Made a couple minor fixes to the previous chapter due to reader feedback. As you will see from the ending of this chapter, it looks like there will be at least one more after this one; they're just too much fun to write...

Chapter Five

"God, it's worse than Russia," Rodney groaned.

The Czech engineer, whose name he still couldn't remember, raised an eyebrow at him. "How is this like Russia?"

Rodney gave him a look of exasperation. "It's not at all like Russia. It's much worse." Honestly, wouldn't the man even try to keep up? Taking a swig of coffee -- the only thing that was still keeping him going at this point -- he ducked back under the control console for the main plumbing system and started swapping crystals again. The console remained obstinately dark. "Why don't we have anyone down here with the gene? Didn't I ask an hour ago?"

"And again half an hour ago. And twenty minutes ago, I believe," the Czech said from somewhere over his head. "As I understand it, no one is available at the moment."

"How the hell is that even possible? Like there's anything more important than getting the plumbing up again! They can't all be that busy!"

"Dr. Jameson is still in the infirmary. Dr. Beckett is presently in surgery, a case of appendicitis in one of the Athosians. Dr. Halloran is offworld --"

"All right, all right, fine, you don't need to rub it in. Everyone's busy. Got it." For the thousandth time, McKay cursed the turn of fate that had left him without the ATA gene. It was like being the head surgeon in the world's most prestigious hospital and waking up one morning to find you were missing both thumbs and suffering from palsy.

"I'm not busy." Lazy drawl from farther away, probably the doorway. Rodney started to raise his head and whacked it on the underside of the console.

"Ow! Jeez!"

"Major," the Czech said.

"Zelenka," the voice returned, from slightly nearer this time.

McKay heard a rustle somewhere near his feet and tilted his head for a sideways view of Sheppard kneeling to peer under the console. The Major looked a lot better than he had earlier -- there was some color in his face, and he didn't look like he was going to fall over if you blew on him. Not that Rodney cared, of course, but it would be highly inconvenient if Sheppard did a faceplant into a piece of irreplaceable technology.

"So tell me, McKay: Do the Ancients stick gum under those things? I've always wondered."

Assuming that he didn't hit him over the head with a piece of irreplaceable technology just to shut him up. "Make yourself useful and see if you can turn this on. I thought it already had been, but I can't get it to work, and I don't have a clue if it's because some moron with the gene turned it off for some reason, or because -- shit!"

The dark space around him had suddenly lit up with a thousand watts of blue light, some of which arced from the crystal he was holding into the hand that was holding it. The feeling was not unlike having his fingers struck with a hammer, added to a tingling sensation that went straight up his arm and, from the feel of things, all the way to his heart.

"You okay under there?" Sheppard sounded apologetic.

McKay squirmed his way out, holding his numb hand protectively against his chest. "No, I'm not, you troglodyte! What did you think you were doing, turning it on with me under there?"

"You told me to."

"I -- but -- well, that's no excuse," McKay snapped, sitting on the floor and shaking feeling back into his hand. With his other hand, he took his own pulse. Fast. Couldn't heart attacks start out that way? How much electricity did it take to damage the heart's internal pacemaker, anyway?

Sheppard squatted down to bring himself to McKay's current eye level. "Need me to call Beckett?" The words might be solicitous, but the tone itself was gently mocking, as was Sheppard's ironic gaze on McKay's faintly reddened fingers.

"No, no, I'm fine, I only need my hands to save us all from the Wraith. Any incidental brain damage will probably take years to show up."

Sheppard opened his mouth to respond to this, just as McKay noticed the giant opening that he'd left with his last comment. "If this is about brain damage, don't think it, don't say it," he snapped irritably. "Too damn easy. If you're going to insult me, at least be creative about it."

The Major grinned as he straightened back up. "Okay, count on it."

Somehow feeling that he'd once again gotten the worst of the conversation, McKay glowered up at him, as Sheppard extended a hand down. Reluctantly, Rodney took it and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. The sensation did seem to have mostly returned to his hand; he flexed it to be sure.

"How's it coming, anyway?" Sheppard asked as Rodney bent over the console and started pulling up readouts.

"It's coming much faster when people don't ask me stupid questions all the time. By the way, what are you doing down here? Not that I don't appreciate the presence of your gene."

