CHAPTER FIVE: ER . . . YOU WANT TO DO WHAT ?
Ford scooted back out of the way as more scientists entered the bay in an attempt to get the jumper to open. They seemed to have been at it for hours, and the longer the major remained stuck in that jumper, the stronger Ford's need to do something grew. Earlier on he'd suggested that they wire the back of the ramp with explosives while Sheppard took up position in the cockpit behind the blast doors, but McKay had shot him down. The 'we'd like to keep the jumper bay intact, thank you' still rang in his ears.
Now Aiden sat, his gear beside him, and watched the loudest scientist pace back and forth while arguing with Grodin who was up in the control room.
"What do you mean you still can't connect to the jumper? It's been nearly an hour, Peter. What have you been doing? It's essentially the same system that you work with everyday."
"That's just it, Rodney," Grodin's disembodied voice came back across the radio link. "It isn't. There are subtle differences in the systems that we still don't understand. You said yourself that this particular jumper was preprogrammed to fly back to Atlantis on its own – Major Sheppard was just along for the ride."
"Yes," McKay argued. "But it is still like the other jumpers. Virtually identical, in fact. I ran the quick diagnostic myself before we left. Atlantis even treated it like the rest of the jumpers in that it brought it in and landed it here in the jumper bay. It had to connect to do that. Why don't you try it from that angle? Do I have to suggest everything?"
"Apparently you must," Grodin replied and cut the radio link.
"Humph." Rodney sniffed, and turned and looked around at the gathered group. "Zelenka? Radek Zelenka, where are you?" Not seeing the man in question, he tapped his radio. "Radek where are you on the ventilation system? Do I need to. . . ?"
Ford zoned out the rest of what McKay said and tapped his radio to a different frequency. "How're you doing in there, Sir?"
John sat on the floor in the near complete darkness of the jumper, his back against one of the benches in the passenger section. His flak jacket and uniform shirt lay on the bench in deference to the gradual increase of the air's temperature. Heat rises – or so they said; in the stagnant air of the jumper he wasn't convinced much of anything was moving.
Scrubbing an arm across a dampening brow, he wondered how much longer it'd be before he received the next set of instructions from McKay. During the past hour or so, he had opened enough panels and swapped enough control chips that he was starting to feel like a member of the science team. Normally that wouldn't be too horrible, except that he was also the guinea pig that was locked in the warm and stuffy maze.
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the heat or the headache that was still plaguing him. It had helped some to switch his radio to standby so that he didn't have to hear Rodney arguing with some of the others; he was feeling irritable enough on his own, but what he wouldn't give for a couple of aspirin. Another item to add to the list of negatives surrounding their newly acquired jumper – no government-issue first aid kit, complete with both Tylenol and aspirin. At least he had food and water – though, in his opinion, power bars were only marginally food.
His roving thoughts drifted inevitably back to their visit to that outpost. He still wasn't sure exactly what he'd seen and felt, and it was really beginning to bother him. The image of the diamond-in-circle came quickly to mind, even the lettering flashed clearly before his inner eye and he'd never made any claims to understanding any part of the Ancient's written language. Yet, its meaning seemed almost on the tip of his tongue.
The radio beeped in his ear and he slowly opened his eyes when he heard Ford's voice, asking how he was doing.
"Wishing I brought a book," was his drawled response. "What's going on out there? McKay still terrorizing the troops?"
Ford chuckled. "Something like that." His tone sobered. "It doesn't look like they're any closer, Sir, but I know Dr. McKay will come through with something before too long – he always does."
"As good a reason to hope as any," John replied. "Heard anything more on our frozen guy?" Even the thought of the cooling word seemed to make him want fresher surroundings all the more.
"Nah, he still hasn't woken up, yet. Beckett thinks he's going to be okay, though, as long as we can get some nourishment into him."
"Speaking of nourishment, it's got to be close to chow time. Have you been up to the mess hall yet?"
"No, Sir," Aiden replied. "We'll go together."
"You know how fast stuff goes, Ford. At least one of us should have something besides power bars for dinner. Maybe have someone bring back a little something for McKay, might make him a little less grumpy."
"Yes, Sir," Ford agreed half-heartedly.
John tapped his radio to close the connection, but it beeped again almost immediately.
