Sometime...Somehow... Part II

Authors note: I am not a scientist so let's face it – most of the worm-hole talk in here is inaccurate geek-speak. All I can say is they did this sort of B-S-ing on Start Trek all the time. There is also the possibility that this might turn a bit slashy. It depends...if I get lots of protests against, then I'll respect the majority of my readers and not go there.

XXX

As deafening as the presence of the worm-hole had been, and as panicked was their collective state of mind in those last few seconds before Rodney disappeared into its funnel...

Now inside the Jumper it was as silent as a tumbled ruin, and their thoughts as mute as the reaches between the stars. For many seconds no one moved or said a word. You could have heard a pin drop.

John Sheppard, a military man of action, was the first to break the stupor of their momentary freeze-frame and spoke. "What the hell just happened?" He asked the dead air. Rodney was gone.

When no one responded Sheppard looked over at Zelenka, whose eyes were still fixed on the spot where his worm-hole, and Rodney, had vanished, didn't answer.

Sheppard repeated himself, this time much louder. "Will someone please tell me what the hell just happened?"

Zelenka tore his eyes away from the empty cargo bay and looked down at the Jumpers controls beneath his fingers. The Emergency Shut-Off Counter was flashing Zero over and over. Atlantis's Stargate-generated wormhole was still active, and according to his instruments, nothing else was amiss. Zelenka finally found his speech. "I-I'm not sure." He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end every which way. It looked comic. "Um, the worm-hole is gone..."

Sheppard stepped away from the wall where he had hooked his fingers through a loop and held on for dear life as Rodney had advised only a moment before. "We can see that. What happened to McKay? Where is McKay?"

Zelenka felt all eyes on him. "I-I don't know what happened exactly - yet. I'll need to study the data to make a determination." Zelenka was breathing hard and his heart was pounding. He raised his eyes to no one. None of the numbers made any sense to him yet. Some of them were Rodney's numbers. They would make sense to Rodney of course, but he wasn't there.

"I n-need to get back to the lab and correlate the data we gathered to see what went wrong but of course that will take some time – some of this was Rodney's and, as we know, he didn't think like m-most of us...I mean he thought of course, truly brilliant sometimes, but it was never, it was never..." Zelenka knew he was babbling but the data he was seeing thus far only puzzled him. Knowing he eventually would have to answer Colonel Sheppard's question filled him with dread.

It was too soon to speak of it, though - where Rodney might be - far, far too soon. But they would find a way. This was his fault. He would find a way. He would find Rodney. He had to.

Sheppard ignored Zelenka for the moment. The man was clearly as stunned as the rest of them. Instead he contacted Atlantis. "Elizabeth? We've got a problem."

XXX

Doctor Zelenka entered Elizabeth's Weir's office with Rodney McKay's laptop in one hand, and a stack of paper and ink notes as thick as his thumb in the other.

Elizabeth gestured to a chair where Zelenka sat and began shuffling his papers. "Not all of these are mine, you understand, some are Rodney's, but I have managed to decipher them – well, most of them, it's just that it's difficult, Rodney was so much better at this sort of –"

Elizabeth understood Zelenka's anxiety. Rodney was gone and to all first appearances it was Zelenka's fault. Weir knew that she shared a good portion of the blame. She was astute enough to also realise that the IOA would certainly place all of the blame squarely on her shoulders. "Doctor Zelenka. Please just tell us what you know. We can all try to live with ourselves later."

That seemed to calm him somewhat and allow him to gather his thoughts and put them in some kind of order, enough so that his opening statement was not the encouraging one she had hoped for. "I think I understand why the worm-hole would not remain stable despite our preparations." He swallowed. "And I think I know where Rodney is – I mean, I have an idea where he went."

Weir asked "Where did he go?"

Zelenka took a deep breath and explained. "Um, first of all the news is not good. I wish it was but as far as I understand it, the second worm-hole – because it had been created with, for lack of a better term, no designation in space-time, it tried to find one. That's why it expanded. It was looking for a place to exist – a point of reference – to attach itself to, and there was none. Because...we, er - I, never gave it one."