"I'm still allowed to answer questions, right?" At McKay's death-glare, Sheppard grinned and shrugged. "Weir said you guys had found an auxiliary control system for the plumbing. After using the facilities on the south pier, I figured I'd come down here and see how close you were to getting the regular ones up and running. She wanted a report anyway."

"Closer than expected, actually," McKay admitted with a little glow of pride. "We thought we were going to have to reroute everything manually, but it looks like we can do it from here -- if we could just get the subroutines working properly."

"Which would be easy if someone would admit that pipe output should be routed under third division of west sector, not over it," Zelenka said from where he was typing away industriously at his laptop.

McKay threw his hands up in the air. "We've been over this! There's a huge conduit going through that area. It's obviously designed to carry a heavy load of effluent -- what the hell do you think it's for, otherwise? Ancients running indoor marathons? Stock car racing, maybe?"

"I am simply pointing out that the re-routing for your golden conduit is ten times more difficult than simply to connect up the smaller pipes under the sector. Maybe it is not preferred way of Ancients, but it may perhaps mean we could be getting to bed sometime tonight."

"Oh, that's excellent, we should do it wrong so that we can finish in a hurry. That's just great. I can see why Elizabeth picked you for this mission, all right. And when those pipes burst under the strain of a load they were never meant to handle, you'll be the one with a mop and bucket cleaning up the mess, right? Wrong!" McKay gestured wildly with his half-empty coffee cup; Sheppard had to duck. "It'll be me! Because anytime anything goes wrong around here, I'm the one they call! Where's McKay? Oh, is he sleeping? No problem -- we'll just wake him up! Because rearranging the duty rosters is an emergency of such magnitude that it requires the presence of his giant brain, never mind the fact that those brain cells are dying by the hundreds due to lack of sleep!"

Sheppard leaned in close to McKay. "See, this is why you should come offworld with me."

"It was the middle of the afternoon; how were we to know you were asleep?" Zelenka protested defensively.

"How about because I hadn't slept the night before and had about two hours of sleep the previous night due to some gene-bearing idiot activating the Ancient equivalent of Muzak which then could not be turned off until -- er, what?" Belatedly, McKay realized that Sheppard had spoken to him.

"Offworld. Unless the city is actively melting down, no one will contact you; they won't even be able to find you. And if we find a nice grassy hillside, you can sleep on it." Sheppard wore such a self-satisfied expression that McKay just wanted to smack it right off his face. The worst part was that his argument was actually working.

"And labs will be peaceful," Zelenka put in loudly. "Work can actually be accomplished."

It was a goddamn conspiracy. Even his own people were in on it now. McKay threw up his hands. "All right! Fine! I'll go through the damn gate with you and your fellow suicide victims, if it'll get you to shut up! All of you!"

Sheppard grinned like a kid. "Knew you'd come around."

McKay held up a finger. "One time. Once. Test run. If things go bad, I'm never stepping foot in that blue puddle of light again ... at least not until someone around here, namely me, figures out how to get it to open to Earth again."

"Of course."

"I take as much gear as I want, and nobody complains about it."

"Sure, we've got a whole puddlejumper to carry it."

McKay winced anew at the name, and Sheppard waited with bated breath, no doubt to see if he'd demand that changing the name back to "Gateship" would be one of the requirements. He wondered if it actually might work ... but, no, everyone in the city was calling the damn things by Sheppard's idiot name for them now. He'd have to remember this, the next time that it came to naming some newly discovered alien artifact: get your pick in early, and spread the name around the city as quick as you can. And don't let Sheppard anywhere near it until the name has stuck like glue.

"Fine," McKay said venomously, aware that it was a really lousy comeback for an argument he'd most assuredly lost. He leaned over the console and brought up the schematics for the plumbing system. "Hey ... you, got the subroutine finished yet?"

"No, because I am routing conduits around fifteen different vital systems in attempt to follow twists and turns of your giant brain." Zelenka's accent appeared to grow stronger the more tired and annoyed he got.

"Fine!" McKay half-yelled. It seemed that he was losing every argument tonight. But, damn, he was so tired his hands were shaking. "Take the damned system under the big conduit, I don't care. Later we can re-write the routine and take the plumbing offline for a half-hour or so while we switch it over and do it the way we should have done it in the first place."

Zelenka swiveled around, pushing his glasses up on his nose with an owlish look of astonishment. "Really? Do you seriously want me to--"

"I don't hear typing!"