"Major Sheppard?" Beckett's soft brogue echoed over his radio link.
"Yeah, Doc?" John replied. He was wondering how long it would be before a doctor with an MD behind his or her name would make an appearance. He could guess what the man wanted.
"How are you feeling there, son?" He got right to the point.
"Like I'm on a beach in a tropical paradise sipping something with an umbrella in it."
"Sounds nice," Beckett played along. "Wouldn't mind being there with you. Any headache or dizziness or nausea on this island of yours?"
John decided to level with him. "To be honest, I've had this headache since before this mission started and just the smell of myself perspiring for the past bit is making me nauseous. But, dizziness, no."
"Alrighty," Beckett seemed to catalog those answers. "You have some liquids with you, still?"
"Yes, I do. And I'm making sure to drink some every now and then."
"That's good to hear. But, Major, if you start to feel even the teensiest bit worst you're to let me know straight away."
John could almost see the finger that doctor would normally no doubt be waving in his direction. "Got it," he answered agreeably, and immediately linked over to McKay's radio.
"Rodney?" he called to the physicist.
"Yeah? What?" He sounded distracted and busy – but who was a Rodney McKay who didn't sound that way?
"Have we figured out how much air I have to work with here?" John asked. Earlier on, he hadn't been overly worried about the pesky little detail, but as time dragged on, his options were looking disturbingly slim.
"Oh, thank you," Rodney spoke in a lower tone to someone, then, "That's . . . uh . . . difficult to say since we don't know exactly when or if the . . . er . . . jumper stopped providing life support."
"So, how long is that exactly? You're a genius, I'm sure you can ball park it for me."
"Actually, I'd prefer not to waste my brain power on calculating numbers that are ultimately useless because we are going to get you out of there absolutely as soon as we can." His words were punctuated with the sounds of eating as he continued, "Surely you wouldn't want me to lose focus on the goal here."
"No, no, goal focusing is good." John pulled out a power bar just to be neighborly, and to return the favor of chomping in the other man's ear. "Guess I'll just have to figure out for myself. How many cubic feet of space would you say was in a jumper?"
"Since you seem to have so much energy, why don't you check out a couple of things for me. I've a theory where --"
"Tell me what you want me to do." John quickly put aside the power bar, grabbed his P-90 and turned on its light. He didn't care what McKay theorized about while chomping on whatever the swill for the day was, as long as it got him out of that jumper. He moved back toward the still lowered control panels and waited for instruction.
"I need you to try to take the jumper apart from your side."
Sheppard lowered the P-90 to his side thoughtfully. Then, "Giving up on science, McKay?"
"Hardly. Ever heard of the term 'reverse-engineering'?"
"Yeah, but what does that have to with me transforming that inside of this jumper into lots of little pieces?"
"Bear in mind that I didn't say to trash the thing, Major. Allow there to be some hope of it being put back together in future."
"Ha." John settled his P-90 so that it would shine light on the area he had chosen to work. "And leave you without a challenge? Where's the fun in that? Besides, you have other jumpers to compare to."
"Yes, however, you're -- Damnit!"
The exclamation sent adrenaline coursing through John's system and he immediately stopped what he was doing with the overhead panels. "What? Something wrong?"
"No – and that's the problem."
"Huh?" Sometimes McKay didn't make a whole lot of sense.
"The lack of the problem is the problem. How can I fix this ship if I can't figure out what's wrong with it? Every piece of equipment that we've found and figured out that can be used on a jumper has been brought here. We ran every test. We can't find the problem."
John shrugged and went absently back to work. "Maybe there isn't one to find. Maybe the jumper is working just the way that it's supposed to."
"But why?" Rodney asked. "Why would it suddenly shut down like --"
The ugly word came to them both at the same time. "Lock down." They said it in unison. Neither could forget the way that Atlantis had reacted when the systems thought that there was a known contaminant floating around the city.
Tense silence reigned for several long seconds. Then Rodney spoke. "There isn't anywhere that you might have gone alone. I went into the jumper with you the first time and I wasn't locked in. Neither were Ford, Teyla, Markham, Stackhouse or the suspended animation guy for that matter. That can't be it."
