by Martha Wells
"What the hell?" John asked evenly.
Rodney waved impatiently for him to shut up. "-all our anomalous readings-"
"-everything that has puzzled us, the consistency of the signal yet the inability to determine direction-" Zelenka waved his hands excitedly.
"Exactly!" Rodney finished. He looked down at John. "Now what did you want?"
"I want you to get off me," John said, and thought he sounded very reasonable under the circumstances.
"The jumper," Zelenka reminded Rodney. "We need you to take us up in the jumper," he explained to John. "Quickly, before we lose signal."
"Right, right, the jumper," Rodney agreed. He prodded John in the side impatiently. "What are you waiting for?"
"I'll give you a thirty-second head start," John promised him. "And I won't use the P-90."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rodney demanded, outraged. "We've been looking for this energy source for days, and you want to-"
"Wait, what?" John pushed himself upright, fully awake now. "You found it?"
"The crystals beneath the central complex, the ones we thought were drained," Zelenka tried to explain, "they are a relay, the source is intermittent-"
"It's on the other moon," Rodney hissed, prodding John again. "Now will you get up and get the damn jumper ready?"
"Why didn't you say so?" John asked him, reaching for his tac vest and gun belt.
"I will come along as well," Teyla's voice said from the next sleeping bag over. "I am quite awake now."
"Immediately" wasn't possible, no matter how loud and imperative Rodney got. The jumpers only required a brief pre-flight, but there was a rule on all offworld missions that anything essential, or that could be identifiable as Atlantean if found by the Wraith, had to be stored onboard when not in use, so it wouldn't have to be abandoned in an emergency lift-off. Since that described pretty much everything they had here, that meant there were several cases of equipment and tools that had to be shifted out of Jumper One to Jumpers Two and Three, in case it was needed while they were gone. The five cranky scientists sleeping in Jumper One also had to be shifted to Jumpers Two and Three to join the equally cranky scientists sleeping there. It all took under twenty minutes, despite Rodney's insistence that this was an emergency and they should just take off with the equipment and extra passengers aboard.
Rodney had wanted Zelenka, Chandar, and Kusanagi to accompany them, but Chandar had volunteered to stay here and monitor the device on this end, rather than leave it to the techs. John felt compelled to point out, "Kusanagi and Zelenka don't have much offworld time. And it was hard enough to get him to come here." This was only Zelenka's second off-world mission, and he wasn't exactly a natural at it. The first one had been a brief foray to a culled planet, to try to get Rodney and Lieutenant Cadman out of the storage buffer of a downed Wraith dart. It hadn't exactly gone well.
Rodney waved the objection away. "Yes, I know. But he needs to get over it, and if Kusanagi's going to advance, she needs field experience." He hesitated uneasily, rubbing his hands together. "Are you thinking about Irina?"
And about every other scientist John had taken through a Stargate and not brought back. "You're not?"
"We all know what the risks are." Rodney looked away, grimacing. Just then, Ronon came walking down the ramp with a crate, and Rodney jerked his head toward him. "And speaking of which, why are we bringing him?"
"Because he needs more mission experience if he's going to be on the team." John knew Rodney was still holding the whole "hanging upside down from a tree" thing against Ronon. It was hardly surprising, since John had stolen a handful of Rodney's popcorn ration once last year, and Rodney was still holding that against him.
Rodney said pointedly, "Nobody thinks that's a good idea but you."
"I think it is a good idea," Teyla said, calmly sorting through her pack.
"We're not voting," Rodney told her. "We-"
"That's right, we're not," John cut him off. What they were really arguing about wasn't bringing in Ronon, but replacing Ford, and he didn't want to hear about it. It had been hard enough to make the decision; he wasn't going to reconsider it now.
John had put off adding a fourth member to their team, put off even thinking about it, about anything but getting Ford back. Until they had found him on P3M-736, out of his head from the enzyme, and John had watched him jump into a Wraith culling beam.
