by Martha Wells
"You notice she didn't offer to give us a ride over there." John took the jumper out of standby, lifting it up to a low hover. "Not that we would have accepted, but we're both being careful here. That's not a bad thing." The HUD didn't read any signs of weapons powering up, but since it couldn't read life signs inside the other ship either, he had no idea how accurate it was. Trishen's shuttle moved slowly away, following the curve of the installation, and John guided the jumper after it.
"You think if she had.. .designs on us she would try harder to appear more trusting?" Radek asked, craning his neck to watch. The purple-shaded stem of the shuttle was centered in the viewport, the indigo wall of the installation looming over them both. "Haven't we said we would go to her ship anyway?"
"We're not all going," John told him. "Teyla, Rodney, and I will check it out first." The others were all looking at him, and he shrugged one shoulder. "I'd just rather not put all our eggs in one basket."
"Yes, that's a very comforting analogy, Colonel," Rodney said, preoccupied. "There's the door. She's right, it's probably a cargo entrance."
The shuttle slowed to a hover in front of a big square hatch, set deeper into the side of the building and at least three or four times the size of the other entrance. The sand drifts were higher on this side, washing up to the door's threshold, so it was impossible to tell if there was a road or ramp leading up to it. John clicked on the comm channel again to say, "We've got it. We'll see you on the other side."
There was a brief acknowledgement from Trishen, then the shuttle lifted up, vanishing over the top of the building.
While Rodney was busy downloading diagnostic programs and data he thought he might need from the jumper's systems, and Zelenka and Teyla were recharging the air tanks, John took Miko aside. Or as aside as he could get in a rear cabin only slightly larger than a Winnebago. He said, "Look, I don't want to scare you, but..." It was hard to say this when she was looking up at him with big worried eyes, magnified even more by her glasses. "If worse comes to worst, not that I think it will, but-"
Miko blinked. "You want to know if I can fly the jumper back to the base moon if I had to."
"Uh, yeah."
She pushed her glasses up, considering the question with a grave expression. "I think so. The navigation is relatively simple, and the guidance system assists with re-entry. With Dr. Zelenka's extensive knowledge of all the systems, I don't think I would have any trouble." She winced. "As long as nothing is shooting at me."
"Right." John folded his arms, chewing his lower lip. Her training had included the basics of how to avoid an incoming hiveship. Which wouldn't do her much good against an alien ship of unknown capabilities that had demonstrated an ability to see through the cloak. "Just fly really fast."
Miko went to help with the air tanks, and Ronon took her place, looking down at John with a stony expression. He said, "Why aren't you taking me?"
"Because Teyla is good at first contact. Your idea of first contact is stunning people unconscious and tying them up," John told him. He was long over any pique caused by their initial encounter with Ronon, but he wanted to make his point. "And I need you here to protect Radek and Miko. And no matter what happens, you stay with them, and you do what they say." He added with emphasis, "That's an order."
Ronon flicked a look toward the front of the jumper. Rodney was in the cockpit, disconnecting his laptop from the jumper's systems, practically bouncing with nervous excitement. Miko and Teyla crouched on the floor, getting the tanks reattached to the field packs, and Zelenka was earnestly explaining something to Teyla about the interfaces. Ronon turned back to John, and actually looked sheepish for an instant, as if he had forgotten there were other considerations besides whether John trusted him to go fight aliens or not. "I won't leave them."
John held his gaze, and believed him. "Good."
As they were ready to leave, the jumper received a reply from base camp, which had relayed their transmission through the `gate to Atlantis. It was just an acknowledgement that the report had been received and a brief formal message from Elizabeth which translated to "Be careful and don't get killed."
The others went into the cockpit and sealed the cabin door, and John, Rodney, and Teyla got their breathing sets attached and switched on. John opened the ramp to a view of the empty plain stretching out to the mountains, the gas giant hanging heavily above them. The light was a little dimmer since the moon had entered its night phase, though like the night on the base moon, it would never get much darker than this. This moon's eclipse was still a couple of hours off. John's ears popped as the rear cabin's air flowed out, and he said, "There's got to be an easier way to do this."
