Free Tau Ceti by Laurence Dahners

said, “Retract the legs.” A moment later the wiggling stopped.
    Roger said, “She? Are you seeing sexual characteristics that I’m missing?”
    Emma elbowed him, “No , but you guys are calling her a ‘he’ which I see no evidence of either. So I’m calling her a ‘she’ until we know. They may not even have sexes!”
    Grinning, Roger rolled his eyes but said nothing. Their view moved forward into the forest. The view darkened and then brightened up as the AI compensated though some of the contrast was lost in the low lighting condition.
    A long period of walking through the forest followed. Shortly it got boring. “Why are they walking instead of flying?” Roger asked.
    Norris said, “Maybe there’s something in the forest that they want and they can’t fly to it through the trees?”
    “I don’t know, the boles of those trees are pretty far apart and their wings are pretty short.”
    Norris shrugged, “I really have no idea. Maybe their flying agility isn’t up to weaving around all the trees?
    As the hike settled down to walking uphill and nothing else Emma went off to work on a laser acoustic pickup for the rocket. Ell turned to the others, “This is exciting but it’s also kind of boring. I’m thinking that at most we should have one of us watching and telling the rest of us if something exciting happens?” She looked around at the others who all nodded. “I don’t mind taking the graveyard shift from midnight to 6.”
    Norris laughed and said, “Sad to say, I’m an early to bed, early to rise person. I’m always up at 4AM . I don’t have a class until 8 so it’d be easy for me to do 4- 7:30 .”
    Roger said, “Why do we have to watch in real time ? Why not just record the video. T hen cruise through it at high speed later looking for the interesting parts ? ”
    “What happens if Goldy starts to take the rocket apart?
    “How would we stop him?”
    “Fire up the engine, fly away if necessary?”
    Emma signed up for 6 to 10PM so Ell took 10PM to 4AM . Wilson, Manuel and Roger all wanted to take shifts but Manuel was worried about how to handle a shift when he might be urgently needed to make things in the machine shop . Roger had to work around meetings with Bynewicz and Mullis. “But maybe Wilson, Manuel and I could work things out between us to cover the daytime hours each day ?”
    Wilson said, “My other assignments can be worked whenever I’m not busy with this , so I’ll take the daytime observation whenever you two can’t be available. When you guys can observe I’ll do my other work.”
    Ell said, “We need to bring someone else in on this. Our group is kinda small for something this huge?”
    Norris said, “ How about hiring a student? Bridget’s friend Belle Donovan from my Planetary Science class is astonishingly smart. She’s killing all the tests and really enthusiastic about this kind of stuff. Students are usually pretty excited to have jobs where they don’t have to do much. Would you like me to ask her? Or you could get Bridget to ask her? ” He looked back and forth. Roger and Emma were grinning at Ell who looked embarrassed. Manuel looked as puzzled as Norris felt. “What?”
    Ell looked down at the floor and blushed, “Sorry Dr. Norris, but I need you to keep another secret for me. I a m ‘Belle.’ I wanted to take your class but it causes a lot of pr oblems when I go to public places like the campus as ‘Ell.’” She shrugged, “So I wear a disguise.”
    Dumbfounded, Norris stared at Donsaii, trying to reconcile Belle’s long platinum blond hair, chipmunk cheeks , acne and thick hips with the beautiful young woman in front of him. Despite her flaws Belle was cute, but compared to Ell… He’d never seen anyone who could hold a candle to Ell, stunning no matter what she wore. Why would anyone disguise themselves that way? He looked at the grinning Roger and Emma, “Are you guys kidding me?”
    Emma laughed, “Nope. Believe it or not, that’s