There hadn't been a lot of options to replace him at first; John had wanted to make certain that all the teams had at least one, preferably two, Atlantean veterans to go along with the new personnel, and now they were all assigned and working together comfortably. And he just hadn't wanted to put a shiny new Marine in Ford's place. Ford had been young, but he hadn't been inexperienced, and it still hadn't saved him. Ronon had survived seven years running from the Wraith with no support network whatsoever; he was ideal for a `gate team, if they could just teach him how to work and play well with others again. "We're bringing Ronon," John said, and Rodney flung his arms in the air and stalked off.
John also took the time to arrange a check-in schedule with Major Lorne. "Think you can handle the excitement?" John asked.
"Yes, sir," Lorne said, his expression wry in the light from the battery lamps. Lorne was Air Force and John's newly assigned 21C, and John had been a little surprised that he was fitting in so well on Atlantis. But then Lorne had been in the SGC for a few years, and was probably used to the crazier aspects of offplanet life. He also had the Ancient gene, so he could fly the puddlejumpers if necessary. Lorne added, "If the scientists start fighting again, I'll just use the Wraith stunners."
"Fire a warning shot first," John told him. After that, they were ready to leave.
"Finally!" Rodney snarled as the jumper lifted off. He was in the left hand jump seat, connecting his laptop into the jumper's systems. "If we lose this trace-"
"Did you lose it?" John asked, guiding the jumper rapidly up through the dark sky, the sensor image of the gas giant outlined by the holographic Heads Up Display.
"No, but-"
"Then shut up."
"Everyone moved as quickly as possible," Teyla pointed out from the co-pilot's chair, her tone placating. She had called the shotgun seat before Rodney, which John suspected was also pissing him off.
"How long will it take to get there?" Zelenka asked warily from the other jump seat. Miko was sitting in the back with Ronon. She seemed more excited than nervous, while Zelenka seemed mostly nervous.
The HUD popped up a projected ETA in response to John's thought. John mentally converted the figures from Ancient. "About forty-five minutes, give or take."
Rodney nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. "I just hope the signatures are still traceable by then."
John rolled his eyes. "Why don't you get the cakes out from under the medical kit?"
Zelenka looked up, startled. "Is that where they are? I thought they had run out."
"Chandar's techs were eating them," Rodney explained darkly, standing up to head into the back.
"Bastards," Zelenka muttered.
The other moon looked red from orbit. When John took the jumper down toward the surface, following the energy signature, they skimmed over a wide open plain with pink and brown soil studded with patches of tall grass and scrubby bushes. The light had an odd quality; bright but tinted by the gas giant filling the sky, unchangeable and undimmed by the few wispy clouds.
"The jumper's detecting a low oxygen content in the atmosphere," Rodney said, sounding preoccupied. "The levels vary between twelve and fifteen percent. Being out on the surface unprotected would be like trying to jog around the top of Mount Everest." He looked up, his mouth twisted. "That's odd."
"Why is that odd?" Ronon asked, standing to look through the cabin doorway.
Miko, sitting on the floor between the two jump seats with her laptop, pushed back her glasses to look up at him. "We've never found an Ancient occupation site on a planet or moon that couldn't support hum
an life."
"I think perhaps what atmosphere is there is artificial," Zelenka said, studying his own laptop.
Teyla twisted around in her seat, startled. "That is possible?"
"Very much so, with Ancients' level of technology," Zelenka assured her. "If it was done here, there was perhaps not enough plant life and bodies of water to sustain the atmosphere, without whatever mechanism that supplied or created it. Since this moon was abandoned, the atmosphere would have gradually leaked away, until it reached a stable level that the surface could support."
"It's a distinct possibility," Rodney added, studying his own data. "The jumper's orbital scan picked up few open bodies of water, minimal plant life, small amounts of ice at the poles, but no sizable life signs, which means no humans, no aliens, no large fauna-"
"No Wraith," John put in, though he wasn't sorry to hear about the lack of large fauna, either. Since the planet with the thing that looked a lot like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, he was sensitive on that point.
"No Wraith, always a plus," Rodney agreed. He looked up, wide-eyed. "Oh, oh, oh, here we go."
