Entanglement

Chapter three

John suddenly found himself standing at the bottom of the shaft, facing Rodney. Rodney yelped and flinched backward, then shouted, "What the hell took you so long?"

John shook his head; they used the transporters constantly in Atlantis, the size of the city made it impossible not to. But without the cushioning effect of the chamber it was just as disorienting as being grabbed suddenly by the Daedalus' Asgard transport beam.

This part of the shaft opened up into a larger well, with a darker green circle on the floor, which probably marked the space it was a bad idea to stand in if more people were coming down. The others were backed against the wall, watching Zelenka and Miko work on an open panel. John stepped out of the circle, just in case the transporter decided to reverse abruptly, and said, "I thought I saw something." He jerked his chin toward the door. "Can we get out of here?"

"Working on it!" Rodney snapped, turning back to the panel. He took Miko by the shoulders and shifted her out of the way.

"What did you see?" Teyla asked John, brows lifted.

"Something came out of the wall," he told her. "A little thing, angled like it was pointing at us."

Ronon looked up toward the top of the shaft. "A weapon?"

John shook his head. "No way to tell. Could have been a camera, too." All three of them pivoted, checking the walls. John couldn't see anything like it down here, but with the blue-green lights and the strips of embossed metal that might be decorative or something to do with the transporter function, there were too many places for a tiny device to hide. He added, "Whatever it was, it could've just been automatically tracking our movements."

"Or something could be watching us," Ronon added.

Teyla shook her head, though she still looked uneasy. "The life signs detector showed nothing."

"But this structure is very large," Miko put in, glancing back at them and adjusting her glasses. "And the shielding is unusual. If someone was several sections away, I'm not sure the detector would find him."

They all looked at her. "Oh," John said, turning that unpleasant thought over. Considering they had no idea if the ship near the Mirror was Ancient or not, if it had been here since the Mirror had been abandoned or since yesterday, it wasn't encouraging. "Great."

Zelenka was saying, "Ah, here, relay is damaged-"

"Got it!" Rodney stepped back from the panel, lifting the mask part of his SCBA unit. "Everyone put your breathing gear back on. This system was designed to get people out of this structure as quickly as possible if the Mirror destabilized. We could run into something that might pop us right outside."

"Important safety tip. Thanks, Rodney." John adjusted his breathing unit, made certain everyone else had theirs on, then gave Rodney the nod to open the door.

Rodney made a last adjustment to the crystals and the door slid sideways. The first thing John noticed was that the door itself was nearly a foot thick, as heavy as the blast doors. The second was that the large room it opened into was not the ground floor corridor he had been expecting to see.

The ceiling was lower and instead of the dark indigo stone, the walls were the metallic blue-green, with more strips of the tiny blue lights. Most of the illumination came from square pillars, set with blocky white glowing fixtures, not unlike the ones in Atlantis. But the lights toward the back of the room weren't on, leaving most of it in shadow.

John stepped through the doorway cautiously. He really didn't like not knowing where they were in relation to the jumper. "Rodney?" he said. "Any thoughts?"

Rodney stepped up next to him, saying uncertainly, "I have no idea. I thought we were on the first level."

"Yeah." John thought, we jumped into a strange transporter and we have no idea where it took us. Good one, John. "But we could hear Ronon when he called up the shaft. If this isn't the ground floor, then it has to be above or below it. It couldn't have taken us to another building." He added uneasily, "Or, you know, planet." Don 't let it be another planet.

"Unless there was a communications device in the shaft that was transmitting his voice back to us," Rodney said. John stared at him, appalled. Rodney added hurriedly, "But what's more likely is that we're a level or two below ground. Think about it: escaping a massive energy discharge by running outside the structure into the open is not the best option. It's more likely that there's a protected escape route down here." He looked around, brow creased in worry. "Somewhere."

"Okay, that is more likely," John admitted. He glanced back at the others. Teyla and Ronon had stepped out behind him, and were gazing around the room suspiciously, flashing their lights into the shadows. Zelenka and Kusanagi had put their tools back in their packs and were anxiously watching him. "It's okay. This happens all the time," John told them, judging this was a good time to throw honesty out the window and concentrate on reassurance.

