Homecoming

Chapter Twelve Castaways

Atlantis floated in deep space, a bright point of light among the scattered stars. Here, at the leading edge of the Pegasus Galaxy, the suns were rare and far apart, and habitable worlds more so. Finding one within the very limited range of Atlantis’ sublight engines was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Zelenka scrubbed both hands through his dirty hair, watching the screen fill and refill with incoming data. There were times now when he even dreamed in English, but at the moment he was so tired that the only words that filled his tongue were Czech. He had to blink hard to summon up even the simplest translation, and he felt as though the air had turned to syrup, dragging at his body. How long had it been since he’d slept? No, that was a dangerous thought, led to how much he wanted to sleep, and that was a very bad thing…

He reached for the mug of coffee instead, ropy with far more sugar than he liked, swallowed fast to keep from tasting it. On the screen, the datafall paused, reformed into an interim analysis, and he leaned forward as though that would help him understand it better. This was the first system — no, the second, the one with the brighter sun, and he frowned, studying the numbers. Nothing new, he thought, but couldn’t shake the sense that he was missing something. He stared at the screen for a moment longer, then typed in the command that continued the scan. There was something, something there that made a difference…

“How’s it going, Doc?”

Sheppard had come up so quietly that Zelenka jumped, a Czech curse escaping before he realized who it was.

“It goes,” he answered, and was annoyed at how hard it was to find the English words. “We are still scanning, assessing the data. And Dr. McKay?”

“Still down in the hyperdrive,” Sheppard answered.

“A waste of time,” Zelenka said, and shook his head, realizing he’d spoken aloud. “Sorry—”

“No, you’re probably right,” Sheppard said. “But you know Rodney.”

In spite of himself, Zelenka smiled. “Yes. He will find a miracle, only it will blow up a small sun, or open a wormhole to another reality…” He was babbling, he thought, and shook his head again.

“When did you last get some sleep?” Sheppard asked.

Zelenka shrugged, pushed his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “If I worry about that, we will find nothing.”

Sheppard eyed him for a moment, then looked past him to the Air Force sergeant working at the end console. “Taggert.”

“Sir?” She was a raw-boned blonde a good ten centimeters taller than Zelenka, dark roots showing at the parting of her hair. Zelenka stared at her, wondering what she had planned to do about it in the Pegasus galaxy.

“Gimme.” Sheppard held out his hand.

Taggert blinked once, then stood up to rummage in the pockets of her BDUs, came up at last with a small silver tube. “Here you go, sir.”

“Thanks.” Sheppard unscrewed the top, shook a pair of tablets into the palm of his hand, and held them out to Zelenka. “These’ll help.”

Zelenka took them dubiously.

“Caffeine,” Sheppard said.

Zelenka shook himself, and reached for his cup, swallowed the tablets with the rest of the disgusting coffee. Immediately, he felt a headache begin, but knew that was psychosomatic.

“OK,” Sheppard said. “Got a minute?”

Zelenka looked back at the console, but there was nothing he could do until the latest dataset finished downloading. “Yes.”

“Give me an update,” Sheppard said, and gestured for them to move further down the line of displays.

Zelenka sighed, but pushed himself out of his chair, followed Sheppard until they were out of earshot of the skeleton crew still monitoring the displays. He leaned against the nearest railing, grateful for its support, and rubbed his eyes again. “Well. We have scanned the first system thoroughly, and, while we are still processing the data, the planets don’t look so tremendously promising. Air, yes, we think; landmass is present, not so much water. The data from the second system are still coming in, but the sun is very bright, and that means too much radiation—” He stopped abruptly, letting his glasses fall back onto his nose. That was what he had seen, the thing he had missed. He pushed himself away from the railing, slipped past Sheppard without a word and flung himself back into his place at the console, fingers dancing as he called up the first-run analysis.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes!”

Sheppard moved warily to join him, but Zelenka ignored him, spinning in his chair to face the other scientists. “Miko, Sergeant Taggert, see if you can move the core analysis to the top of the queue, and get me an enhanced version of the magnetic field scan. And anything else we have on the atmospherics.”