John only felt marginally better, a gnawing unease reared its head. "There is something that might be different about me," he said, reluctant though he was to voice his concerns.
"Would that be your glowing personality?" Rodney asked.
"No. I was thinking more along the lines of seeing things." The words were spoken quietly. He could almost hear the sound of the doors shutting on the padded cell with his name on it.
McKay, in typical fashion, stumbled over the reply, not certain how to treat the admission. "What sort of things did you see?"
"I saw . . . ." The image flashed up into his mind on demand, and then, quite unexpectedly, the room listed to the left. He threw out a hand, and braced himself against the wall. After a moment the spell eased and he settled gingerly down on to one of the bench seats.
"Major! Major Sheppard!" He began to register Rodney's increasingly panicky voice calling to him.
"Yeah," he mumbled, massaging his temples against the worsening headache. "I'm here."
"What happened? You faded out on me." Rodney's tone was almost accusing.
"No undue pressure or anything, but, if you don't get me out of here soon there's going to be one less person on Kavanaugh's crap list."
Elizabeth gazed down at the still form of the man who had been brought back through the gate by Sheppard's team. She had yet to get a clear picture of what had taken place on their mission. What with everything going on there hadn't been time for a decent debriefing.
The bags of IV fluids which hung from a pole at the bedside to run through thin tubes beneath the bedcovers as well as the wires which were connected to monitoring devices seemed oddly out of place given his origins.
As she looked at the man's thin features, she tried to gather up an image of another Ancient that her time-traveling counterpart had told her about. Despite having no real way of knowing what Janus had looked like, she still found herself comparing him to the man who lay on the bed. He had sounded like such a dynamic personality. She wondered vaguely if this man might have known him.
"Elizabeth, we have a problem." Rodney's voice in her ear drew her quickly out of her musings.
"What is it, Rodney?" She asked in as low a tone as she could manage, all the while moving out of the curtained off area where the patient lay.
"He's running out of air, and we're running out of options."
"What are you suggesting Rodney?" Elizabeth asked, for she knew that a suggestion had to follow that opening; one that she probably wasn't going to like.
"We might have to try Lt. Ford's suggestion." It was spoken quietly and more than a little reluctantly, but that didn't make her like it any better.
"You mean blow up the back of the jumper?" she asked. "Weren't you the one who argued against it. You said it would destabilize the docking station and possibly even send the jumper crashing down onto the lower level. That can't be good for anyone actually inside of the jumper when that happens."
"Yes," Rodney agreed. "Kind of like the egg in a box dropped on the floor scenario. Not a pretty sight But, if we calculate correctly, we can determine exactly how much explosive would be needed to blow the door just the way we want, and hopefully not send the jumper over the edge. It's risky, but it's all we've got as a backup plan when it gets down to the wire. And right now, the wire is pretty much staring us in the face."
"Like demolishing a skyscraper in the middle of a busy city."
"Exactly."
Elizabeth thought about it for all of two seconds, then, "First, we run this by Major Sheppard – he's the one at risk. Second, what do we need to do to prepare?"
"We need someone working on the calculations. . .."
"Peter?" Elizabeth questioned.
"Nah," Rodney objected, "Yamata and Jansen would be a better choice. I'd prefer to do this without blowing something up, and Peter's more familiar with the jumper's systems than they are."
"Fine. I'm on it."
Peter brought up yet another screen on his laptop, hoping that he'd see something that looked out of the ordinary. There had to be a reason the jumper was reacting the way that it was. It had gone completely dead as if its power source was depleted, but every test he attempted told him otherwise. The shuttle was not out of power, it had simply shut off and did not respond to communication attempts from the base computers.
He clicked methodically through each of his screens, hoping to see something that might lead him in a direction. He paused on one screen, staring at the complex signal that danced erratically across the screen. It was several moments before he remembered that it was the signal from so long ago when they'd initially opened the gate on world PX3-922. It appeared that the signal was still active.
He frowned. That signal had ceased when they'd closed the gate.
An edge of excitement flickered within him as he maximized the screen, determined to follow this clue wherever it might lead him.
John's hands slipped again on the bit of insulation. There was a growing pile of the stuff on the floor which on occasion swam hazily out of focus and then back in again. His breathing was altered, and his mind and body felt unequal to the task set before him.