"It does?" Ronon commented skeptically.

"Yes. Yes, it does," Teyla said, spearing him with a look. She turned to give Radek and Miko a reassuring smile, adding, "We need only look for the way to the surface."

"Right." John turned back to the shadowy room. "Stay together."

There was an open triangular archway at the back of the chamber, leading to an almost identical space, but unlit. John had thought the lights would come on once they got into the darkened section; they did in Atlantis, responding to any movement now that they had been initialized by the Ancient gene. But the pillar-lights here stayed dark. "That's not good," John commented, carefully examining the walls with his P-90's light while Zelenka and Kusanagi got out flashlights. He didn't see anything like a console to turn the lights on manually, either.

"This area must have taken some damage," Rodney agreed sourly, looking from the life signs detector to his tablet. "Everybody turn on your breathing units; there's a strong flow of air, but this section isn't holding pressure." He tucked the tablet under his arm and switched on his own unit, looking up with a wince. "I hope our hypothetical escape route doesn't need power."

"Great," John muttered, switching his unit on. He caught a worried look from Teyla. Yeah, they were potentially in a lot of trouble here. They had about an hour's worth of air in each tank, which had seemed like a lot when they had had a clear path back to the jumper.

Rodney said uneasily, "At least the chamber at the bottom of the shaft is pressurized, if we, ah…" He tapped the strap of his breathing tank significantly.

John just said, "Right," and picked up the pace. The air at the bottom of the shaft might keep them alive, but staying there didn't exactly offer a lot of options for searching for the way out.

They went through three more rooms and a couple of corridors, all unlit. Then the escape route stopped being hypothetical, but might as well have been mythological for all the good it was going to do them. Their lights had started to find cracks in the walls and the floor had become grainy with dirt and pebbles. Then they found the tumble of rock blocking the end of the next large room. Rodney swore, and John agreed, "Yeah, this sucks."

"But look at this," Teyla said, directing her light toward the far wall. There was a narrow silver track set into the floor, partially concealed by dust and rubble.

"Huh, that's intriguing," Rodney muttered, starting toward it. John used his longer legs to get there first, sweeping his light around to check the ceiling for any sign of imminent collapse. It looked like the wall had buckled, the rock pushing through the metal panels and piling up on the floor, but the roof hadn't given way and didn't look inclined to it. Rodney moved back and forth, his flashlight flickering around impatiently, picking out a large rounded shape buried under the rubble. "There's something under here, some kind of small underground vehicle. It must use that track-"

"What, like a little subway?" John asked.

Rodney waved his hands. "Yes, that is what an underground vehicle would be called, yes. But it's obvious this is-

"Perhaps it goes to the spaceport," Miko said, standing on tiptoes to see as she stood next to John. She had apparently taken the order to not get ahead of the military personnel literally, and he sure as hell wasn't going to fault her for it.

"Yes, exactly." Zelenka crouched with his flashlight, trying to get a better look at the smashed metal and glass under the rocks. "If this is escape route, it would make the most sense for the subway to head directly there, at very high speed. And it could have a self-contained power source, like a jumper, and wouldn't be affected by power loss in the main complex, as a transporter would."

Rodney glared. "Of course! That's what I was trying to-

"So how do we get out?" Ronon asked.

"We're working on it," John said easily, before Rodney's head exploded. They were still finding stuff; it wasn't time to start the real worrying until they had exhausted all the possibilities. "Right, Rodney?"

"Yes, yes." Rodney turned away from the crushed subway car, flicking his light around. "There should be alternate entrances, if this was a regular method of transportation to and from the port. In which case, there could be something nearby…" He stepped over the rubble, moving toward the wall.

They spread out a little, searching, their lights finding more rubble and dust and buckled metal. John kept a close eye on the time, thinking about their air tanks.

Finally Zelenka halted, shining his flashlight toward the ceiling. "Wait, Colonel, Rodney? What is this?"

John stepped over the rocks to reach his side, squinting. "That.. looks like a hatch." It was a door-sized panel set in a recess in the flat stone ceiling. From the chunks of metal still attached, there had once been a stairway or ladder to access it. John saw with relief that it had a little console, which meant Rodney could trick it into opening for them if there was any power left in this section at all. "Good job, Radek."

