"Your forearm is fractured in at least one place," Ronon diagnosed. John didn't know much about his time in the Sadetan military, but he had probably seen his share of combat injuries.
Teyla rummaged through the on-board first aid kit of the Jumper. "Here is the medication against infection." Teyla handed John a blister strip of pills.
"Antibiotics," John explained. "I'm not sure if Carson would think that's called for already." He washed down one of the pills with a gulp of water.
"Your arm is infected," Ronon stated in a manner that tolerated no argument. He pulled a gauze bandage from the packaging and wrapped it around John's arm. John flinched.
Turn around," Ronon commanded. "It will be the least painful if we tie your arm back against your chest."
John turned his back to Ronon just as Rodney walked up to them at the mouth of the cave. Rodney looked tense and tired and wordlessly sat down a few meters from them.
"Everything going all right?" John asked Rodney through the pain of Ronon pulling at his arm.
"Yes, we'll be on our way tomorrow morning," Rodney answered. He leaned against the rock wall. Despite the heat, he looked pale; his hair was wet with sweat. Teyla silently passed him his canteen from the stack of their supplies.
"We brought you the energy source from the citadel," John told Rodney. "It was just sitting in the middle in a dark room. Nothing on the walls or anything. The place wasn't reacting to the gene, so it probably wasn't Ancient. What do you make of it?"
Ronon carefully sat the silver box in front of Rodney. Rodney eyed it sceptically. It looked ordinary and plain to the naked eye. The sides were each about ten inches long; the vertices were sharp and exact. There wasn't a scratch on the smooth, but dull surface.
"You are sure this isn't just Ancient modern art?" Rodney asked more to himself than to them as he reached out and touched the box. Other than with John, his touch provoked no reaction. He slid his hand around the surface, a frown on his face.
"It's definitely some sort of metal. If Sam Carter were here, we'd know if it was Naquadah, but I'd say it is." Rodney pulled back and started with his Ancient scanner. "I was right. It's no ZPM," Rodney confirmed after a few seconds."
"Gee, Rodney, I figured that out all be myself," John sniped. The combination of pain, heat and exhaustion was getting to him. Ronon had probably been right about that infection, but John didn't like to be on the receiving end of medical care.
"Zelenka will have to do more tests once we are back on Atlantis. The medical scanners will probably tell us what's inside this thing. Glorified alien art," Rodney said flatly. John said nothing. It wasn't like Rodney to surrender a new discovery to his colleague without a fight. Zelenka was a brilliant scientist, but he was no Rodney McKay.
"You haven't seen the best thing yet. It's a hologram box." John put his hand on the box like he had back in the citadel and the projection of black text appeared back about a foot high above the box. Rodney twitched back by the sudden flash, but quickly caught himself. He leaned in to examine the hologram and John didn't fail to detect a hint of Rodney's natural intensity on his face. He started scribbling away on a piece of paper, his lips moving silently.
"Have you tried touching it anywhere else?" Rodney asked, his head buried in his scanner.
"I'm not fondling a piece of alien technology! Honest, I haven't tried yet." John concentrated, but thinking at the box didn't help. He touched the side panel, and the projection changed, now showing three large symbols in a column, fire red.
"It looks like a warning," Ronon commented.
"These symbols resemble the writings on a planet I visited as a child. Our village was attacked by three Darts. Those who survived ran through the Gate. We hid on a dark, deserted planet. There were great ruins covered in symbols like these and other languages. We first thought it was the world of the Ancients, but none of us had seen those symbols before," Teyla told them.
"What do you mean by dark planet?" Rodney asked impatiently.
"It was very strange. The sky was dark day and night. There were no living things, not even the smallest insects. Our group nearly starved to death because we couldn't hunt to feed ourselves. The adults finally had to venture off world to find food," Teyla explained. She had been to hundreds of worlds in her life, but this dark and dead world had frightened her even more than the Wraith.
"Nuclear fallout?" John asked. "Kolya was very interested in building an A-bomb. Maybe someone else got the job done before he did."
"No." Rodney shook his head. "The climate after a nuclear explosion of that magnitude would precipitate a new Ice Age. The Genii were at least another decade away from detonating their first bomb when we first met Cowen."
"Well, that was until we helped them," John said darkly. Rodney swallowed and looked down. John chided himself. He hadn't intended to remind Rodney of what had been neither his nor Rodney's finest hour in the Pegasus Galaxy, but he hadn't been able to forget that mistake. He had the feeling that they hadn't heard the last of the Genii, despite their tentative truce at the moment.
"Can you read it?" Ronon interrupted John's thoughts.
Teyla nodded. "Some. There were walls covered in Ancient and many other languages. My people don't pursue scholarship like you do. It's not a luxury we have. But we respect what the Ancients taught us. My father taught me the Ancestors' language. He took me to read the writing in the ruins."
Teyla moved closer and John reactivated the second hologram.
"It's a warning. The third symbol means 'danger', the second means 'time'. I don't know what the first one means. It's been a long time," she apologized. "Show me the first projection again."
John placed his hand back on the top and the small text of the black hologram reappeared.