"Right, right." Hastily he bent over his keyboard. "Okay, I am uploading ... now."

McKay spun to stare at him. "That was fast. Are you capable of psychic programming now?"

Zelenka cast a sideways glance at him, somewhat sheepishly. "I had ... already written it that way. Before you came up with main plan. Program was being rewritten from scratch to accommodate large conduit."

McKay stared at him. "Damn it, do you mean you already had the blasted thing written? We could have gone home hours ago? And you were redoing it ... why?"

"Because you wanted it done that way." Zelenka seemed genuinely confused. Sheppard backed up against the wall and watched them quietly, arms folded. "And you are right, it would have been better way to do it."

McKay opened and closed his mouth, fishlike. Then he marched over to the Ancient tabletop that Zelenka was currently using as a desk, and smacked his fist down on it. The Czech scientist jumped.

"Tell me your name again," McKay said, "so I can yell at you properly."

Zelenka stared up at him with an expression vaguely like that of a trapped squirrel. "Radek Zelenka."

"Right, right. Zelenka, don't ever do that again?"

"Do what?" The Czech blinked at him. "Follow orders?"

"Yes! If it conflicts with common sense, then yes, dammit! Mine or anyone else's! For God's sake, tell me if I'm doing something stupid! What am I going to do, fire you? The worst I can do is yell at you, and I'll probably do that anyway."

"I do not understand. You are my boss--"

"Zelenka, every single one of you is here on this station because of your brains. If I wanted mindless yes-men, I'd join the military." He shot a pointed look at Sheppard, who just smirked from his position against the wall.

"You want us to tell you when you are wrong."

McKay flung his hands in the air. "Finally! Some show of intelligence! Yes, that is exactly what I want!"

The trapped, frightened look on Zelenka's face slowly changed to one of glee. "Yes, I will tell you, then. I will take great joy in telling you, as often as possible."

"Oh God," Rodney groaned, "I've created a monster." He stomped back over to the console. "You done uploading?"

Zelenka swung around to look at the laptop. "Yes."

Rodney keyed his radio. "Control room, this is McKay."

"Grodin here," came the lightly accented voice, and McKay closed his eyes thankfully. Finally, something was going right for a change: there was someone on duty tonight with a brain.

"Grodin, we're about to try firing up the sewage systems. Keep a close eye on the boards for anything out of the ordinary. If this goes smoothly, then nothing should change. If anything does change, I want to know about it. Let me know when you're ready."

A brief pause, then: "Ready. Go ahead."

McKay nodded to Zelenka, who hit a few keys on his laptop as Rodney threw a switch on the console. There was a moment of silence.

"It isn't working," Zelenka said.

"I can see that." Rodney's hands were already in motion, flickering across the console, re-routing manually. Once again, the system tried to activate and failed.

Zelenka groaned, and cursed briefly in Czech. "See that? There is a failsafe in the east sector, overriding our subroutine and shutting it down."

At the same moment, Grodin's voice spoke in Rodney's ear. "Hey, I'm still learning to read this thing, but I'm getting what I'd say would be red lights if we were on Earth. They aren't red, but you get the idea. They weren't there a minute ago."

"East sector?"

"Yeah." Grodin rattled off coordinates.

Zelenka had been listening on his own radio. "That's where I'm getting the failsafe problems."

"Well, just overri-- ride ..." McKay trailed off, aware of Sheppard watching him. "As I was going to say, I'll head over and check it out." With a combative glare at Sheppard, he inquired nastily, "Feel like a walk, Major?"

"Why, I'd love one." Sheppard pushed himself away from the wall.

Rodney tucked his borrowed laptop under his arm and hit his radio. "Grodin, we're going to go take a look. How much longer are you on this shift?"

A soft laugh. "I'm working all night."

Despite himself, Rodney snorted a laugh as well. "Welcome to the club. Well, keep an eye on things and let me know if anything else starts to fail."

"Will do. Grodin out."

"What should I do?" Zelenka asked.

Rodney turned back, halfway out the door. "Get started on a bypass subroutine in case we can't fix it and have to go around that section. It would help to already --" He paused, took in the man's slumped posture, the dark circles under his eyes. His entire staff was stretched to the breaking point right now. "On second thought, get some sleep. Any code you write right now would probably be more useless than usual."

