Two Literary References

Operation Luna.

(i) "We could either come along or stand where we were and waste our sweatiness on the desert air." (6, p. 56)

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
― Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard 
-copied from here.

For the whole poem, see here.

For Alan Moore on genre fiction and the graveyard poets, who include Gray, see:

The Origin Of Genre Fiction?

(ii) "'...that line from Dunsany - 'beyond the fields we know.'" (5, p. 46)