"Yes, you get a gold star," Rodney added, joining them.

It was too high for even Ronon to reach while stretching up and standing on his toes, but fortunately there was no shortage of rocks. They piled up enough to make a small platform for Rodney to stand on and reach the console.

Zelenka stood below, handing Rodney tools and kibitzing. Ronon offered to hold Miko up so she could see too, but she declined. After a few minutes of work and trading insults with Zelenka, the console popped and the hatch groaned, starting to slide open. John stepped back as dirt and pebbles poured through the growing opening, a red landslide. Rodney hastily jumped down as everyone else backed away. Tucking his toolkit back into his pack, Zelenka said fervently, "Don't be blocked, please-Hah, I see light!"

He was right; wan daylight was visible through the cascade of dirt. There were murmurs of relief. "Looks like we're in business," John said, trying to get closer, squinting to see through the dust cloud. The slide trickled to a halt and he stepped up onto their awkward rock platform, looking up through the opening. It led into a metal-walled shaft about eight feet long, and he couldn't see much beyond that but the curve of the planet dominating the sky.

He still couldn't see anything when Ronon boosted him up, but he could tell the edges of the hatch were set securely in some kind of stone platform. Ronon half-shoved, half-flung him, and John scrambled for a moment, sending another small landslide down. The walls of the shaft were crusted with dirt, but he finally got a grip on a set of handholds forming a ladder in the wall. He hauled himself up enough to brace his feet on the metal of the shaft, then climbed the rest of the way to the surface.

Poking his head out cautiously, he saw the shaft opened into the bottom of a semi-circular pit with sides too regular to be anything but manmade. Dirt was still trickling down the opening, and it looked like whatever covering that had originally shielded it had been torn away, and the whole thing buried under weather-shifted soil, most of which was now down on the floor of the chamber below.

John climbed out and struggled through the loose sand toward the side, finding a set of steps by luck when his boot caught on the first one and he smacked into the side of the pit. They were still mostly buried, but provided enough purchase to make the climb easier than trying to swim upward through a sea of shifting sand. His headset came on and Rodney's voice demanded, "What are you doing? What do you see?"

"I see sand. Lots of sand. Give me a minute." At least the SCBA kept him from having to breathe in the dust. John reached the top of the pit, and swore in relief. The outer wall of the installation was about five hundred yards away. The distance didn't quite add up; he didn't think the series of belowground rooms had covered that much ground. Rodney must have been right about the transporter; it hadn't been a straight shot down the shaft. It had taken them further outside the building, and Ronon must have called to them over an automatically activated comm system.

But however they had ended up out here, they were on the right side of the building. John could see one of the triangular doorways as the structure curved, and the rock formation not far to the south looked familiar. He fished the jumper's remote out of his tac vest. "Well hello, baby," he muttered as the readout told him the cloaked jumper was within close range. That must be the doorway they had used to enter the building, and the jumper was waiting only a short distance from it. "What, what?" Rodney was yelling in his headset as in the background, Teyla said, "Dr. McKay, please calm down," and Zelenka added helpfully, "You are using up all your air, Rodney."

"We're near the jumper," John reported, ignoring all the commentary. He shoved off from the dirt-encrusted stairs and went back to the shaft. His arrival caused another small cascade and some grumbling exclamations from below.

He dropped to his knees beside the open hatch, unslinging his pack to get the rope out. He figured Teyla, Miko, and Radek would need it, all being too short to reach as far up as John had been able to, and Ronon could only fling them so far up the shaft. There was no good spot to tie it off, the ladder set into the side just had handholds, not actual rungs he could wrap it around. John settled for anchoring the rope by bracing his body across the shaft, planting his butt and his feet against the stable stone and metal rim. He said over the radio, "Teyla, you're next."

She managed it with some scrambling, and another small landslide as more crusted dirt was dislodged. She struggled out, shook a spray of red sand out of her hair, and looked around. "We have been lucky for once," she said, her voice wry.

"Hey, hey, watch it," John told her seriously. "Remember, we talked about that." He said into his headset, "Come on, McKay."

Teyla lifted a skeptical brow at him, taking up the slack of the rope and bracing herself to help anchor it. "Yes, you believe if we speak of luck, it goes away. I do not share your superstitions."

