Exogenesis

Chapter One

The hushed mutterings off to his left failed to capture Dr. Rodney McKay's attention. Unlike the vast majority of the science team currently stationed in Atlantis, Radek Zelenka didn't pester him unless it was for something incredibly good, horrifyingly bad, or astoundingly bizarre.

"Muj Bo±e!"

Like that.

Automatically hitting `save' on his computer, Rodney stood and walked across the lab to look over Radek's shoulder. "You have something?"

The Czech scientist was currently investigating an underwater avalanche near the mooring apparatus that anchored Atlantis to the seafloor. He pointed to the readings on his screen and replied, "One might say so, yes"

Rodney almost stumbled backward. "Are those legitimate?"

"No, Rodney, I am playing a joke," Radek answered with a look of irritation. "It is April, and I am the fool to consider investigating the calls of a whale. Perhaps we should also have ignored the animal when it pinpointed your position as you floundered on edge of the abyss"

"All right, excuse me for being just slightly surprised-and I wasn't floundering," Rodney shot back. "As always, I was entirely rational and methodical in my approach to the problem at hand. And where exactly did you pick up a term like `floundering'?"

"It was how Colonel Sheppard described Jumper Six on the edge of the underwater canyon." Radek rocked his palm in a seesaw motion to illustrate his point.

Of course it was. It certainly had nothing to do with Rodney's precarious mental balance during his excursion into a claustrophobic's purgatory, complete with an intensely frustrating encounter with Sam Carter. He also preferred not to dwell on the fact that, with so much Ancient technology at their disposal, Sheppard and Zelenka had resorted to whale watching in order to locate his submerged jumper.

Now the same animal, or one of its relatives, had been sighted swimming around Atlantis's south pylon-directly above the site of the avalanche.

"So" Radek sat back and crossed his arms. "I was right. Your whale is trying to tell us something"

"It's not my whale."

"Ah ha!" Radek shot from his chair and waved his hand in triumph. "You admit it. My suggestion was not ludicrous. I was correct, and you were wrong"

"I admit no such thing! I simply stated that relying on a whale was-"

"Tantamount to soothsaying." Casually elegant as always, Elizabeth Weir strode in. "Good morning, gentlemen." Exchanging a knowing look with Radek, she added, "I just came by to check on your progress. So the whale really is signaling something?"

"Yes, yes, we've been through all of that, thank you." Rodney blinked away the distraction provided by the mug of steaming coffee in Elizabeth's hands and tapped a command into the computer terminal to bring up a bathymetric chart on the wall-mounted screen. "We've just found-"

A polite cough sounded from behind him.

With an exaggerated sigh, Rodney amended, "Radek has found something of interest."

"Four puddle jumpers," Radek added, his gaze fixed to the readout.

"What?" Elizabeth's eyes widened. She quickly set her coffee mug down on the table and, tucking a wave of dark hair behind her ear, stepped closer to examine the screen.

"I'm assuming they were buried by debris accumulated around the edge of the shield when the city surfaced," Rodney continued, unconsciously edging closer to the aroma of freshly brewed beans.

Indicating a faint but steadily pulsing light just outside the indentation in the seabed where the city had been, Radek said, "And there is something alive in one of the jumpers."

"Probably the whale's favorite snack food," Rodney said dismissively. "I'm much more interested in the possibility of salvaging the jumpers for spare parts."

"After they've been submerged for ten thousand years?" Elizabeth gave him a look of disbelief. "While I'd be the first to admit that you can fix pretty much anything, Rodney, I doubt that we'd be able to dig them out of who knows how much coral growth

"It's entirely likely that the jumpers remained intact until the city surfaced. Which of course is good news for us, because even a year or two immersed in water wouldn't have damaged the crystals to any measurable degree."

Radek, who had returned to his computer, now swiveled around in his seat and peered at Rodney over the top of his glasses. "Life sign indicator is not for fish."

"Well, then, what exactly is it? Giant hermit crabs? A baby whale playing hide and seek?"

"No. An Ancient. Two, in fact "

"Oh, my God!" Elizabeth exclaimed.

Radek nodded agreeably. "Is what I said."

Pushing the Czech's chair aside, Rodney took one look at the readout, and then turned on Radek. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I was attempting to when you questioned if I was playing a joke." Radek met his glare with an annoyingly disingenuous expression.

"Hold on a minute." Elizabeth frowned. "How could anyone, even an Ancient, still be alive down there after so long? Unless they're in-"

"Stasis chambers." Without a thought Rodney reached across the table for Elizabeth's abandoned mug and took a sip.

A bemused smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. "Feel free to help yourself, Rodney."

"No," Radek corrected. Almost choking on the coffee, Rodney nonetheless caught the look of concern that Radek directed at Elizabeth as he elucidated that comment. "Life pods "

Examining the data, Rodney noticed the newly familiar blip in the life sign signatures. Wincing at the memory, he added, "The energy signature is similar to the units we recovered from the Cohall system-but it's very weak. It's not inconceivable that the avalanche damaged the pods, in which case, we need to get down there sooner rather than later."

"It rather begs the question, doesn't it?" Elizabeth's expression had measurably tightened.

"Why these jumpers were unable to get inside city's force field," Radek supplied unnecessarily.

"Thank you for once again stating the patently obvious." Realizing that he was still clutching Elizabeth's coffee, Rodney put the mug down. "We could speculate endlessly, but it's only a few hundred meters deep. We've already proven that the jumpers can handle significantly greater pressures than that, and I can patch in a spare power cell so that extending the shield won't be so draining this time. Better yet, two jumpers parked here and here"-he typed in a command to bring up an enhanced image of the area, and pointed to a broad ledge near the signal's origin-"would amplify the field approximately four to five times. We could take a look at all of the abandoned jumpers and possibly the mooring apparatus with a minimal amount of moving around."

Her attention focused on the screen, Elizabeth nodded distractedly. "Teyla and Ronon are ashore visiting the Athosians, so you'd better take Colonel Sheppard, Dr. Beckett, and a couple of Marines. We don't know what we'll be dealing with down there."

"I'll go fill them in. You can enlist Carson." Waving a hand toward Radek, Rodney added, "Might want to go get your gear."

The Czech's head whipped around so fast that his glasses slipped off his nose. "Pardon me?" He rapidly pushed back his chair and stood. "What happened to the `we' in this discussion? I did not volunteer to play submariner again."

"As you so subtly reminded us, this was entirely your own idea. Besides, I thought you vowed to learn to swim after your last adventure" Rodney raised his eyebrows in challenge.

"A promise made in a moment of weakness. I was merely enthusiastic about not having drowned."

"Well, now you can get enthusiastic again, because one of us needs to go, and you'd better believe it's not going to be me." As loath as Rodney was to admit it to himself, the hours he'd spent in that dying jumper under the unending ocean had left their mark. He'd gotten over it, having lived to fight another day and all, and if asked, he'd swear on Schrodinger's grave that he never woke up in the dead of night with the sensation of cold salt water rising over his face. But really, why should he have to go back down there to prove that he was over it?

Radek opened his mouth to continue his objection, but after meeting Rodney's gaze seemed to think better of it. "Yes, I see. Go, find soldiers. I will say hello to your whale friend for you."