Sheppard stared at the whole in the ground in total disbelief. This could not be happening...again.

"Major Sheppard!" Teyla pushed through bushes and started toward him. She took in he and Burns shocked looks. "What has happened?"

"It just opened up and—"Sheppard looked at her. "Becket just disappeared."

A look of shocked disbelief settled on her face.

Sheppard shook off the stupor that had over come him and grabbed his radio. "Beckett, come in!"

"Uh, yes, Major. We've got a wee bit of a problem."

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I got hung up part of the way down and it broke my fall, but we seem to have a bit of beastie problem now."

Sheppard face dissolved into a look of confusion. "Beastie?"

"The Wraith isn't dead, sir," Ford interjected.

"Remarkable how resilient these things are," Beckett commented, rather off handedly.

"I don't freaking care how resilient that thing is," Sheppard snarled back, inching up to the hole. "Shoot it!"

From somewhere down in the dark, a shot rang out. It was quickly followed by several more and then the chatter of the automatic fire of a P40 and then silence.

Sheppard waited a moment and then keyed the radio again. "Beckett! Ford! Someone answer me!"

"What?" a hoarse voice answered.

Sheppard shot a look at Teyla and then answered. "McKay, is that you?"

"Yes," came the clipped relay.

"Are you okay? What's going on?"

There was a long pause. "What?"

"Where are Ford and Beckett?"

"With the thing—" his voice trailed off a moment. "I can't get my hand to work. This is very odd." Rodney sounded unnaturally calm, which couldn't' be a good thing.

"McKay, can you get Beckett for me?"

"I don't think so."

Sheppard sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face, struggling to keep his voice calm. "Why not?"

"I can't seem to get up," McKay said sounding perplexed.

"Stay put then," he said. "Can you tell me what you see?"

The Scientist wheezed a bit as he spoke. "I can't really see. It's dark."

Sheppard sighed. "How are you feeling?"

"Not so good," McKay said softly. "I think—" his voice faded and there a muffled thud. A moment later another voice with a distinctive Scottish accent said, "Rodney?" and the radio clicked off.

"Beckett?" Sheppard called over the radio again.

"Yes, Major. The Wraith is dead, again," the Doctor said in an exasperated tone. "Ya'd think you'd need to drive a stake in these things and lop their heads off as hard as they are to kill."

"How are you holding up down there, Doctor?"

"I need my patients out of this blood hole, Major. That's how I'm holding up," he said sounding very irritated.

"We're working on it Doctor," Sheppard told him. Just how they were going to do it was another story.

"Well, work harder, Major."

Sheppard opened his mouth to respond when suddenly he found himself faced by several rustically dressed men.

Teyla stepped forward. "Calib," she greeted them.

"We will help you," the older man said, nodding back at the young men with him. They carried armloads of ropes and lumber.

Sheppard stared a moment and then smiled. "Great. Let's get these guys out of there."

Beckett held the stethoscope gently against McKay's chest and frowned at what he heard.

"Doc?" Ford asked, rubbing absently at the splint Beckett had wrapped around his leg. Between the splint and the shot of morphine he had given him the pain had eased back to a tolerable range.

"Yes, Aiden?" Beckett eased McKay onto his side and ran a hand down the man's back, his frown deepening.

"How is he?"

"We can get him fixed up back in Atlantis," he said, absently.

"How bad is it?"

The Doctor sighed. "He's not good. That last tussle with the Wraith may have caused one of his broken ribs to puncture a lung or something pretty close to it. I can't really tell yet. We need to get him back."

Ford nodded, his eyes going back to the Wraith. "Maybe we should cut its head off," he said to himself.

Beckett turned to look at him and then at the Wraith. "We really need to find out what will permanently kill those things."

Ford studied the Doctor. "Doesn't that go against the Hippocratic Oath or something."

"No," Beckett said shortly. "A good physician helps those he can and protects those he can." He looked at the Wraith stonily. "This classifies under protecting my patients."

Ford just nodded.

The radio crackled. "Doctor Beckett?"

"Beckett here," he answered, sitting back on his haunches.

"The Relarn have very generously offered to help us get you fellows out there. We should have something to haul you up out of there in a moment. You may want to get your patients ready to move."

"Thank heavens," Beckett sighed and touched the radio. "Lieutenant Ford is ready to move now, I'll get McKay ready in short order. We've got to get them back to the 'gate as quickly as possible. McKay's starting to slip into shock and he may have a punctured lung and I'm not equipped to treat that here."

There was a pause, "Understood. We'll get you out of there."

"I bloody well hope so," Beckett grumbled. "This is a wee bit more trouble than I'd usually expect you boys to get into," he said to Ford, forcing a smile.

Ford gave him a crooked grin. "This is a 'wee' bit more than we expected ourselves. Who would know that McKay would find a hole to fall into."

"Aye," Beckett said, picking some of McKay's blood stiffened hair out from under the edge of the bandage around his head.

Ford glanced back over at the recently dead Wraith, wondering about the missing arm. That didn't look like an old injury. He sighed and leaned back against the cave wall. His brain felt sluggish and he knew that had to be the morphine. He thought he heard shouting overhead. He opened his eyes and looked over at Beckett, the Scottish Doctor's stared up at the roof of the cave.

"Major Sheppard, is there a problem?"

It took a moment before. "Doctor Beckett, hold tight," Sheppard said tightly and then the radio clicked off.

"Lovely, just lovely," Beckett growled.