Homecoming

Chapter Thirteen Landing

The planet without a name turned serenely in space, wide cloud bands circling its southern hemisphere, a storm as large as a continent blowing across uncharted seas. From a high orbit it looked like a blue and white marble, one of the special shooters made of crazed glass. Those were always the ones that looked really pretty, but they shattered if you used them very much. They were fragile.

Like Atlantis.

The Ancients had centuries to perfect their city, and it was only after more than five years here that John was beginning to realize what a work of art it was. Even the smallest and most insignificant spaces were meant to be lovely. The frames of his windows were tinted titanium, shaded to look like weathered bronze. The small window in his bath had a tracery of gold glass around the edges that caught the morning sunlight with a bright glow. The stones in the bathroom floor were set so that they felt level, and yet splashed water drained effortlessly away. Each miniature perfection contributed to the whole. The City of the Ancients was breathtaking.

Nothing was stranger than standing on an outside balcony, protected from the void of space only by Atlantis’ shield. It was like standing in space without a space suit, a 360 degree breathtaking view without even a pane of glass between you and the universe.

Behind him the door swished open. “Oh my God.”

He looked around. Dr. Robinson stood in the doorway of the control room, her hands raised involuntarily to grasp at the frame as though she might fall.

“Come on out,” John said. “It’s perfectly safe.” He looked as though he were standing on the edge of infinity, the endless drop off the balcony to the planet’s surface far below, or past it into the endlessness of space, standing on the edge of infinity in jacket and pants and a lopsided smile.

“Safe?” She let go of the door but didn’t step out.

“We’re under the shield,” he said reassuringly. “It’s as safe out here as it is in there. Those doors are just glass. If the shield failed, they wouldn’t hold. So you might as well be out here.”

Dr. Robinson stepped out cautiously, looking down at the vertiginous depths beneath her. “I don’t see anybody else out here.”

John shrugged. “Some people find it a little creepy. But you’ll never find a better view.” He gestured to the railing. “Come over and have a look.”

Very deliberately she walked over to the rail, and if her hands tightened about it, she didn’t cling as she looked out into the endless night. He waited, letting her look her fill. After a while she nodded. “So that’s our new planet?”

“Yeah.” They were in high orbit, the planet the size of a beach ball, not filling the sky, taking last readings before their approach.

“Big ice caps,” she said.

He nodded. “Really big ice caps. They’re coming down to fifty degrees above the equator. Our viable landing area is only within twenty degrees of the equator either way.”

“Do me a favor and spell that out for me,” she said with a smile. “Not a scientist, remember?”

“The seas are frozen, and just south of the ice caps there’s significant sea ice,” John said. “We need to stay close to the equator, what would be, say, roughly the area between South Florida and Rio de Janeiro.”

“Tropical,” she said.

“What would be tropical on Earth. Here it’s just about inhabitable.” John looked down at the planet turning slowly beneath them. “Going to be interesting.”

“Not even two weeks and already an emergency,” she said thoughtfully, her face creased in consideration. She was still wearing lipstick. Heightmeyer never gave up makeup, though a lot of the female scientists did. Maybe it was a professional thing, kind of a uniform. If you look put together it makes people think you’re handling it.

John glanced at her sideways. “Regretting coming?”

Robinson shook her head slowly. “Not on your life. To see something like this…”

“It’s pretty cool,” John said. “I told you there was stuff that was worth it.” Like standing out on a balcony in the middle of space.

At least it had not happened 24 hours earlier. That was what Radek kept telling himself. If the hyperdrive had failed 24 hours earlier, then they would be in trouble. This was not trouble. At least, this was not trouble by Atlantis standards.

As far as he was concerned, the standard had been set nearly five years ago, when he had spent all night trying to figure out how to destroy the city, had sat down with Elizabeth Weir and showed her his simulation. He was insufficiently destructive. Too much of the wonder that was Atlantis would survive Radek Zelenka.

The Wraith had not had them then, and the Replicators had not two years later. Though they had had Elizabeth. She was dead, something that still seemed as unthinkable to him as it had then.

And yet those days did not seem quite as dark to him in memory as the siege. Perhaps it was because he had been older, become used to it. He had not been so afraid. Or perhaps it was that he had not had time to be, between all things. There had been the repair spacewalk that had nearly cost him his life, a micro meteorite through his leg like a bullet while he was in deep vacuum. He had completed the repairs, and Sheppard had hauled him in, so death had waited for them all.

That leg still bothered him, how not? But he did not like to say anything about it while they were on Earth. Someone might decide he was not fit. He did not tell Dr. Keller, of course, and when O’Neill had caught him stumbling on the gateroom steps when it cramped up, Sheppard ran interference very neatly. Nothing was ever said, so perhaps O’Neill had not noticed.

So this was not really trouble. Not by Atlantis standards.

If the hyperdrive had failed in the void between galaxies — that would have been bad. If it had gone out before they reached the first spiraling tendrils of the Pegasus Galaxy, they would have real trouble. This was five days to reach a marginal planet, not years. Five years, fifty, a hundred, a thousand? It would not matter. The shield would fail long before Atlantis could reach any world at all, and they would die in the drifting void.

He was not worried so much about the landing. Sheppard would bring them in. It might get a little challenging, but all would be well. Rodney would take the landing from the control room, where he might toggle the power most efficiently. He would be in the chair room with Sheppard, in case of any technical problems with the chair itself.

Radek watched Sheppard lean back, his eyes closing as the handpads cradled his fingers, the conductive gel in them making the microscopic electrical connections of the interface. It came to him that Carson always looked stressed when he flew. Sheppard looked at peace. He looked like the face of a knight on a tomb that Radek had seen in a cathedral crypt somewhere, serene yet intent, as though the next world held battles still that awaited the crusader’s sword.