"Ask Zelenka," Rodney grumbled, adjusting his pack and squinting against the dust as they started down the ramp. "I've been telling him to work on converting the cloak to a shield, to make a temporary barrier to hold in the air while the rear cabin hatch is open, but he's baffled by the elementary principles of-"
"I can hear you, Rodney," Zelenka said in their headsets.
"I know you can hear me, otherwise why bother?" Rodney demanded.
John interrupted with, "We're clear. Lock it up tight and don't open the door to strangers. And I want radio silence until I tell you otherwise."
"Yes, Colonel," Zelenka replied. "Take care."
John waited until the ramp sealed and the jumper vanished under its cloak, then led the way to the installation.
The heavy metal door was set into a deep recess, the sill covered with drifts of the red sand, the whole more than big enough to fly something the size of the jumper through. With his pocket flashlight, Rodney found the wall console buried in the side of the recess. He said, "Ready? Here we go," hit the console, and backed hurriedly out of the way.
John and Teyla covered the door as it groaned and the metal split diagonally into two triangles, one section sliding down and the other up. It revealed a cavernous passage, poorly lit, leading deep into the structure. It looked damaged, with broken lights and shattered stone and metal debris scattered on the dusty floor. If there had been any kind of airlock arrangement, it was long gone. "Okay." John lowered the P-90 a little and stepped inside. "I say we leave this door open."
"I'm reading one life sign," Rodney reported, "On the other side of the structure. She must be waiting for us at the far end of this corridor."
They started down the passage. It ran straight for a little distance, then took an angle to the left, then back, but Trishen was right, it was obviously heading through to the inner side of the building and the Mirror platform. There were blocky pillars along the walls, but only a few of the white lights set into them were lit, and there was a constant whistle of escaping air. "Looks like the Wraith came through here," John said, shining his light up into some twisted metal girders. Smaller passages led off into other parts of the building, some open and dark, others closed off by blast doors.
"Or the Mirror itself," Rodney said, eyeing the damage thoughtfully. "A severe discharge could have caused those impacts that look like energy weapon scars."
Teyla frowned. "I just realized. Trishen did not mention the Wraith." She threw a pensive look at John. "Perhaps there are none in her reality."
John shrugged a little dubiously. "Maybe. You'd think she would have asked about it otherwise." If John was trapped in another reality, he thought that would have been pretty high on his list of questions.
"We may be looking at the best possible scenario, that the Ancients were able to discover a reality with an uninhabited Pegasus," Rodney reminded them, sounding testy. "I did say that was a possibility."
"Yeah, but then why aren't they still there?" John felt compelled to point out. "She said we were descended from a common ancestor that had left freaky advanced technology scattered everywhere. That sounds just like here."
"Not being psychic, I won't know until I ask her," Rodney retorted. "The Ancients could have been wiped out by the same plague that hit the Milky Way. Or only a small group may h
ave managed to go through the Mirror in the first place." He waved the life signs detector. "Obviously, they planned this installation to accommodate a massive evacuation, but if they were cut off by the Wraith advance, only the people working here and anyone left on the base moon may have managed to make it through."
"To succeed, only to die anyway," Teyla said quietly. "It is a bleak fate."
Rodney tapped the detector against his hand, his eyes on the intriguing gaps in the wall where machinery had been attached. "True, but they did manage to seed the human race in the new reality. That was obviously very important to them, considering how often they spread their genetic wealth around." He checked the life signs detector again, and his voice betrayed a little nervousness. "We're nearly there."
"Yes, there is light ahead," Teyla added, her eyes on the end of the corridor.
Ahead, as the passage angled again, John saw dim natural light, and a moment later he could see the large square doorway opening out into the Mirror platform. Trishen, still in her EVA suit, stood just inside it. Behind her John could see the stone platform stretching out to the big silvery wall of the Mirror's frame. "She's holding something," he said, low-voiced. She had a round dark object in her arms.