“Got something?” Sheppard asked, and Zelenka couldn’t hold back his grin.

“Yes. Yes, I think so. I said, the sun puts out too much radiation, but there are things that stop that, yes? Even on Earth, we have too much solar radiation if it wasn’t for the Van Allen belts, the magnetic field of the planet. But see here.” He pointed to the screen, to the numbers glowing green at the top of the list, and could have laughed aloud at Sheppard’s dubious stare.

“OK.” Sheppard drew the word out.

“This planet has a bigger magnetic field than Earth,” Zelenka said. “Much bigger. Probably the core is larger or hotter, but we don’t know yet. So the radiation does not matter so much. Maybe not at all. And the planet has seas, big ones.”

“So you’re saying you’ve found us a planet?” Sheppard straightened, a new alertness in his face.

“Maybe.” Zelenka touched keys again, inputting a new set of search parameters. The go pills were hitting him, the exhaustion fading; he felt alive again, bright and clever and able to save the day. “But — yes, I think this one is a possibility. Everything else looks good. And everything on the magnetic field — I think it will be enough.”

He looked up, smiling, and saw the look of relief on Sheppard’s face, before the commander’s mask was back in place. Sheppard smiled back, a real smile, not the wincing grimace that showed up sometimes in meetings, and tapped Zelenka lightly on the shoulder.

“Nice work, Radek.”

“Thank me when I am absolutely sure,” Zelenka said, and turned back to his console.

There was no sign of the kitten in the main room. Rodney frowned, hoping against hope that Jennifer had closed the animal in one of the bedrooms, but a quick search made it almost certain that he had felt something brush past his ankle as the door slid back. He groaned — God, he was tired, and there was still so much work to do just to get the city’s power adjusted so that they could get wherever they ended up going… But he couldn’t leave Newton — Schrodinger — roaming loose.

There was no sign of the cat in the hallway, either. Rodney swore under his breath, decided to turn left just because the corridor was longer and didn’t dead end, and he was fairly sure the cat wouldn’t choose the easy way. Maybe he could find someone to help him look — Jennifer, of course, but she was still in the infirmary dealing with what he was sure were purely hypothetical illnesses brought on by being stuck on the edge of the Pegasus Galaxy with no hyperdrive and no obvious place to land unless Zelenka got off his ass and found something. And really, he himself ought to be working on that, only he’d been up for eighteen, no, nineteen hours straight trying to re-route power so that if they did find a planet they would have a hope in hell of landing safely, and finally that annoying Air Force captain, the Ancient technology specialist, what’s-her-name, Mac-something, had told him flatly to go to bed before she called in the Marines. And there was no reason to imply he was taking amphetamines. Not only were they contraindicated for someone with his blood pressure issues, they gave him terrible headaches and they made him irritable.

He had reached the end of the corridor, and there was no sign of Schrodinger/Newton.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said aloud, and turned through a full three hundred sixty degrees, hoping to see something he’d missed. Not that that was very likely, in the beautiful and entirely uncluttered Ancient corridors, and he hesitated, trying to decide whether he should search the weird little stairhead lounge or the storage hall first.

“McKay?”

That was Ronon’s voice, coming from the lounge, and Rodney turned toward it with some relief. Maybe he could talk Ronon into helping, though Ronon’s ideas of catching small animals probably involved stunners. And roasting them afterwards.

“What is this?” Ronon pointed to the top of one of the chairs, and Rodney felt his shoulders sag with relief.

“It’s a cat. My cat.”

Ronon looked at him, and looked back at the half-grown Siamese digging his claws into the pale gold padding, eyes half-closed in something between delight and malice.

“A pet,” Rodney said. “You know. A domestic animal kept for companionship. You had pets on Sateda, right?”

“Yes.” Ronon’s expression was more than usually grim, though Rodney didn’t see any actual injuries. “Pets don’t usually snarl at you.”

“He doesn’t snarl,” Rodney said, indignantly. “He’s very sweet-tempered. Not like some people,” he added, thinking of the captain, and Ronon’s jaw dropped.