"You were willing to humor the people on P6S-221 who thought wearing hats kept the Wraith away-" John leaned back, steadying the rope as Rodney started his climb. "You can humor us."

Teyla shifted to take more of the weight. "Wearing a hat because our hosts asked it was simply courtesy. I am not going to encourage your primitive-"

Rodney's head appeared near the top of the shaft and John reached down to give him a hand up. Rodney was looking down, apparently addressing Zelenka, "I can't tell if it's a power access port or not, do I look like I can make a complete assessment while hanging in midair?" John and Teyla heaved and Rodney dragged himself up, scrambling out of the shaft to thump down heavily on the sand. Breathing hard, he told John, "If the jumper's nearby, I don't see why you couldn't have gotten the winch and saved us the trouble of-" Rodney froze, eyes going wide, and that was when the shadow fell over the pit.

John threw a look over his shoulder and got a heartfreezing view of a big dark shape hovering over them. He twisted around, jerking up the P-90. It was a ship.

He heard Teyla take a sharp indrawn breath and Rodney gasp, "It's-It's-"

Gritting his teeth, his whole body tight in anticipation of a culling beam, John whispered tensely into his headset, "Ronon, fall back, get them away from the hatch, now, do it now."

But it didn't look Wraith; it didn't look like anything John had ever seen before. It was larger than the jumper, curved into a conch shell-like spiral, dark purple shaded to pink… It matches the tulip ship, John thought in shock. This thing went together with that ship like Lego bricks. A faint flush of cool air came from it, smelling of ozone; a cloud of dust rose slowly around it. John registered Ronon's terse, "Come on," a murmur of alarm from Zelenka, Kusanagi's breathless, "Hurry, Doctor."

"I sense no Wraith," Teyla was whispering, her P-90 aimed at the thing looming over them. "This ship is not of the Ancestors?"

"I have no idea," Rodney managed. He winced. "It's not killing us yet. That's probably wishful thinking."

John couldn't see anything that looked like the muzzle of a weapon. Since it had been maybe thirty seconds and they still weren't dead, he added, "Rodney, when I say go, grab the rope and get back down there. Teyla, you're right behind him."

Teyla flicked a worried look at him, but nodded. "But, I, it's-" Rodney swallowed noisily. "Right." He edged back toward the shaft, his eyes still on the ship. "What about you?"

"I'm going to be right behind Teyla," John assured him. "Go!"

Rodney swung his legs into the shaft and grabbed for the rope. John shifted, bracing his leg against the edge of the hatch, but Rodney let go of the rope, grabbing onto the dirt-encrusted ladder and half-climbing, half-falling down. "Teyla, go," John snapped.

She twisted around and grabbed the rope, and just as she swung down into the shaft, the ship moved. It rolled with a sudden rush of air, dust sheeting over the pit, and John twisted his face away. He felt Teyla's weight leave the rope and he rolled to crouch on the edge of the opening, trying to disappear into the dirt and sparse tufts of grass. He couldn't go down yet; if he fell he would slam Teyla and probably Rodney into the rocks at the bottom of the shaft. Then he heard Rodney yell "Go, go, we're clear!" and Teyla's breathless confirmation. John swung his legs over the side, scrambling for purchase. Then the shadow and the looming weight overhead were suddenly gone.

His heart pounding, John looked up. The ship was lifting away from the pit. It rolled gracefully, with a sound like wind rustling through pines, then moved out of sight toward the south.

John slid down another foot before he managed to stop himself. He couldn't hear the ship anymore, but he watched the edge of the pit warily. So did it leave? Wraith ships didn't have cloaking technology, but it sounded like the consensus had been that this wasn't a Wraith ship. And John had to admit that the evidence was in favor of it; if it had been some new kind of Wraith ship it would still have a culling beam, and he, Rodney, and Teyla would be well on their way to getting stuck to the wall of a hiveship as future items on the dinner menu. John winced as his headset crackled and Rodney's voice whispered furiously, "What the hell are you doing? Get down here!"

"It left. I'm trying to figure out where the hell it went." John dragged himself out, getting another ton of sand down his pants in the process, kneeling in the dirt to untangle himself from the rope.