"We're holding things," Rodney said, tense and impatient.
"Yes, and a lot of the things we're holding are guns," John told him, exasperated.
"It does not look like a weapon," Teyla pointed out softly. Then she admitted, "Unless it is an explosive of some kind. But that seems unlikely."
John thought it was unlikely too, unless Trishen was a suicide bomber, but it still made him uneasy. He signaled the others to halt about ten long paces from her. Even at this distance, her helmet didn't reveal much. The faceplate wasn't as reflective here in the dimmer light, and he could almost see the outline of her forehead and eyes, though the lower part was still opaque. The thing she was holding looked like a black metal soccer ball, except the bottom seemed to be flattened slightly. He lifted a hand in greeting, and said, amiably, "Hi. What you got there?"
Trishen juggled the thing a little, caught between returning the greeting and answering the question. "It's a data display device. I thought I could show you some of the readings from the anomalies that occurred when I tried to send the probe through." She sat down awkwardly, placing the thing on the dusty metal floor. She made a vague gesture. "We can go out onto the platform for a closer look at the Mirror if you like, but if we're out here for any length of time we should stay inside the structure, for the shielding." She touched the device and something slid open in the top. Suddenly a glittering haze of color burst out of it.
John and Teyla both flinched backward, jerking up their weapons. Then John saw it was actually a holographic display, showing the three-dimensional figures that were the Ancient equivalents of charts and graphs. Teyla threw him an abashed look; John didn't exactly feel like an expert intergalactic explorer at the moment either. Trishen was staring up at them, startled at their recoil. She said hurriedly, "It is only a three-dimensional display-"
Rodney stepped forward, giving John and Teyla an exasperated look. "Yes, they have actually seen a hologram before, they're just-Never mind. I'm Dr. Rodney McKay, she's Teyla Emmagan, he's Colonel Sheppard." He eased forward, staring intently at the glittering column and digging a camera out of his vest. "You use the Ancient system for numbers and symbols?"
"Yes." Trishen looked uncertainly from John and Teyla to Rodney, then evidently decided to talk to the rational person. "For this type of data, it's the best method. You use them as well?"
"To a certain extent." Rodney moved closer, crouching to get a better look. "This is just a recording device." He showed her the camera, then nodded toward the figures suspended in the display. "This one is the progression of energy signatures? That was directly after you deployed the probe? Can you bring up the sequence that you took when your ship was drawn through the Mirror? You did record that, right?"
"Oh, oh, yes, this is my initial reading." Sounding relieved, Trishen leaned forward, placing her gloved hands on the surface of the device. John motioned for Teyla to stay in position where she could cover them and moved up beside Rodney. Trishen was manipulating the device in some way John couldn't quite see, and more figures blossomed in the display. She said, "And as you can see the variation with the singularity's later signatures is pronounced."
"Yes, the instability is starting to grow and extend across the lower right quadrant," Rodney muttered, shifting a little closer. He set the camera aside to get his tablet out, and rapidly brought up a series of files. "What were your figures for the accretion surface?"
After that it got a little over John's head. Rodney and Trishen talked numbers and quantum singularities in perfect accord long enough that John signaled Teyla to relax. She lowered the P-90 and came to stand next to him.
Then Rodney said, "Hold it, hold it, I need to check something." He sat back, keying his radio. "Zelenka. Zelenka. Radek, answer the damn-" He looked up at John in sudden anxiety. "Why aren't they answering?"
John lifted a brow. "What does radio silence mean, Rodney?"
Rodney glared. "Oh, for the-Tell him he can talk, then!"
John said, "Go ahead, Dr. Zelenka." He had had his radio open the entire time so the others could listen in.
"I am here, Rodney," Zelenka said in their headsets, sounding perfectly composed. "You need to reference the data the jumper managed to gather before the disruption?"
Rodney pushed to his feet with a grimace and walked away a few paces, presumably to berate Zelenka in relative privacy.