“It snarled at me, McKay.” He pointed accusingly toward the cat. As if to prove the point, Schrodinger arched his back and hissed at the waving fingers. “And it did that. It sounds like a Wraith.”

“He does not,” Rodney said, and scooped Newton into his arms. The cat wriggled, giving a muted yowl, and Rodney automatically adjusted his hold. “Cats are nothing like the Wraith. They’re mammals, they’re furry, useful mammals who hunt mice and other rodents… I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Me neither,” Ronon said. He paused. “Are you supposed to be sleeping?”

“Brilliant! Yes, of course, I’m supposed to be getting some rest, which does in fact mean sleep, but instead I’m out hunting for my cat that somehow got loose—”

“McKay.”

Rodney stopped, the last of the adrenaline fading from his blood. He was painfully tired, and even though he’d survived worse, this was not a good situation. The cat wriggled again, purring as it made itself comfortable, and he made himself take a deep breath.

“Go to bed,” Ronon said.

“Yes.” McKay settled the cat, turned back toward the door, hoping he’d make it back to his quarters before he fell over. “I’ll — do that.”

It was morning. Or as close to morning as you could get, lost in the space between galaxies. Richard Woolsey tugged the uniform jacket into shape, fingers itching to adjust his nonexistent tie. For thirty years, nearly, he’d worn another uniform, plain black suit, white shirt, respectable tie; it had made him invisible, an apparent nonentity, and he’d used that camouflage expertly, rising through the ranks of the US government and the IOA, until he’d been offered this entirely different opportunity. He knew perfectly well what the IOA expected of him, knew, too, that it was going to be impossible more times than not, and accepted that this post might be the end of his career. It had seemed worth it at the time — still was, he told himself firmly. Bringing Atlantis home was worth all the risks. It just seemed a little unfair that his first major crisis should be so purely technical.

He shook himself, annoyed at the lapse into self-pity. He had known what he was getting into, had known perfectly well that any problem on Atlantis was as likely to need nuclear weapons or an Ascended being as diplomatic skills. He had been so sure he could cope.

His eyes fell on the row of books he had set in one of the long narrow niches, bookended by a pair of iridescent glass sculptures. Before he left Earth, he had bought himself an expensive electronic reader and filled it to its limits with every recent thriller and series mystery he could think of — that was one of the advantages of having nowhere to spend a generous salary — but these were different, books that he had carried with him in many different places, stories that had shaped his dreams of who he could be. The shabby covers mocked him: The Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, Kipling’s Kim — he’d played the Great Game in his day, and in many of the same places, a secret thrill in his heart as he scurried from meeting to meeting, or sat wedged in a HUMVee between genially contemptuous soldiers. Others, too, from college and later, but today he wasn’t sure what those old dreams held for him. They were hero stories, all of them, and he had long known that he was no hero.

And if ever there were circumstances that called for a hero… He smiled in spite of himself, in spite of everything. Yes, being trapped in a giant alien city-ship with an inoperative hyperdrive and no guarantee that they could land even if they did find a suitable planet — that would seem to be a good moment for one. He owed them a hero, all these people who had come back to the city on short notice, owed the people of Pegasus, too, who needed Atlantis if they were to have any chance to survive the Wraith. And instead they got him, an aging, fussy bureaucrat who had been chosen in part because the IOA thought he was controllable.

At least that last one was no longer true. From the moment he’d walked into the President’s office to plead Atlantis’s case, he’d known that he was choosing sides, would probably end up forced into retirement no matter what happened. It had seemed worthwhile — it was worthwhile, he told himself fiercely. It had just — perhaps it had been a bit presumptuous to think he was the man for the job.

But. He squared his shoulders, fingers reaching again for the tie that wasn’t there. It was his job. His responsibility. If he was not a hero, he could make room for others to be heroes — yes, that felt possible. Keep everyone on track, make sure nothing, no one, was overlooked, and McKay would find an answer. Colonel Sheppard would bring the city down in one piece. They would make it happen; his job was was merely to… facilitate.

His eyes fell again on the line of books, the familiar titles both reassurance and reproach, and his earpiece crackled.