Teyla's voice overrode Rodney's to ask, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Rodney, just out of curiosity, when did you last check the life signs detector?" John kept his head down as he made his way to the half-buried steps at the edge of the pit.

Rodney was saying to someone else, "Oh please, I have no idea what it is and unless you've got a copy of Jane's Fighting Intergalactic Spaceships hidden in your pack, neither do you." He answered John, "When you first climbed out, there was nothing on the screen but us. The ship must have been out of range. Or it's shielded against the detector, which frankly would be just our luck. And if it's still out there, I'm not getting a reading. So basically it could be anywhere so be very, very careful!"

John scrambled to the top of the steps and took a cau tious peek over the edge of the pit. "Oh, crap."

"What?" several different voices demanded.

"I found it. It landed." John cautiously eased back down, digging his binoculars out of a tac vest pocket. "Guess where."

John could hear Rodney thumping himself in the forehead. "It's next to the jumper, isn't it?" Rodney said bleakly.

"Yeah. Maybe about twenty yards from it." John wiped sweat and dirt off his forehead and lifted up enough to focus the binoculars on the alien ship. "That's not an accident. It has to be able to see through the jumper's cloak."

"An Ancient ship would have that ability," Radek put in, sounding unnerved.

Teyla said, "But if they were somehow Ancestors, they would see we are human, and try to contact us."

"They could be like us, humans who have found and learned to use Ancient technology," Miko added cautiously.

"Maybe they are trying to contact us," John pointed out. With the binoculars he could see more detail on the ship, including bulbous projections that might be sensor devices or weapons, and a curved depression in the hull that could be a hatch. He put the binoculars away, checked his watch, and grimaced. They didn't have a lot of time left on the air tanks, and all that climbing and suppressed hysteria had to have used up an extra share of oxygen. "If they wanted to lure us out into the open, all they had to do was fly behind the building and wait till we came out."

Then Ronon said, "Maybe they just want to make sure we're good to eat first."

John shook his head wearily. There was a moment of silence, then Teyla said, "Ronon. That was unnecessary."

"We have fifteen minutes of air left," Rodney added, his voice grim.

"I know." John didn't see that he had a lot of choice. "I'm going to get the jumper and bring it over here. If I'm not back in seven minutes, get back to the building. Teyla's in command."

Rodney was already sputtering, "What? Alone? Are you out of your mind?"

Easing up to the top of the steps, John didn't see how company would help if the ship decided to fire on him. "Yeah, alone."

"Sheppard, I'll go," Ronon said as Teyla began, "Colonel-" and Rodney started, "We could try-"

"Ronon, stay with the others and do what Teyla says. That's an order. Everybody shut up now. That's also an order." Wincing, John stood cautiously, already feeling like he had a target painted on his chest. But there was no sign of movement from the ship.

The others interpreted "shut up now" as "continue to argue in furious whispers" but it kept John company as he crossed the suddenly endless stretch of open ground between the pit and the cloaked jumper. He moved at a jog, because he just didn't have time to take it slow and cautious. He gave the other ship as wide a berth as possible.

The argument was still raging in his headset. He heard Rodney say, "You're discounting the possibility that it could have come through the Mirror!" and Radek reply, "I am not discounting! I see no reason to theorize in advance of my data!" John hoped Kusanagi's earlier guess was right, and the ship was occupied by Pegasus Galaxy humans who had stumbled on Ancient technology and figured out how to use it. The other option was aliens, and he really wasn't comfortable with that.

It wasn't that he didn't believe there were benign aliens. He had seen all the SGC reports and he knew about the Tok'ra and the Nox and all the assorted others, and he had met an Asgard in person, though he still thought Hermiod was a creepy little bastard. But his gut reaction wasn't ever going to change. In an argument where Rodney had called John a xenophobe, Rodney had pointed out that John's perception of aliens had been adversely affected because his first experience with one had involved being pinned to a dinner table by a life-sucking vampire that wanted to eat his entire species. John had replied, yeah, so what? and that was pretty much the end of rational discourse on that subject.

