"Organic life sample, local-Orion Arm, Antares-7," Science Officer Second Lucinda Saylor placed the liquid sample from the foaming terrestrial seas of Antares-7 into the micro organizer, and watched numbers spin across the viewscreen. Her cybernetics would be recording and relaying the information to the ships log, but she enjoyed the simple pleasures of a bit of commentary to help the analysis along the chain to earth easier. "Largest recorded organism is approximately eight micrometers, standard size array about 7 micrometers on a four standard deviation spread - mean is 1.5 micrometers. Lacking upper end sizes on microorganisms indicates an early stage microbe development."

She left off the word again. Pentrating radar, thermal analysis, and calorimeter samples all concluded the same thing - there were once again no creatures significantly beyond the development level of picoplankton. Humanity had so far only surveyed perhaps 40% of the Orion Arm, but so far the second great filter hypothesis was holding up well. One hundred and forty seven planets thus far had shown evidence of microbial life, with thus far zero instances of multicellular life discovered. Eight planets thus far had proven somewhat suitable for human life. Antares VII was just on the outer edge of that categorization, the dual stars providing more than enough heat even at nearly the orbital diameter of Eres. The planets magnetosphere was compromised however, so terraforming would be rather expensive. No finder's fee for this one.

A stray thought directed into her cybernetics opened a comm link to the first science officer, "eight μm, I'll let the survey team know to pack it up. If you want you can be the one to tell the captain to pack it up," she sensed acknowledgement of the transmission and added another stray thought, "even with the magnetosphere, she's pretty tectonically stable, maybe a 3% bonus?"

The laughter she sensed in her mind was pretty dismissive, "best not to hold your breath." Thanks Jakob, always great with morale. She set about zeroing out the survey equipment, next on their path was Betelguese. Guess someone had a thing for binary stars this cruise. Maybe this time they'd find a Eurkaryote. Now that would be worth some cash.