The jumper's HUD was picking up a group of manmade structures, standing out against the flat terrain. Despite the lack of life signs, John kept the jumper cloaked.
As they drew nearer, John slowed the jumper, bringing it down for a closer look. There were several large low buildings, with flattened domes, surrounded by stretches of pavement that were mostly covered by sand. One dome was partially open, showing that at some point it had been able to retract, allowing access to the building for air or space craft. "I think we found the spaceport," John said, and had to think, I love it when I get to say things like that.
Rodney was on his feet, gripping the back of John's seat and pointing over his shoulder. "Get closer!"
John lifted a brow. "You think that's a good idea? If that thing snaps shut-"
Rodney snorted. "Oh, right. This from the man whose last words were almost `hey, I want to get a better look at the big thing with the tentacles down there."' He waved a hand. "This dome must operate like the outer doors in Atlantis' jumper bay, and it's probably been stuck open for ten thousand years."
"Okay, fine. But I get to say `I told you so' if the building eats us," John said, though he thought Rodney was probably right.
"I will make note of that," Teyla commented dryly.
"How comforting," Zelenka added, sounding uneasy.
John guided the jumper down toward the half-open dome. This close, it looked reassuringly stable; red lichen or moss had crept up the sides and was growing in cracks in the dark material. Still, he didn't intend to go all the way in. As he hovered over the dark opening, the jumper's outer lights came on, playing over the building's interior, illuminating a metallic floor and another set of bay doors leading to a lower level, also wedged partly open.
"Look," Teyla said softly, pointing. "The far wall."
John adjusted the angle, tilting the jumper downwards for a better view, and the lights swiveled to better illuminate the area. He saw the racks and walkways for a jumper bay, all empty. Now this was a cool find. "This is the spaceport, all right."
His voice tense with excitement, Rodney said, "We need to check those other domes. If they left even one jumper behind, or if there's a repair facility, or spare parts-
"It would come in handy," John finished. They had lost a few jumpers over the past year. With the Daedalus making regular supply runs, it wasn't as desperate a situation as it would have been before resuming contact with Earth, but it wasn't like they could manufacture them yet. He thought this was a damn good day's work.
"But there is no city here, no Stargate as far as we know. Why would they put the jumper bays in the middle of nowhere?" Teyla wondered, her brow furrowed slightly.
"The city could be underground." Rodney stepped back to study his equipment again. "And actually that makes more sense. If this power source is shielded-"
"Rodney, I don't think it is here," Zelenka said, shaking his head at his laptop's screen. "These readings are almost identical to those on the other moon." He looked down to check Miko's screen, then turned his chair, watching Rodney intently. "I think this is also a relay."
Snarling under his breath, Rodney lunged over Miko to look at Zelenka's screen. Zelenka leaned sideways to avoid being shoved out of his seat and Miko smashed herself back into the doorway. John looked earnestly at Teyla and said, "It's like a scavenger hunt."
She lifted a brow and her lips quirked. "I hope that is not what it sounds like."
Rodney turned back, stabbing a finger at the port. "He's right. Keep going, that way!"
"What, you don't want to stop and explore the spaceport?" John protested. From the readings, they wouldn't even need to use the awkward environmental suits, just the SCBAs that were part of the jumper's standard equipment.
"You have a spaceport at home. Right now we need to find the energy source." Rodney leaned between the seats, nearly elbowing Teyla in the head as he pointed at the HUD. The jumper's longrange sensors were busily assembling a rough map display. "Now go that way, toward the mountains."
"We can always come back," Teyla pointed out practically, fending Rodney off. "The spaceport does not appear to be in any danger of vanishing."
John began, "Yeah, but-" Rodney was turning red and Zelenka was waving erratically toward the readings on his screen, and Miko was gazing up at him in mute appeal. Ronon stirred restlessly but didn't weigh in on either side. "Okay, fine." Disgruntled, John lifted the jumper out of the dome and guided them away toward the distant mountain range. "But next time we stop and look at the thing I want to stop and look at."