Of course, if it was humans in there, that certainly didn't mean they were out of the woods. Instead of sitting in there thinking hey, other people with a spaceship, let's contact them, it could be hey, another spaceship, let's kill them all and steal it.

But they could have done that with one burst of fire into the pit and they hadn't, and that was all John had to go on right now.

"Colonel! What's going on? What is the alien ship doing? What-" Rodney demanded.

"Nothing, yet." The ship was just looming silently on the sand, like a giant metal conch shell.

Forty yards now from the square dent in the sand that marked the jumper's position, John debated the relative merit of glaring suspiciously at the strange ship versus trying to pretend it wasn't there. Thirty yards and he was starting to think he was home free.

Then the dent in the purple hull made a metallic clunk and started to slide open. "Crap," John muttered, spinning to face it. He kept the P-90 aimed toward the growing opening, still backing toward the jumper.

"What? What is it?" Rodney said urgently. The others had gone quiet.

"The hatch is opening," John said through gritted teeth.

The hatch slid all the way up. The interior was too dark to see anything but a shallow airlock. Then a helmeted head peeked out.

John stumbled to a halt because he was having a The Day the Earth Stood Still moment. Except this figure was a lot smaller and more tentative than Gort. It was maybe a little over five feet tall, human-shaped from what he could tell; everything was concealed in the dark blue folds of a loose outfit that might be a pressure or environmental suit of some kind. The helmet was dark glass, opaque, and attached to a small purplish-gray unit strapped to its back. It was gripping one side of the hatch, braced as if to leap back into the ship, its whole stance conveying uncertainty and trepidation rather than hostility. John was still mostly expecting it to shoot at him, though its hands were empty.

They stared at each other for a very long moment. Then it lifted a gloved hand slowly, fingers spread in what had to be a greeting. Five fingers, John noticed. Slowly, he took one hand off his P-90 and waved back. He said, "Uh, hey there. I actually can't do this right now, because I'm running out of air, and I have to move my ship."

In his headset, he heard Rodney say, "What? Who are you talking to-Oh. Oh, God."

The figure hesitated, then a voice, light and a little tinny as it was filtered through whatever comm device the helmet used, said, "Oh." Then it added, "I–I'll wait here."

They stared at each other for a moment more, then John said, "Okay." He reached into his vest and triggered the remote. He heard the welcome hiss and thump as the jumper's ramp opened behind him, felt the cool breeze as the conditioned air flowed out. He backed up until his heel caught the end of the ramp and he barely managed not to fall on his ass. Fortunately the cloak extended far enough that the human-alien-person-whatever would have missed that part.

John bolted inside, hitting the switch to close the ramp. He went immediately to the cockpit, saying, "I'm in the jumper. You guys okay?"

"What? What happened?" Rodney shouted into his headset. "What was it? Human, alien, what?"

"We are fine," Teyla answered, sounding relieved. "What did you see?"

"The hatch opened, somebody stepped out." The jumper was already powering up as John dropped into the pilot's seat. The HUD flashed on, showing him the energy signatures and relative position of the alien ship. He saw with relief that as far as the jumper could tell, it was the only other ship in the area. And the sensors were only reading one life sign, but the handheld detector hadn't read anything, and this one might only be registering because the person-alien-whatever was standing in the hatch. Though something about the tentative way it had peeked out had suggested that it was alone. John wasn't going to count on that, though. "He's wearing an EVA suit and helmet; he mostly looked human, but I couldn't tell." He hesitated, then dropped the cloak. The ship obviously had instruments that could see through it, and he wanted to try to keep this whole thing at the cordial level it had started out on.

"You were communicating with it, you could have asked if it was human," Rodney pointed out in exasperation.

"Well, yeah, but that seemed kind of rude. Get ready, I'll be there in a minute."

He lifted the jumper up to a low hover, then took it through a decorously slow turn and back toward the pit. The sensors informed him the ground was stable, confirming that there was some kind of stone construction buried under the dirt. He set her down close to the edge of the steps and opened the ramp. It was going to take the jumper some time to re-pressurize, so he rapidly changed out his own air bottle, then loaded a pack with spares. He carried it down to the shaft and lowered it with the rope. And since there was no point in doing it the hard way again, he got the collapsible chain-link ladder out, secured it to the ramp, and dropped it down the shaft.