“Mr. Woolsey.”

“Dr. McKay.”

“I think we’ve got something.”

I knew you would. Woolsey swallowed the words, the relief. “Very well. All senior staff will meet in the briefing room in half an hour.”

The briefing room was more crowded than usual, as though every senior staff member had brought an assistant just in case. Woolsey approved the idea, but not the numbers: it wasn’t efficient to have people leaning against the walls, laptops and tablets precariously balanced in their arms. He said nothing, though, merely leaned back in his chair as McKay ran through the data.

“So. It’s not terrible. I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s not terrible, either.”

Woolsey frowned. He had been expecting a more — definitive — summation, after the twenty minutes of what was to him mostly incomprehensible information. “What does that mean? You did say that the solar radiation was not a problem.”

“Yes.” McKay paused. “I mean, no, it’s not. But that’s not the only factor to consider.”

“The planet is too far out from its sun for optimal conditions,” Radek Zelenka said. “It is marginal for human habitation due to its climate. However, in the equatorial regions it is temperate enough to support human life.”

McKay cut him off. “What Dr. Zelenka is trying to say is that the planet is cold. Much colder than we’d like. However, there is a narrow band around the equator that should be warm enough to be useful. The planet’s surface is ninety percent ocean, so we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to land.”

“What about native life?” someone asked — Woolsey couldn’t quite see who it was — and Lt. Colonel Sheppard spoke at the same moment.

“If it’s that cold, and there’s that much water, isn’t there a problem with—”

“Sea ice?” Zelenka said. “Yes, yes, that is a problem. However, in the equatorial region—”

“No,” McKay said. “There isn’t any native life big enough to see from here. So it shouldn’t be a problem. And no, ice is not a problem, either. Not if you land at the equator the way you’re supposed to. If you land somewhere else—”

“It will be very cold,” Zelenka said.

Sheppard put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, ignoring the babble of voices rising around him as everyone began to digest the information. “How cold? Antarctica cold?”

“In some places, yes, of course,” Zelenka began.

“In the equatorial zone it’s not nearly that cold,” McKay said.

Zelenka looked at him. “More comparable to Northern Europe, wouldn’t you say, Rodney? Scandinavia, perhaps, or Canada? It is certainly not uninhabitable.”

“No, obviously not uninhabitable,” McKay said. He jammed his hands into his pocket. “People live in Canada. They live in Norway. But it’s a lot colder than we’re used to.”

Woolsey folded his hands, rested them on the sheaf of notes in front of him. It was time to take control of the meeting, before people started repeating themselves, and McKay did or said something outrageous that would need to be smoothed over with the people who hadn’t worked with him before. And in any case, there really wasn’t a decision to be made. This was the only planet that could support human life: cold or not, it was where they had to go.

“Our last home was subtropical,” he said. “But we can certainly deal with a climate more comparable to…”

He let his voice trail off, and Zelenka responded obligingly. “The North Sea.”

“The North Sea,” Woolsey repeated. It was not the analogy he had hoped for, but he recognized certainty when he heard it. They were all looking at him, waiting for his decision, and he blinked, wondering who they thought he was. But he knew the answer: he was the commander of Atlantis, and it was his word to give, however inadequate he might feel.

“Well. It will be different.” He straightened his back, looking at the circle of faces. One of his books had offered the right advice, he realized. Be what you wish to seem. That was his only option now. “Dr. McKay. How long will it take us to reach the planet?”

“Five days. That’s assuming no further power drain, and optimum use of the sublight engines.” McKay paused. “And leaving us plenty of power for the landing. Or — maybe not plenty, but enough.”

“Enough?” Sheppard asked.

“Yes. Enough. No unnecessary maneuvering, but — enough.”

Sheppard was looking distinctly dubious, and Woolsey couldn’t blame him. “Very well,” he said aloud. “Colonel Sheppard, you and Dr. Beckett set a course for this planet — does it have a designation?”

Zelenka shook his head. “It’s not in the Ancient database.”

Woolsey grimaced — one more thing for McKay to argue about. “Set a course for the planet,” he said again. “It seems we have found our new home.”