"Yeah." The words were just slightly slurred as he responded to Dr. Beckett's voice over the radio. "M'here."
"We need you to go into the front of the jumper, Major," Beckett requested gently. "The ramp is all wired up and ready to go, so you'll need to manually close the bulkhead doors."
"Right. Got it. 'Bout damn time." He pushed himself up from the floor and made the journey toward the front of the ship. He had argued earlier, when the idea had been put to him, to go ahead and set the explosives. The thought of slowly suffocating to death wasn't high on his list of things to try. But the calculations and simulations had taken longer than expected, all the while Rodney had worked frantically trying to get into the jumper using his own methods. There were even several people trying to drill through portions of the hull near the view screen.
As he moved unsteadily forward, he noted that the drilling team was backing off. The faint blue light from their torches dimmed to darkness, leaving only the nearly non-existent ambient lighting of the jumper bay.
The area calculated to be the most safe was just behind the rear passenger seat. John half-stooped, half-fell onto the floor then assumed the position with his head down and his arms wrapped about his knees. It reminded him vaguely of natural disaster drills back in grade school. He felt just about as helpless now as he was then.
"Are you in position?" A voice asked.
"S'ready as I'm ever going to be," he said.
"Standby."
John tucked his head in and held on.
"Almost done, almost done, almost done," Rodney insisted, holding up a hand as he stared at his computer's display. Just a couple of more seconds and the simulation would be done, then, "damn!" He pounded a hand against the side of the ship. It hadn't worked.
Frustrated and, not a little frightened, he shut off the systems he'd been using and gathered them up from the left rear of the jumper where he had set up shop what seemed so many hours earlier.
"What are we going to do if this doesn't work?" Ford wanted to know.
"We don't have a choice," Rodney snapped. "This has to work."
Ford nodded as if he'd said something profound. "The charges are ready." He held out the radio control toward him.
Rodney looked down at it, a little stunned that he would be the one to push the button. What if it all went wrong? What if the calculations were off? What if he was the one who pushed the button that lead to the death of Major Sheppard? Could he live with himself?
"Dr. McKay, I think I have something." Peter Grodin's voice sounded in his ear.
Oh thank God. The words echoed through is mind as he turned away from the device and keyed his earpiece. "Yes, Peter. What is it?"
"I've discovered a signal emanating from the jumper on the same frequency as the original signal that we picked up when we initially activated the gate, only it's very different, much shorter in duration. It repeats every 97 seconds."
"Really? Why didn't we notice that before?" Rodney asked, his mind already going to work on what this could mean for getting John out of that ship.
"It is not one of the more common frequencies used by Atlantis or our equipment. The signal typically stopped after the gate was closed. I found it quite by accident, actually."
"So what you're saying," Rodney put in impatiently, "Is that you've been pursuing a cool tidbit of information but have no idea how to make it work to save Major Sheppard."
"Actually, I have an idea. I believe that the jumper is, as you suggested, in a form of lockdown, and is –."
"Waiting for the password." Rodney interrupted, already seeing where the other man was going. "Unfortunately, that password is at least 10,000 years old. If the city doesn't know what it is, we don't have a snowball's chance of figuring it out."
"There was odd data in the original signal. Some of it looked like it may have been encrypted . . . ."
Rodney understood right away. "Try sending the signal that came through the gate back to the jumper –"
"Already doing it," Grodin replied. "In a few more seconds we'll find out if it's worked or not."
Tense silence reigned as they all waited. When the low-pitched hum sounded, indicating that the jumper's systems were coming back online, it was as if everyone in the jumper bay released a breath.
The ramp began what seemed to be the world's slowest descent and Beckett was right there, ready to enter almost before it could settle against the floor. He and his team moved through in a near blur as Rodney put out a hand a leaned heavily against the side of the jumper.
He watched hazily as, moments later, the med team reappeared with an obviously groggy John Sheppard. Though conscious, he didn't fight the oxygen mask or the gurney they'd placed him on.
Rodney shifted uncomfortably as the prone man met his eye. There was a glimmer of expression there that Rodney was sure translated to a thank you. He didn't deserve it. He should have been able to figure the problem out long before now. As it was, it was nearly too late.
Turning away, he went about the task of packing up his equipment.