Teyla came up first, moving immediately to the edge of the pit to keep watch. "He is still standing in the hatchway, watching us," she reported quietly as John gave Rodney a hand up out of the shaft.

"Good," Rodney said, heading toward Teyla and ducking to keep his head down. "If there's only one of them in that thing, then no one is inside powering up weapons."

John had thought of that too, but they were still at their most vulnerable right now. Leaning down to help Miko over the edge of the shaft, John said, "Rodney, just get in the damn jumper."

Radek made it to the top, sweating and nervous, with an impassive Ronon right behind him. John sent Radek into the jumper after Miko, and he and Ronon hurriedly dragged the ladder up. Getting everybody into the jumper and closing the ramp didn't make him feel any more secure.

As the jumper re-pressurized the compartment, John dropped his pack and went forward to the cockpit. The others were already crowded inside, looking out the port at the other ship, Miko in the shotgun seat with Teyla and Zelenka standing behind her, craning to see. John moved Rodney out of the way so he could sit down in the pilot's seat, and Ronon ducked in, standing in the hatchway. They had a good view of the other ship, still sitting quietly in the sand near the jumper's previous position. The occupant had vanished.

"He went inside when you closed the ramp," Miko reported, flushed with excitement. She was holding one of the video cameras, aiming out the port. John was glad somebody had remembered to take DV of the ship.

The HUD was cycling through different sensor screens and Rodney shook his head, his mouth twisted. "We're not getting much data. I don't think it's an energy shield that's blocking us. It seems to be the material of the hull itself."

John nodded decisively. He could sympathize with the jumper; he had nothing at the moment either. "Right. So what are our options here?"

"Should we not go outside and try to speak to the pilot again?" Teyla said, studying the ship intently, her brows drawn together. "He does not seem hostile."

"Not yet," Ronon contributed grimly.

John wasn't exactly an optimist about this, but he couldn't side with Ronon on that one. "No, I don't think he's hostile. Unless he was faking..I think he was scared."

"We could run away," Radek offered. Everyone turned to look at him. He shrugged eloquently. "I just wanted to put it on the table, I'm not saying we should do it."

Rodney gave him a withering look. "You know, this is why I don't bring you along on these things-" He stopped suddenly and snapped his fingers. "Wait, we're being very stupid."

`° We?"' John asked him pointedly.

Rodney sat down in the other jump seat, opening the laptop and its interface into the jumper's systems. "Well, all right, you. He's probably trying to contact us right now, that's why he went back into his ship."

"Ah." Zelenka made an annoyed gesture. "You are right."

John frowned. "But the jumper should pick that up automatically."

Intent on the interface, Rodney huffed in exasperation. "No, because its comm system has been adjusted to scan our frequencies and the range the Wraith use. If he's broadcasting in a different range, which he probably is-" He went still, his face transfixed, one hand going to his headset. "It's there. This is… It's an Ancient frequency." He tapped the keypad hurriedly and the transmission filled the cockpit.

It was the light hesitant voice John had heard earlier, still tinny and now distorted by bursts of static."…of the Eidolon ship.. hear me? Are you there?"

"Interference from the Mirror is causing the disruptions," Zelenka whispered.

"Did he say Eidolon?" John glanced back at Teyla and Ronon. "Anybody heard that before?"

"Never," Teyla said, frustrated. "And I could not tell if he is saying he is the Eidolon ship, or he thinks we are." Ronon shook his head, shrugging.

John chewed his lower lip, eyeing the controls. "Yeah, I didn't get that either."

Rodney was making frantic motions at John. "Will you answer him?"

"Okay, okay." John opened the channel, cleared his throat, and said, "We're here. Sorry about that. Uh, we… forgot that we didn't have the radio on."

Rodney glared and said furiously, "Excuse me! You're making us sound like idiots. What are you going to tell him next, that we startle easily because things try to eat us a lot-"

John glared back. "Do you want to do this? Then shut up.

"Dr. McKay, Colonel!" Miko pointed urgently at the comm readout. "He can hear us."

Crap, John thought, staring at the comm panel.

The voice corrected carefully, "I'm female."

"Oh." Miko bit her lip in embarrassment. "Sorry."