Trishen looked from John to Teyla, as if not quite sure which one of them to talk to, and asked uncertainly, "Do you live in this system, or did you come here to research the Mirror, as we did in my reality? I didn't think there was anyone else on this moon. I listened for communications traffic and flew around the circumference in my shuttle, but I saw nothing except these ruins."
Teyla answered, "No, we live far away. We only discovered this place a short time ago." She hesitated, flicking a look at John as she gauged how much to say. "We have explored many ruins of the Ancestors, but we have never before found a device such as this Mirror."
John thought this was a good time to ask, "You didn't send any distress calls or anything like that, did you? Because there's some things out here whose attention you really don't want to attract."
Trishen made a little gesture, turning her palms up. "No. My ship has an automatic beacon, but I turned it off. I admit, I was afraid." She did something on the device that caused the hologram display to freeze, and twisted around to face them. "We had long speculated that the Creators came to our galaxy fleeing a terrible force."
John looked away, out toward the platform and the looming frame of the Mirror. He hated giving the bad news. "It's true. The Ancients were wiped out in this galaxy.
Teyla added, "The enemy you speak of is called the Wraith. They use humans for food, and have destroyed many worlds." She tilted her head, watching Trishen carefully. "There are no Wraith in your reality?"
"Food," Trishen repeated nervously. She laughed a little weakly. "I was hoping that part wasn't true." She looked up. "No, my people have never been attacked by anything." She hesitated again, then added tentatively, "I have never seen people like you before."
John exchanged a baffled look with Teyla. The hell? He said, "Uh, okay."
Teyla began, "I am not certain I understand what-"
"That's it," Rodney interrupted, cutting off his radio with a sharp gesture. "Our data confirms it. The problem is definitely with the accretion disk itself, it's size is causing the singularity to react to any energy fluctuation with these instabilities. The Ancients must have had some sort of tuning process to get it to work in the first place." He turned to Trishen. "I need to see the whole range of data before the Mirror activated and pulled your ship in, everything your research group collected. Do you have that with you?"
Trishen nodded anxiously. "Y
es, but this device doesn't have enough storage space to contain it. Can you come to my ship to view it on the system there?"
"Of course, I-" Rodney stopped, flustered, obviously recalling their situation. He looked at John, brows lifted. "Ali, can we do that?"
John had been thinking about their next step, and had been ready to say yes. It was what they had agreed to do, and he wanted a look at the inside of that ship as bad as Rodney did. But that last comment of Trishen's had thrown him a little and he couldn't exactly pinpoint why. "People like you" coming from somebody from another planet, let alone another reality, could mean anything, from his and Teyla's relative heights to their skin or hair color to their obvious hair-trigger wariness. Or the way she had heard them bitching at each other over the comm system. Whatever it was, though, she seemed okay with it. He said, "Yeah, we can do that."
Trishen gathered her equipment hurriedly, and she and Rodney stopped in the big doorway out onto the platform, both taking readings. "If the Mirror discharges while we're out on the platform, the concussion wave would slam us into the walls with possibly lethal force," Rodney explained, studying the detector intently.
"Great." John was looking at the ship, sitting on the platform about a hundred yards away. The oddly organic shading of blue and purple on the hull didn't fade into the darker stone of the installation as much from this angle, so it was easy to see the round shape of the hatch and a small ramp leading up to it at the base. The conch-shell shuttle seemed to fit neatly into the top of the tulip, not easy to recognize as a separate craft unless you knew to look for it.
Rodney admitted that the readings suggested that for the moment the Mirror was not inclined to kill them, and they started across the platform toward the ship. They were moving quickly, Rodney and Trishen a few steps ahead. Trishen said, "I'm beginning to wonder if my ship's energy signature itself is causing the increase in the Mirror's instabilities. If it's affecting the accretion disk, even from a distance-"
Rodney launched into a theory of his own, and Teyla took the opportunity to say, low-voiced, to John, "She said `people like us.' What could she mean?"