"When do you want me to come back?"

McKay waved his hand in the air. "Go. Sleep. Eat. I'll call you if I need you."

And he was out the door, but not before he heard Zelenka say, in a surprised tone, "Thanks."

Halfway down the hall, Sheppard caught up with him and waved something shiny in front of his face. He grabbed at it in annoyance to get it out of his way. "What's this?"

"Beckett wanted me to make sure you ate something. Yes, I did check in with Beckett, and you can tell Weir so if she asks."

Rodney turned it over in his hand. Powerbar. Raspberry chocolate. "Hmph." He tore off the foil and ate as they trotted up a flight of stairs.

"How far is it?"

"Pretty far. Probably take us about an hour to get there." McKay licked the inside of the foil wrapper. "I think I've lost ten pounds in the last few days, running around this blasted city. They should market it back home as the Atlantis Diet. Nonstop stress and a city the size of Manhattan without so much as escalators. I'm guessing we now know why there don't seem to have been any fat Ancients."

"Guess we should've packed bicycles," Sheppard said thoughtfully as they hiked down yet another interminable corridor.

"It defies belief that they wouldn't have had some way of getting around. How can you build Stargates while the basic principles of the internal combustion engine elude you?"

"Have you looked?" Sheppard asked.

Rodney glowered at the smirk. "What do you think? No, Sheppard, we just walked right by the giant subway depot on the second level. Of course we've looked. Unless they have a pocket teleporter in the closet, they must have shut down their transportation system or taken it with them."

Sheppard shrugged. "Maybe they do. Have a teleporter in some closet somewhere." At McKay's disbelieving stare, he shrugged again. "It's the Ancients; who knows what they could have built?"

"Well, not me, obviously." Rodney's shoulders slumped a little. "Everyone thinks I do, but I don't."

He became aware of Sheppard looking at him in some surprise. Defensively he snapped, "Yes, even the great Rodney McKay doesn't know everything. Try not to let the shock go to your head."

"No, no, it's not that." Sheppard shook his head. "I just didn't think I'd ever hear you admit it." He smiled a little. "You must be tired."

There was what appeared to be genuine concern in the green eyes. McKay distrusted it instinctively. People didn't act that way unless they wanted something from you. "Well, I hope you enjoyed the moment, because it won't happen again."

Silence descended. Rodney realized that he'd actually gotten tired enough that his mental wheels were spinning aimlessly -- he wasn't pursuing any particular train of thought at the moment. Normally he would have been compelled to start talking, a sure-fire way to get himself past mental roadblocks. But he was strangely reluctant. Too damn tired, perhaps. Rodney wasn't used to being around other people and just being ... quiet. Yet in this case, it seemed companionable, somehow. He didn't feel as if he had to talk to fill the gap. Sheppard seemed to feel the same, because he didn't say anything either. They just hiked -- past pillars festooned with glowing lights like Christmas trees, past stained-glass doors to as-yet-unexplored rooms, past stairways leading up into blackness and galleries of windows looking out across the dark ocean. Sheppard paused at one of these; McKay kept walking for another few steps before he realized he was alone and turned back to see what had become of his companion.

They had penetrated quite far into the east wing of the city, and looking back on Atlantis's core, Rodney saw that the towers were lit up like office buildings at night, silhouetted against the stars and casting shimmering reflections into the dark water. Somehow, he'd never really thought about what the place looked like from the outside. And it had been a long, long time since he'd stopped to look at something just because it was beautiful. Maybe it was only because he was so tired that he couldn't take his eyes away.

Sheppard spoke beside him, softly. "Have you ever flown over a city at night?"

Trust Sheppard to make everything about flying. The man was obsessed. But he sounded so ... reverent, or something, that it made Rodney want to say yes. He'd done so much jet travel in his life that he imagined he'd flown over pretty much every city in North America and Europe. But he couldn't remember ever once looking down.

"I don't remember," he said.

"When we figure out how to get the jumpers out of the hangar bay -- and I know there's a way ..." Rodney turned to see the boyish grin flashing at him, the city lights reflected in Sheppard's eyes. "Whenever we figure it out, I owe you a ride over the city at night. A dark night without a moon, just like this one. Hey ... does this planet have moons?"

"I have no idea." It was embarrassing to admit that he'd never even checked. "I had more important things to worry about, like making sure the toilets flushed."