John mouthed the words, "Everybody, quiet. Especially Rodney." He said aloud, "Sorry about that, again. We're peaceful explorers, and, uh-" They weren't telling anyone that they were from Atlantis anymore, hoping to keep from spreading the information that the city hadn't self-destructed. Necessary, but it had made quite a hole in the standard "we come in peace, let's not try to kill each other" speech. Trying to get some idea whether he was talking to a human or not, he said, "We've never seen a ship like yours before. Is Eidolon the planet you come from?"

"No, I'm not from…here." There was a static-filled hesitation, then the voice blurted, "I came to this plane of existence through the Quantum Mirror."

There was a collective gasp from the others and Rodney pounded on the back of John's chair. "Okay," John said slowly, stalling. The first question that occurred to him was "was that really a good idea?" but he managed to keep that one to himself. He said, "Why?" Though if she was the scout for an invasion force, she probably wouldn't come out and say so.

"I was with my line studying the-" There was another burst of static and John thought he heard"…no alien races but I believe that…." more static, then"…common ancestor."

Rodney was now doing some kind of little dance behind him. John said carefully, "Say again? What was that last part?"

There was an edge of desperation in the voice. "I said, I believe we share a common ancestor. We call them the Creators. They originated much of our technology, including many things we still do not understand fully, like the Mirror." Holy crap, John thought. If that's true He was aware of Miko bouncing in her seat, Teyla lifting her brows in astonishment and Rodney and Radek having some sort of fervent sign language "I told you so" thing. The voice was continuing, "I didn't intend to come here. I was col lecting data from the Mirror. There is a similar complex around it in my reality, a ruin of the Creators' civilization, and my research-" static fuzzed out a few words "-exploring it. The Mirror activated suddenly and my ship was pulled through. I tried to return, but the Mirror on this side seems to be more damaged, more unstable." There was another hesitation. "I am alone here and…I need help."

"Oh, yeah, apparently you have to watch that. Quantum Mirrors suck people in suddenly." John looked up to see even Teyla making urgent "get on with it" motions. "What kind of help do you need? Besides, obviously, you'd like to get back home."

"That, yes. And my ship is damaged. I know how to repair it, but I need materials. I was trying to scavenge supplies from the ruin and-It caused the security system to activate." She sounded deeply embarrassed. "I apologize for that. When the monitors came on, I saw you. I tried to turn it off, but I'd apparently removed a necessary component from that console. By the time I replaced it and regained control of the system, you were outside. I went to my ship and tried to call you on my communications system, then took the shuttle out to look for you. When I saw your ship, I was so relieved."

Rodney leaned over John's shoulder suddenly, cutting off the comm mic for the cockpit. He said, "That explains everything we found on the first level. Some of the doors must have been open, letting in the native plant and animal life. When she arrived, she must have activated the automatic systems, and the building sealed itself and pressurized. And that means-"

"She has the Ancient gene," John finished, lifting a brow.

Rodney switched on the mic again, saying briskly, "Hello, Dr. Rodney McKay speaking. I'm a scientist with experience with this technology. Can you tell me what indication you saw that the Mirror wasn't forming a stable connection to your reality?"

"Yes." The voice sounded more certain. "Yes, my instruments show that the Mirror is experiencing periodic energy fluctuations, like the one that occurred just a little while ago. I've tried sending transmissions through, and then a probe with a recorded message, but I received no response, and from the energy discharge I believe the probe was destroyed."

"You realize the Mirror may not be set to the same destination," Rodney told her. "Finding your reality again could be problematic, to put it mildly."

"Oh, but in my reality, our research suggests that the instability was preventing the Mirror from switching destinations, even when it was shut down and reactivated. That's why I believe that if I could just activate it successfully, I could go home."

Rodney frowned, throwing a look back at Zelenka. Zelenka shrugged, mouthing the words, "It's a possibility.

"I know that," Rodney mouthed back, glaring irritably. He said aloud, "Right, yes. I'd have to take a look at your readings."

"Will you do that?" she asked anxiously. "Look at my data? My equipment is in my ship, which is in the open portion of the ruin, near the Mirror; this is only a shuttle unit." She hesitated, then said timidly, "Will you help me?"