The Dragonriders of Pern / The Chronicles of Pern

It s the third planet we want in this pernicious system, Castor said in a totally jaundiced tone, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen. How s the hairpin calc going, Shavva?
 
Looking up from her terminal, Shavva screwed up her face for a moment before she spoke. I m happy to report that that ll work out fine. Pity we can t have a look at the edge of the system, she added. I d love to have a look at those heavy-weight planets and the Oort cloud, but that can t be done when we ve got to do an entry normal to the ecliptic. As it is, the slingshot will only give us ten days on the surface. She cast him an expectant, wry look.
 
He groaned. We ll have to double up again. At her half-stern, half-sardonic glare, he added, Fardles, Shavva, after so long together we all know enough of each other s specialties to do a fair report.
 
Fair? Ben Turnien repeated, his quirky eyebrows raised in amazement. Fair to whom?
 
Damn it, Ben, fair enough to know when a planet s habitable by humanoids. None of us needs a zoologist anymore to tell us which beasties are apt to be predatory. And each of us has certainly seen enough strange life-forms and inimical atmospheres and surface conditions to know when to slap an interdict on a planet.
 
There was a taut silence as the four remaining team members each vividly recalled the all-too-recent deaths: Sevvie Asturias, the paleontologist-medic, and Flora Neveshan, the zoologist-botanist, both lost on the last planet the Exploration and Evaluation team had visited. Castor had inscribed, in bold letters on the top of that report, D.E. Dead end. Terbo, the zoologist-chemist, had been felled in a landslide on the first planet of their present survey tour, but as that world had clearly supported some intelligent life, the initials I.L.F. ended that report. They d lost Beldona, the second pilot and archeologist, on the third world in the same accident that had injured Castor: a planet initialed

Anne McCaffrey, one of the world s most popular authors, is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern® series. She was the first woman to win the two top prizes for science fiction writing, the Hugo and Nebula awards. She was also given the American Library Association s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in Young Adult Fiction, was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and was named a Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Grand Master. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1926, McCaffrey relocated to Ireland in the 1970s, where she lived in a house of her own design, named Dragonhold-Underhill. She died in 2011.