"It starts with a greeting 'Welcome gracious appearing descendant'," Teyla translated. "Something 'places the power of activation to the gateway in the place of our legacy. The travellers' three choices await to the new worlds.' The key was buried safe to beware of danger or the youths until time was ready for our descendants to find new worlds in space beyond. A terrible mistake destroyed us and brought an enemy over this realm. The key was to be buried to be left for progeny to return for you will not repeat our mistakes.'" Teyla finished.
"I think we know that story," Rodney commented. "That's the story of the Ancients and the Stargate. 'gateway', 'other worlds', 'enemy', 'leaving the realm'. You found a story box." Rodney rolled his eyes.
"I'm not so sure, McKay. It says this is a key. The ring doesn't have a key," Ronon said.
"So it's DHD crystals. It all fits. Ancients, Stargates, genes. The decedents are people like our dear major; the cube reacted to his ATA gene," Rodney snapped angrily.
"It's Lt. Colonel," John corrected. "I don't think it's that simple. It has a lot in common with the Stargate. But Ronon is right, from what this says, this box is the key to getting to the Gateway 'in the place of their power'."
"Okay, this does not sound any more likely than what I just said." Rodney crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I admit that only an Ancient story box would come with a warning."
John tried two other sides of the silver cube, but he produced no other projections. He leaned back against the wall, not sure what to do now. It was usually Rodney pressing to figure out new technology, especially if there was a possibly of gaining an advantage. The silver cube definitely qualified and there Rodney was, sitting in his corner, looking stubborn and miserable. John had worked hard to get over his anger at Rodney, but the scientist seemed to do nothing to help him. One minute he was back to normal, but more often than not, he was snappish, angry and moody. John had no illusions; Rodney wasn't the type to open up, to anyone.
"We should check out the Jumper's data base. Maybe we can find some info about the place Teyla and her people escape to," John proposed. "Might help us find out who built this thing." He started to get up. Normally he wasn't so much for research in the field and he gladly left that to the geeks, but there was nothing to do on this planet and seeing Rodney brood in the corner made him irritable. Rodney, however, made no move to get up.
Teyla got to her feet. "I will accompany you. You might need my help finding the planet."
They walked down the short distance to the lake. The Jumper was still beached at the shore, where they had crashed the day before. From the distance, the ship looked fine; the hull wasn't broken and apart from dirt there was nothing wrong with the craft. Close up, John could see the coin-sized indentations. They had to have gone straight through the shield, John wondered. Maybe the Ancient shield had a similar defect to the Goa'uld force shields, which only protected against fast flying objects, but a thrown knife passed right through. He would have to ask Rodney about that. Later.
Teyla was already inside the Jumper, in front of the computer, waiting for John. He mentally called up the database.
"What else do you know about the planet?" John asked, ready to feed the information into the Jumper database.
"I was very young at the time, but before we ran through the Gate, I saw Oran touch these two symbols." She pointed them out on the Jumper dialling computer.
"All right, that's good." The characters appeared on the HUD display. "How many moons and suns were there?" Two years ago this question would have sounded insane to him, but now he lived in a mythical city in another Galaxy. Skies weren't always blue, humans were Wraith foods and cities could fly.
Teyla closed her eyes for a moment. "I don't know. The sky was so dark, like a cloud. I couldn't see anything in the sky. I was used to walking in the woods, using the stars to guide me. This planet was an enemy to all living things.
"Let's see what we get," John said. The HUD instantly displayed the record of the planet John and Teyla had been looking for.
A roughly Earth-sized planet at the outer edge of the Pegasus Galaxy called Voran by the native people. The Voran were classified as harmless humanoid with a compatible physiology.
Compatible for what?
The Ancients had set up a small colony on Voran, including a research facility. A total of 4,500 Ancients had settled on Voran in addition to 80, 000 indigenous settlers.
Earth seemed to be grossly over-populated in contrast to the civilisations of the Pegasus Galaxy.
Around 16,500 years ago, a group of Ancient and Voran researchers miscalculated the calibration of the Stargate and the catastrophe eradicated all life on the planet. A new Ice Age came over the planet, the atmosphere was filled with toxic dust, and the planet remained inhabitable.
The toxins had probably decayed over the millennia, since Teyla and her people had stayed on the planet for several weeks without problems, but it made sense why animal life had never retaken the planet. As Teyla had said, there had not even been an insect on Voran.
The technology that had caused the catastrophe had been taken apart by the Ancients and hidden away until their descendants were ready to make better use of the Stargate.
John frowned. The Stargate wasn't a dangerous technology. He had no idea how it was possible to eradicate an entire planet using a Stargate. He remembered reading some pretty strange things in SG-1's reports but not even Jack O'Neil had pulled that off. There wasn't any more in the Jumper database. It wasn't like the gigantic database in the city, which would take them many more years to decipher, even with the increased manpower from the Daedalus.
"Do you believe that the box we found today is part of this technology?" Teyla asked him quietly.
"It sounds probable. I only wish we knew more about what this stuff does. If there is a chance that it blows up, we are leaving the box here," John decided.
TBC