Yup, two in one night again! See how much I love you guys? LOL! This one is short...but important...

DOWN CAME A SPIDER

By TIPPER

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CHAPTER EIGHT: ONE TRACK MIND

"God DAMN it!" Carter screamed, throwing a pen across the room. "What the HELL, McKay! Why did you put this on me!"

She only had twenty hours left now. Twenty hours to figure this thing out. But she was nearly convinced that there was nothing to figure out. She was exhausted, hungry, furious at Landry for imposing this deadline, and just frustrated beyond belief.

She raged up out of the chair, sending it to the floor, and stalked over to the front of the chamber, glaring at the man inside. "You are complete pain in the ass, you know that? What the hell did it mean, Carter will know? What am I, a god damned McKay mind-reader now?" She turned around, walking in a tight circle, then faced him again. "How is it possible that you can drive me crazy, and you're not even here to fight with me! Huh? You come out of this, McKay, and I'm going to wring that scrawny neck of yours! You hear me?"

"I brought you some food," a faint, nervous voice interrupted from behind her.

Carter spun around, to find a young female scientist looking at her with worried eyes, a tray of food in her arms. Carter blushed mightily, and attempted a smile. The woman didn't buy it, just watched her with narrowed eyes, as if expecting her to go off again.

"They said you missed dinner," she told Sam, her voice tentative. "Colonel Sheppard suggested I bring this down. I think he's thinking of coming down himself soon, but was stopped by Doctor Weir, so he asked me to do it." She held the tray up a little, but the wariness in her eyes remained.

Carter forced herself to retain the smile. "Yes, sure...thank you." She indicated the table, "You can put it over there."

The woman nodded, and went to put it down.

"And I'm sorry for yelling," Carter said quickly. "I don't...I rarely yell. Or get angry, really. In fact, the only person who can ever seem to do that to me regularly is..." she trailed off, glancing again at McKay behind her.

"That's okay," the woman said. "He does that to everyone."

Carter smiled again, and walked over to the table, looking down at the light dinner they had prepared for her. She was grateful it wasn't heavier. She glanced at the woman.

"What's your name?"

"Doctor Torrens. I'm a chemical engineer." She stepped back from the table.

"Torrens?" Carter frowned slightly, "Wait...You're one of the two scientists who was with McKay and Sheppard in the auxiliary power room, right?"

"Yes. Doctor Atchison and I. We made sure the metal spider wasn't attacking the City while Doctor McKay studied the spider itself."

Carter nodded, "I don't suppose Doctor McKay said anything to you or Atchison—"

"No, Colonel. We weren't doing anything like that. I'm sorry. I assume you've seen Doctor Zelenka's notes? He questioned us for a while."

Carter gave a disappointed nod. "Yes. I did."

Torrens gave a weak smile. "Well, if, uh, if you need anything else..."

"No," Carter returned the smile and sat down in front of the food Torrens had brought her. "But thank you."

The scientist smiled more fully and turned to leave, then stopped. She was looking at McKay's laptop. For a moment, she didn't move, just looked at the information on it. Carter watched her for a little while, then frowned again when Torrens seemed confused.

"What?"

"Just," Torrens frowned and turned to face the monitor, "this isn't what Doctor McKay had up on the laptop when he left it."

Carter glanced at it, then shook her head. "No, that's true. The information he had on there about the metal spider was scrambled. Doctor Zelenka and his team have spent a great deal of time trying to decipher it."

"No, that's not what I meant," Torrens sat down in front of the laptop, and hesitantly touched a couple of keys. "This information is about the spider's hard drive and technology, not..." She trailed off, typing some more, searching around the different drives on the laptop.

"What are you doing?" Carter asked, forgetting the food to stand up and lean over the other woman.

"While we waited for Doctor Zelenka and the others to arrive, I read a little of what McKay had in his main window. It wasn't the data from the metal spider, it was data the spider was receiving..." She typed some more, and frowned when she obviously had trouble finding what she was looking for.

"What do you mean?" Carter asked, feeling a touch of hope for the first time.

"I'm not sure. It was definitely something connected to the spider, outside of its main hard drive. But it was separate. I remember thinking it was spooling data impossibly quickly down the screen across the link McKay had made." She typed in some different commands, then growled in frustration. "I can't find it now," she said, grimacing.

"Hey," Sheppard called, walking into the room. He was carrying another tray of food, obviously for himself. "What's going on?"

Carter couldn't hide the hope in her eyes as she looked up, and Sheppard quickly put his food down, coming around the table to see what Torrens was doing.

"You found something?" he asked, his voice shaking slightly.

"Not yet," Carter said, watching as Torrens continued to search for whatever it had been she had seen. She looked at Sheppard again. "Colonel, I know you've been asked this a hundred times, but can you remember anything else that McKay might have said when he was working on the laptop? Anything at all?"

Sheppard glanced at her, and shook his head. "No. He was complaining, mostly."

"About what?"

"About not having enough time," Sheppard said, grimacing.

"That's it?"

"He also told Torrens and Atchison not to touch the laptop."

Carter frowned, looking down at the woman with them, then back to Sheppard. "You're absolutely certain. All he said was that he didn't have time?"

Sheppard nodded, "Actually, he was telling me to stop asking stupid questions," he gave a rueful smile. "He didn't have the time to answer, and...and since the spider only had a one track mind, he—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Carter's eyes lit up, and Sheppard found himself surprised how familiar that gaze was. "One track mind?" she repeated, "Is that what he said? One track mind?"

"Yeah," Sheppard nodded, "I think so."

"Oh my God," Carter said, "Oh my GOD!" She turned around, and grabbed the laptop away from Torrens.

"Hey!" the woman said, "I was—"

"I know what his idea was!" Carter said, grinning now as she started typing furiously. "How could I not see it before? We've been looking at this all wrong! Of course! It's not about shutting the spider down, it's about sending it away! Just like we did before."

"You've seen one of these spiders before?" Sheppard asked, not hiding his confusion.

"No, no, it was the gate we had to, to...oh, never mind, it doesn't matter..." She typed some more, then grinned as something appeared on the screen.

"That's it!" Torrens cried gleefully. "That's what he was looking at!"

Carter's eyes read quickly down the screen, then nodded. "Okay, I gotcha, McKay. I gotcha. We're going to get you out of this." She reached forward, grabbing the radio on the desk that she had been issued. "Doctor Beckett, Doctor Zelenka, Doctor Weir, this is Colonel Carter. I think I've got it, but I need your help."

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TBC...

And now we can get moving again!