Sheppard laughed. "Point taken. Still, I owe you that ride. There are advantages to being on Team Sheppard, McKay, no matter what people say about me," and he shot Rodney a sly grin. "At the very least it beats fixing the plumbing."

------

"Well, this is just a whole barrel of stupid."

"McKay ... you do know you're talking about the Ancients, right?"

"I realize that, Major. And what everyone here seems to forget is that the Ancients were, on a fundamental level, people, just like us. Well, smarter than us, better educated than us, and able to tippytoe around the laws of physics when they felt like it. But still people. They made mistakes, and I've no doubt that sometimes they would make a silly design decision just because 'it's always been done this way and why change now?' I doubt if people have changed that much in ten thousand years, aside from the occasional glowy ... floatiness."

The two of them were currently standing at the bottom of a shaft. Sheppard couldn't guess at its height; the top was shrouded in shadows far, far above them. He thought several hundred feet, at least -- they were, according to Rodney, at the bottom of one of Atlantis's towers, and the shaft seemed to go all the way up to its top. Occasional glowing light strips, dotted at random intervals along the sides, provided uncertain illumination. Pipes and wires ran up its sides, soaring into darkness; others criss-crossed the shaft high above their heads.

Most ominously of all, a metal ladder, of the exact sort that might be found down a manhole cover back on Earth, ran up the shaft as high as the eye could see. It appeared to be the only means of accessing it.

"So where exactly is this ... red light Grodin's talking about?"

McKay was studying schematics on his laptop. He heaved a sigh. "According to the coordinates he gave me, about halfway up, give or take a bit. That's where the main sewer line crosses the shaft. And before you ask, no, there is no other way into the shaft that I can find. Of course, we haven't downloaded half the maps, and for all I know there could be a convenient corridor marked Sewer Access on some level above us. And we could wander around in here for the next week before we find it."

Sheppard tilted his head back and peered up at the slim, shadowy lines of pipes high above him. "So what are the odds that the pipe is about to break and shower us in a million tons of sh--"

Rodney closed the laptop with a snap and let out a long, pained sigh. "Fortunately for both of us, Major, not very likely. And fortunately for you, it really isn't your problem, considering that I'm the only one who would have any idea what I was looking at up there." With another sigh, he stared mournfully up the shaft, and reached for the lower rung of the ladder. "This is really not my day."

"Hold on, McKay. We can go get rappelling gear. It'll be a snap getting up and down this shaft with belay lines."

Rodney paused, and held up a finger. "So you are suggesting walking all the way back to the city proper, obtaining equipment, and walking back? I'm sorry, but I'm dead on my feet as it is. Another forced march is going to kill me."

"So would falling down the shaft."

"Touche. But you're also ignoring the vital point that I have no idea how to rappel. Nor do I have any intention of spending several hours troubleshooting a problem that is most likely a cracked crystal or frayed wire that won't cause us any problems at all if we recalibrate the system to ignore it."

And he reached for the ladder again. This time, Sheppard stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

"Okay, now what?" the scientist demanded as Sheppard looked him up and down, taking in the physique that had clearly seen more of a chair seat than a gym.

"McKay, have you ever done any rock climbing? Rope climbing? Even ladder climbing?"

Rodney retrieved his wrist, looking aggrieved. "Well, no, but I assume it can't be that hard, if you grunts can do it."

"The point is not technique, McKay, it's the effort that you have to expend to do it. The first rung is easy. The two hundredth is going to be hell. By the five hundredth, your arms may not be capable of supporting you anymore. At that point, you fall and die."

"I sincerely doubt if I'll have to go that high. Have a little faith here, Major."

Sheppard rolled his eyes, wondering how to get the seriousness of the situation through the man's thick skull. "It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of accurately knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you think you can climb that shaft without falling off?"

The blue eyes darted everywhere but his face. "So what do you suggest?" McKay finally asked in a small voice.

"Simple." Sheppard gripped a rung. "I''m in much better shape; I'll climb it. You tell me what to do through the radio."

McKay's jaw dropped. "What? You don't exactly bounce when you fall either, you know! This all goes back to that 'expendable military' thing, doesn't it?"

Sheppard made little effort to suppress his exasperation. "No, McKay, this goes back to that 'I climb a hell of a lot better than you' thing."