After about fifteen minutes of flight, the mountains were beginning to loom larger in the port.
"Dr. McKay, Dr. Zelenka!" Miko said suddenly. "These readings-"
"Rodney, Miko, do you see this?" Zelenka demanded.
Rodney snapped, "Yes, yes, shut up, I'm trying to-"
"It's spiking!" Zelenka yelped.
"Kids." John kept his voice calm. "Share with the rest of the class. I'd kind of like to know what I'm flying directly into."
"It's a power signature." Rodney, who was obviously in the midst of a science-gasm, laughed a little erratically. "It has to be something enormous. It's showing fluctuations, as though it's in use-"
"How enormous?" John could see something on the horizon, a shape too regular to be part of the low mountains. He squinted, trying to make it out. Then the jumper's sensors picked it up, creating a three-dimensional shape in the HUD. Teyla leaned forward, staring intently at the image. According to the sensors, it was a round structure, open in the middle, with a flat roof. It looked like nothing so much as a big stadium, at least a 100,000 seater. John said, "This enormous?"
Everybody was staring at the HUD now. The jumper wasn't finding any life signs, just the power signatures that were making the scientists frisky.
"Get closer," Rodney whispered.
John gained a little altitude and dropped a lot of speed, approaching cautiously. They could clearly see the dark stone walls now, indigo like the city on the other moon, streaked with the red dust. The building wasn't featureless, there were lines and squares embossed in it in abstract patterns that were probably just decoration, but there were no windows on this outside wall. Moving slower still, John took the jumper up over the roof.
The open well in the center of the building was big enough to accommodate at least two football fields. Inside it was a giant silver ring, framing... something. An enemy field, John thought, baffled. It was black and oddly mottled as energy fluctuated across it. "What the hell?" he said aloud. There was pavement around the outer ring and a few other structures standing out from the main building. He knew what it looked like, but it couldn't be.
Startled, Teyla said, "Is that some sort of-"
"A giant Stargate," Rodney finished, sounding caught somewhere between awe and pure avarice. "It could be. That energy field-"
"If it's a `gat
e, it's active." John looked from the energy readings the HUD was displaying to the dark fluid surface. How the hell can it be active?
"A ship nearly the size of the Daedalus could pass through it," Teyla said, fascinated. "Surely that must be its purpose, to transport large ships."
Zelenka waved a hand wildly. "Yes, yes, it has to be for large transports, probably without hyperdrives, to send them to-"
"Yeah, right, but why is it active?" John thought that was the important point right now. "Who the hell dialed it?" There were still no life signs, so whoever had activated it had to be on the other end of the wormhole.
Rodney shook his head. "It's been active intermittently for the past week, or we wouldn't have detected-When we found the crystal relay chamber, that might have triggered some sort of automatic-But the intermittent activity suggests-" He stared out the port, his expression turning fraught. "We're cloaked, right?"
"Yes," John said, drawing out the word and giving Rodney a look.
Rodney nodded to himself, his face uneasy. "Then we should be fine. Try to get down a little closer."
Keeping one eye on the HUD, and wondering at Rodney's definition of "fine," John brought the jumper in low over the roof, following the curve around. There was no way in hell he was going to take them over the giant wormhole, if that was what it was.
The ring itself was thick, maybe as wide as a boxcar, but it was bare of any symbols. "I do not see chevrons, or `gate symbols along the rim. How does it dial?" Teyla wondered, echoing John's thought. "It must be completely different from-"
The field rippled as if a wave had crossed it, silver edging the black. Interference suddenly fuzzed out the HUD, leaving only an Ancient blinking error message. Rodney's fingers dug into John's shoulder, almost to the bone, and he gasped, "Go, go, go, now, get away from it-"
The jumper was already swerving up and away, responding to Rodney's urgency and John's startled thought, even before John could give it a new heading with the physical controls. Then John heard a rumble reverberate through the jumper's metal and the readouts went crazy. Suddenly an explosive concussion hit them like a giant hand; the jumper shivered and John fought the controls.