“We are ready,” Radek said into his radio.

“We’re green up here,” Rodney responded. “All power is well within safe parameters.”

“Taking us down,” Sheppard said. His voice was slow, as though he were half asleep. Not for the last time Radek wished that he had the ATA gene, or at least a recessive that could be activated. He would like to know that, that oneness with the city. He should like to know her that way.

There was no sense of change in motion. There would not be, with the inertial dampeners. But on the screen before him Radek saw the scene shift, the city pitching up so that the stars were overhead, the great counter thrusters of the drive on the bottom of the city down so that their engines would slow the city. The shield flared opaque for a moment, then compensated. They brushed the top of the atmosphere.

From the chair room he could feel the rumble beneath his feet as the massive thrusters fired, all power on full, slowing their reentry. The vibration increased, the engines straining. Even as big as they were, Atlantis in the grip of gravity possessed incredible inertia.

“Your angle’s too shallow,” Rodney said from above.

Trails of light tore past the cameras, superheated gasses flaring against the shield.

“Sheppard, your angle’s too shallow!” Rodney was more emphatic this time. “We’re not descending fast enough. We’re going to skip off the atmosphere like a stone.”

The corners of Sheppard’s mouth turned down, but he didn’t respond, fingers twitching on the interface pads.

“Sheppard?” Rodney said again. “I said the angle is too shallow!”

“I do not think he can hear you,” Radek said. Lost in the interface, how would he? And surely he was as aware of the city’s angle of entry as Rodney.

On the screen before him the angle was correcting, a little deeper, but without picking up additional speed. He had bled off speed with the shallow angle, not quite enough to skip, but enough to slow them considerably. Yes. No doubt that was how it was supposed to be done, not precipitously as it had been the previous two times they had landed the city, falling like a meteor across the skies.

The city shook, but it was not as bad as before. He could keep his feet easily enough, hanging on to the edge of the console.

The cameras fogged, vapor streaming past. A high cloud layer? Possibly. Probably. All systems were still green. The ZPMs’ power level was ticking downward, but not quickly. Fifteen per cent…fourteen per cent.

Thrusters fired again, tilting the city slightly, increasing the drag. The shield pulled more power to compensate. And the city slowed.

Ice. The cameras showed ice below, thousands of feet down to the north polar ice cap. They were wrapping around the world in a high polar sweep, bleeding speed as they went. Ice. Nothing but ice. Surely they would start seeing water now. He didn’t know how high they were. It all looked the same, sixty thousand feet or thirty thousand.

“You need to course correct,” Rodney said.

Mountains. Glaciated mountains. The planet’s largest landmass was embedded beneath the polar ice cap. Dark peaks streaked with snow.

Surely they were too low. Surely…

Ice again. Endless plains of ice. Perhaps it was sea ice, but if the city landed on it instead of open water…

Darkness beneath. Gray water rolling in great waves, low enough to feel a sense of motion. An island reeled by, a chain of them, bright against dark water.

“Sheppard!”

He would have to remember that Rodney was a backseat driver. Yes. Never drive with Rodney.

11 per cent. 10 per cent. The ZPMs’ power gauge was changing more slowly now. The shield had less heat to dissipate.

The city shivered for a moment, changing pitch again, stardrive down, like a jet putting its flaps down hard as the runway skimmed by beneath it.

Islands. Water. Water.

It didn’t look as close as it was. He was surprised as it slammed him to the floor, laptop crashing down on top of him. Atlantis shook, heaved, bouncing in deep water, wallowing, water flooding over the lower third of the shield, then righting and coming to rest on the waves.

“We are down,” Radek said into his headset unnecessarily, scrambling to pick himself up. He’d fallen on that bad leg and it took a moment to get the knee to work right.

Beneath the floor the rumble died away, the engines dying.

“Rodney?”

“Finding my headset,” Rodney said. He sounded a little shaken too. But it would take more than this to get Rodney away from his board. “Shields are holding. Structural integrity is intact. We’ve got a few minor things blinking, but nothing bad. ZPMs at 9 per cent.”

That was a better case scenario. They had feared it would take all their power. This gave them a little leeway. Not enough for everything they would wish, but enough to run the shield if they needed to. Enough to dial Pegasus gates, if not enough to dial Earth whenever they wanted.

“Checking external sensors,” Radek said, doing so. “Atmospheric mix as we saw before, perfectly sustainable if a little oxygen poor. Negative eight degrees centigrade. Lovely.” Not warm, but not polar either.

“Sheppard?” Rodney sounded irritated.

This time the chair tilted up. Sheppard opened his eyes. “Yeah, Rodney?” He looked a little groggy, as a man awakened from a deep sleep.

“You got us off course,” Rodney said. “Equator. How hard can that be? We’re eighteen degrees north! Do you realize how cold it’s going to get? How hard can it be to hit the equator?”

“Want me to take her up and try again?” Sheppard demanded. “You said within twenty degrees of the equator.”

“I said it was habitable within twenty degrees of the equator. I said to land on the equator.”

“It’s not like there’s a big line around the planet, Rodney! And there are things like weather, you know. I had to compensate for the updrafts over the landmasses,” Sheppard said. “We’re down and we’re in your zone.”

“We’re going to freeze our butts off,” Rodney said.

“Better than hitting an island, don’t you think?”

That was of course inarguable. But Rodney would argue it anyway.

Radek put his laptop back on the console. “Nice landing,” he said.