Before they pelted him with questions Zelenka rushed to clarify. "You see, because we - because I - created it inside the Stargate's worm-hole matrix, it didn't actually exist in our space-time, but it, well, wanted to. All the parameters in this universe would not have kept it contained for long because it didn't recognise our space-time, our math, or our physical laws. They were all meaningless to it. Unfortunately neither I nor Rodney foresaw this aspect of the experiment."

Sheppard said "No kidding? So what you're saying is Rodney disappeared into a worm-hole that doesn't - or - didn't exist? That doesn't make sense, Radek. Rodney is gone. Now I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure he existed, and if the worm-hole swallowed him..."

"It didn't swallow him, exactly, and it existed but not in our space-time. But our Stargate's worm-hole did exist, and does, and it was still active and Rodney knew that. He also recognised that if he could stop the second worm-hole's expansion in time, it would...save us."

This was why he hated all this science stuff. So much damn double-talk. Sheppard ask, a bit peeved now "That still doesn't answer the question: Where is Rodney?"

Zelenka kept his eyes on Weir's far more sympathetic expression. "When Rodney jumped into the second worm-hole, he collapsed it, but in doing so it spat him out into our Stargate's worm-hole. So he is where-ever our worm-hole sent him."

Sheppard nodded. "Well - good. So we can just figure out which address that is and go get him."

But Zelenka shook his head, reluctantly. He bit his lip and glanced down at his notes, and Rodney's, wishing they would change to reflect more encouraging news. "The problem is we configured our Stargate to create a worm-hole that had no specific address at the other end. I mean no address that is a known planet or solar system. We configured it so the other end would finish up in an area between stars, in e-empty space." Zelenka didn't look at Sheppard but kept his attention on his notes. Notes didn't have disappointed or angry eyes. Notes didn't judge, didn't hate you.

Sheppard looked at Weir whose face had just gone as pale as he supposed his own had. He asked "Are you telling us that McKay is floating out there in space somewhere? That would make him dead, Radek."

Zelenka held up a finger. "No, no, it doesn't. N-not necessarily,...b-because just before Rodney jumped into the vortex he entered some notes and data into the Jumper and into his laptop. The notes were his interpretation of what was happening with the dynamics of two worm-holes, how the smaller one was affecting the larger one, and the data – it's a program, a formula that he created, on the spot, to help us find him."

Sheppard was tired of all the talking and especially all the sitting around doing nothing to find his friend. "Okay, so let's use it and go find him. We're wasting precious time." He stood up, ready for action. In fact he could feel his muscles quivering in his anxiety to get moving.

But Zelenka wasn't finished. "It's not that simple Colonel."

Weir's heart dropped even further, thinking to herself it never is.

Sheppard stared down at Zelenka, his nerves a jumble of twisted ends, his patience all but vanishing. "Why not?"

Zelenka went from his notes to Weir and back to his notes. "Rodney suspected the smaller worm hole was warping the dimensions of the larger one and I think he understood what that meant. It meant the other end of the Stargate's worm hole, the end that we had configured to open into empty space, had been altered; so the final destinations, the possibilities for where the other end came out were other than empty space, although I believe empty space still made up a percentage of those possibilities."

Elizabeth followed. "You mean Rodney may not be in space, he may have ended up on a planet?" Please...

Zelenka gave her a small nod. "Yes."

Sheppard knew what was coming next. "But..."

Zelenka rubbed his eyes. It had taken him nine hours of study to decipher the notes and data that Rodney, in less than forty seconds, had entered into his laptop and the Jumper's controls. The results had left Zelenka utterly stunned with the man's abilities, and also shaken at its implications. "But there are too many possibilities to narrow it down to a respectable number."

"Well how "too many" is too many?" Sheppard asked.

"The cone of the area of space that Atlantis's worm hole encompassed measures twenty billion, billion, billion, billion miles deep and wide. Within that cone there exist perhaps one hundred million stars. Within those the possibility of planets that could support life to some degree runs into the hundreds of thousands."

