He has moral problems from the moment that he finds out what happened. "Finding the survivor" smacks of Deus ex Machina to allow a "happy" ending and an opportunity for the character to redeem himself.

To err is of course human. But to mess things up spectacularly, we need an elite — Yanis Varoufakis

Having read OSC's Maps in a Mirror short-story collection I have to say if his characters display empathy just as plot devices he's very good at it. An entire section of the collection is stories about religion (or, rather, about transcendence - not much particularly Christian about the stories) and that's particularly good. Mayeb it's because OSC is actually deeply religious or because I was young and impressionable when I read that, but I find the way he handles religious themes rather more convincing than the way an atheist such as Arthur C. Clarke does in, say, the Rama series.

To err is of course human. But to mess things up spectacularly, we need an elite — Yanis Varoufakis