It was the seventy-ninth time we had entered a system and carried out our search for a home. The days and years of excitement were long since past. It was a routine now. It was what we did. Hope and disappointment and all the rest of the emotional baggage had slowly drained away, failure after bitter failure.
We had learned to expect nothing. We'd learned to discount every encouraging datum and to believe every ill omen. Seventy-nine systems in sixty-three years. And that was only the systems worth investigation. How many other systems had we visited solely for the purpose of mining mineral-rich asteroids, or to accumulate hydrogen?
It was what we did. ft was who we were now. The Ket: less than a hundred wanderers in search of a new home.
—Animorphs — The Ellimist Chronicles
