What we wanted was to see planets taste life in a way they never had.

Standard procedure; the usual high volume of paperwork required to even sneeze on another planet.

His brain didn't want her to go, and he was afraid his subconscious would badger it's only witness into believing she didn't have to.

These were not the aliens out beaming anyone up. If anything, they'd be the ones providing apologetic form letters to the inconveniently beamed-up.

It was beginning to look as if he hadn't just found a sign of water on a destitute planet, he'd found a sign that the same planet had penguins. Those would be two fundamentally different breakthroughs.

There was an off-planet directory next to an old rotary phone that looked lost, as if it had wandered in the room and was actually looking for a more modern facility.