Free Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) by Laurence Dahners Page A

low before the adventure he and Silver had when Silver’s wing got injured. I get the impression none of the Teecees have lived through the summer without flying south and the fact that they did it brought them a lot of prestige.”
    Harald Wheat said, “We need to publish some of this stuff. Is there really any harm that can come of the public knowing about the Teecees? It’s not like anyone can go to Tau Ceti and exploit them, right?”
    Ell sighed, “I just have a bad feeling about telling the world. We’re still trying to sort out the impact from ordinary ports.”
    Norris said, “We can’t just suppress this knowledge. Science should be carried out in the public eye.”
    Wheat said, “I completely agree with Dr. Norris. Our non-disclosure agreements expired some time ago so we could publish without your permission. I’ve been holding back out of respect for your wishes, but the world deserves to know and to know sometime soon.”
    Ell glanced at Roger and Emma who both shrugged.
    Ell sighed, “OK.”
    Norris said, “I propose that we submit a quartet of papers in Nature. You describe the technology for the one ended ports. I describe the Tau Ceti system and TC3 in particular. Wheat describes the biota of TC3 and Piscova describes the language.”
    Ell shook her head, “No paper about the one ended port al tech. It’s far too dangerous.”
    Roger raised his eyebrows, “But, with the other papers coming out , people are going to realize that we couldn’t have reached another star without some major technological advance.”
    Ell slumped, “Yeah, I know.”
    “Maybe you could release a description of single ended ports that have a minimum reach of, say a few AUs. Then people couldn’t use them as weapons here on earth.”
    “Yeah, I’ve thought of releasing one ended ports with a reach of between one and fifty AUs for space research or less than 5mm for medical implantation. But I can’t release a ‘description’ of how to do it or people would figure their way around it. The only safe thing to do would be to sell devices that could do those things but not reveal how they’re made.”
    Norris shrugged, “There are a lot of smart people out there. They’re going to figure it out from the original patent apps and your papers aren’t they?”
    “Yeah, probably they will… eventually.” Ell said wearily, “But I don’t want to be the one who told terrorists how to do this.”
    “Wait a minute,” Roger said, “Less than 50 AU? Then they couldn’t reach other stars.”
    “Nope, and I don’t want them to do that. Not all aliens we meet are going to be primitives like the Teecees. Believe me; we don’t want every Joe Blow sending a mission to some of the stars out there. We don’t want them doing bad things to the primitives, but we especially don’t want them pissing off one of the advanced races.”
    Roger narrowed his eyes, “One of? Sounds like you might have already encountered a more advanced race.” He glanced at Emma ; then back at Ell “What did you find at Aeapou findlpha Centauri?”
    Ell shrugged, “Just some pretty primitive looking life. The planet there that’s near the liquid water zone has a pretty eccentric orbit, sometimes frozen, sometimes boiling. There is abundant mushy green stuff, probably single celled, but nothing that anyone would be excited about.”
    “But, it sounds like you’ve encountered a more advanced race, where?”
    After a long pause that set everyone’s nerves on edge Ell said, “Sorry, I just don’t want to say right now. I don’t know enough about them. I want to more fully evaluate the risks.”
    The people in the room looked at one another. Norris exploded, “You can’t keep something like this a secret! An advanced race! That’s hugely important, not something that one person should keep as their own secret! Think what they could teach us.”
    Piscova turned to Norris and said, “What if they attack instead of teach?”
    “I thought