"You have no evidence of that," Rodney protested, folding his arms. "You've never seen me climb."

"And how many hours a day do you spend going through obstacle courses, lifting weights and jogging, McKay? You want to know how much time I spend doing those things?"

Rodney glowered, but was forced to relent in the face of the fact that Sheppard was, well, right. "Fine, fine, you have a point."

"I'll be up and back down while you're still huffing on the fourth rung, McKay."

"I said you were correct! Must you be a complete asshole about it?"

"Plus I have the gene, so I'm probably going to have to climb this ladder eventually, one way or another. May as well get it over with now."

McKay threw his hands up in the air. "You keep this up and I'm going to be hoping you fall, you do realize that?"

Sheppard just laughed. "Keep your radio open," he said, and started climbing.

"You won't have any idea what you're looking at when you get up there!" McKay hollered up the shaft after him. Sheppard looked back over his shoulder to see that the scientist had placed his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.

"McKay, dammit, I am not going to be able to catch you if you fall, and you know this is something you can't do. It's either this or go back to the city for climbing gear."

The scientist groaned and smacked the wall with his fist, but he took his foot off the ladder. "If you touch anything, Sheppard, so help me, without being told --"

"I may be a jock, but I'm not a complete idiot, McKay." Sheppard grinned to himself as he continued climbing. He had no idea why Elizabeth seemed to have trouble managing Rodney. He found it perfectly easy himself. Not to mention fun as hell.

The Ancients turned out to have had at least a little foresight; Sheppard found occasional catwalks circling the shaft, which, though narrow, made good places to stop for a minute to rest and stretch his arms. And he needed it; even though he was in good shape, his shoulders were soon burning and aching. McKay would never have managed it.

Of course, if McKay was up here, it might have been easier to get him to shut up. Or possibly, if all else failed, push him down the shaft. He hadn't stopped talking once since Sheppard had been climbing.

"... or it might look like a flat panel with two small indentations on the bottom edge. Those are finger holes; press two fingers to them and it should pop up. At least most of them seem to do that. We found one yesterday -- actually, since it's the middle of the night, I guess it would be day before yesterday now -- that we couldn't even open with a blowtorch, and don't ask me why, because there was no visible signs of corrosion ... in fact, nothing around here is nearly as corroded as you'd expect, which is pretty weird if you think about it. I set one of the chemists to analyzing that material that they make everything out of here -- it's not really a plastic, but not a metal either, and in ten thousand years it doesn't seem to have decayed at all, it's amazing. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, Ancient access panels --"

"McKay," Sheppard said as he stretched and resumed climbing.

"...hm?"

"How close am I?"

A snort came through the radio. "Since I have no idea how high up you are, that's a difficult one to answer, Major."

Sheppard paused. "Well, I'm not just going to keep climbing 'till I hit the ceiling! I'm not doing this for my health, McKay." Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the bottom of the shaft had retreated to a very tiny circle of light, very far below him. Sheppard wasn't even remotely bothered by heights, but he had to admit that it would be a long fall with an unpleasant end.

"All right, all right ..." He heard typing through the radio. "Tell me what you see around you."

"I see a shaft, McKay. Um, there's some pipes right below me."

He could visualize Rodney's look of exasperation and grinned to himself as he climbed. "Could you be a little more specific, please, Major!"

"Well ... two straight pipes, side by side, about as big around as my leg, and another one about twice that big crossing above them at right angles." He tilted his head back. "Um, there's another one above me that makes a sort of U-bend in the middle."

"I think I've got you located," McKay's voice echoed tinnily in his ear. "Can you se a really big pipe above you? About six feet in diameter or so? Probably about fifty feet farther up?"

"Could be. It's dark up here." He thought he could make something out, but it was hard to tell.

McKay seemed to take that for a yes. "Well, when you get there, that's it." A fractional pause, then, "Are you there yet? Tell me when you get there."

"Just exactly how fast do you think I climb?" In addition to the ache in his shoulders, his fingers were starting to feel as if they'd been pummeled with a meat tenderizer. Gloves would have been a good idea.

"I have no idea, Major, because I'm down here and you're up there." He could hear the frustration in the scientist's voice. It clearly chafed McKay to no end that he was dependent upon Sheppard to relay information to him. "Tell me when you get there, would you just do that?"

Sheppard decided to save his breath for climbing, since he had no real hope that responding would make McKay talk any less.

"Major? Major? Is your radio working? Did you get that last part? I said --"

On second thought ... "Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on. I'm almost there. Shut up and let me climb."

The giant conduit that McKay had described was located right above another of those catwalks. Sheppard stepped off the ladder with a sigh of relief. Like most of the other catwalks, it didn't have a railing -- he was getting the impression that the Ancients weren't really all that big on safety -- and was only a couple of feet wide. Sheppard glanced down the shaft and decided that, even with his good head for heights, he probably didn't want to do that again.

McKay, incredibly, had shut up. Sheppard tapped his radio just to make sure it hadn't cut out. "Okay, I'm here. Now what?"

"Tell me what you see." Eagerness quivered in McKay's voice.

"Anything specific? Or everything?"

"Everything. If I want more detail on something, I'll tell you."

Sheppard stabilized himself with a hand against the wall so that he could look around more safely. "Um, okay. That big pipe is right over my head. It comes out of the wall in a sort of metal collar, or something ... I can't see any seams. I'm standing on a catwalk sort of thing. There's a row of lights down near my feet ... little round lights, kinda blue."

"Do you see anything that might be an access panel?" Though McKay's impatience could be clearly heard in his voice, he seemed to be keeping it in check at the moment. "Do you remember the different kinds I described --"

"Hang on, I'm checking," Sheppard said hastily, hoping to cut off a fresh flood of information about Ancient wiring. Somewhat to his surprise, he found that he'd actually been listening to at least some of McKay's rambling. "Yeah, here we go. It's the kind with a place for your hand and -- aha!"

"What? Aha what?" From the sound of things, McKay was practically bouncing in place.

"I touched it and it slid back into the wall. Now there's glowing crystals all over the place. And a little flat screen, and some lights."

"Describe them."

He did, and McKay instructed him to touch the screen in certain places, bringing up more schematics. Sheppard began to feel like an elaborate remote control device as McKay directed him through checking the integrity of the different crystals. When he pulled out one of them, there was a faint flash at its base, which hadn't happened with any of the others, and he halted with an exclamation of surprise.

"What? What?"

"It sparked." Sheppard peered at the base of the crystal. There was a tiny, hairline crack. He described it to McKay.

"Aha!" The loud voice in his ear made him wince. "That's what's doing it, then. Maybe it was damaged when we rose, or maybe something just shifted or settled over the years, or, hell, maybe the Ancients hired a substandard contractor. But it must be grounding out and causing a short. That's why the failsafes are kicking on."

"Well, what do we do about it? I don't have another crystal on me."

"You don't need one. The systems are full of redundancies. Just bypass it."

Sheppard frowned, forgetting that McKay couldn't see him. "Er, McKay, I don't know how to do that."

"Well, that's what I'm for, isn't it? Now pay attention and try not to break anything."

A few minutes later, following McKay's instructions, Sheppard had crossed over two crystals and, pulling out a few more, shifted some wires from one nexus point to another. He had his hand deep in the bowels of the thing, tugging on a particularly stubborn crystal.

"Are you sure I have to take this one out? Can't it be one of the others? It doesn't want to let go."

"Kindly be a man about this, Major." McKay was now pacing down below. He claimed it helped him think. The rhythmic tapping of his footsteps came faintly through the radio. "Yes, it has to be that one; do you see any other crystals that are wired directly into the main flow control relay? I don't think so! Just pull on it."

"That's what I'm doing," Sheppard gritted, and getting a better purchase with his fingers, he gave a powerful yank. The last effort must have loosened it, though, because it slipped out with hardly any resistance. Not expecting the sudden give, Sheppard windmilled his free arm as he involuntarily stepped backwards.

And fell.

The brain goes into slow motion at times like this. For an instant, Sheppard seemed to hang on the edge of the catwalk, and he had all the time in the world, it seemed, to contemplate what had just happened to him and what was about to happen to him. Unfortunately his body wasn't similarly enhanced, and he was still reaching for a purchase as his overbalanced center of mass carried his other foot off the edge as well.

"Oh fuck," he said quietly, as gravity took him.

Vaguely aware of McKay's shout of "Major!" echoing inside and outside his radio earpiece, he plunged headfirst towards the floor hundreds of feet below.

---

About time we had another cliffhanger, isn't it? Literally!