Elizabeth could see where this was going. "So you're saying Rodney could be on any one of hundreds of thousands of planets."

Zelenka still wasn't finished. "If he made it to a planet – yes. And only a small fraction of those would be able to support human life for any length of time, some would naturally be too hot, too cold, too large, and then there's the problem that some would have atmospheres too thick, too thin, or the wrong chemical mix - or the right atmosphere but no plant or animal life, or all ocean or even all land but no water.

"And then of course there are the molten rock and gas giant planets that would kill him in an insta – "Zelenka stopped short. He had not meant to remind them all, least of all himself, that Rodney could very well already be dead.

Weir rubbed her palms together and then clasped them under her chin. She reminded Sheppard of a person in prayer. "I understand Doctor Zelenka." She said sadly. "We...get the picture."

Zelenka now told them the part that bothered him the most. "He had no time to narrow it down, you see. Writing a program to filter out every harmful planet or moon would have used up more time than he had, so he wrote a simpler code that by necessity encompassed a wider range of planetary bodies but one that would give him at least some chance to survive." If only Rodney had had another few seconds...

Sheppard didn't have to ask the last question, but decided to simply speak his mind for all to hear. "And I'm right in guessing that we can't just stay here all comfy cozy and track his location through the worm-hole itself, can we? We'll have to check out all these hundreds of thousands of planets individually."

Zelenka nodded miserably and then stared at his hands. His nails were bitten to the quick. "Yes. Because Rodney collapsed the second worm-hole by entering it, no addresses from Atlantis's Stargate would reach him anyway. Once the worm-hole ceased to exist, whatever addresses we might have been able to discover in order to search for him became useless."

Weir had an idea. "What if we re-create the worm hole?"

Zelenka nodded. "Yes, we already thought of that but it would not be the same worm-hole. That one, once Rodney collapsed it, ceased to exist. If we create another it will be an all new worm-hole, plus the original problems of containment would still apply. We would face the same danger as before."

"Then how do you know that Rodney is on any of the hundred thousand planets?" Sheppard pointed out.

Zelenka hated to say it. "Well, we don't. Based on Rodney's formula, he might be. And the number is more likely several hundred thousand planets, so the odds that we can find him are-"

"Don't tell me the odds!" Sheppard snapped at the scientist. It wasn't entirely Zelenka's fault. He knew that. Sheppard paced Weir's spacious office. But it was mostly his fault and now Rodney could be dead or dying or... Sheppard said "Radek, after careful consideration I've decided that this experiment of yours sucks."

Weir spoke up. "John, that's enough."

Sheppard swallowed. "Okay, then tell us genius: is he at least still in this universe?"

Zelenka considered it. "Most likely, yes."

"Most likely? Great." Sheppard shook his head and resumed his pacing. "That's just great."

Weir had not expected the news to be so bad. But she was still the leader of the Atlantis expedition and right now her people, so devastated by the loss of their friend and colleague, needed a boost. They needed something to hold on to as, if not a hope, a memory to keep them in place and ready to do whatever was necessary no matter what happened next. Even if it meant that ultimately they could not get Rodney back.

"Doctor Zelenka, what would have happened if Rodney had not done what he did, if he had not closed the worm hole?"

Zelenka sighed. What Rodney had done was, as far as he knew, unprecedented. No one had ever tried to collapse a worm-hole using their own body. He may have had to pay for his selfless act with his life. Zelenka did not voice those thoughts. "He knew what he was doing Elizabeth. Rodney knew that if we could not shut it down – and he obviously believed we would not have been able to - then it would have expanded in the next few seconds or minutes and consumed us, the Jumper, the city, and maybe the entire planet.

"I'd like to add that if any other of us had tried, it would not have worked, we would still all be dead. The negatively charged energy inside the worm hole needed a specific amount of positively charged matter to close it. Rodney's mass fit the bill perfectly. He was not too big or too small. It was a brilliant strategy. Honestly I-I..." Zelenka shook his head sadly. "I don't know how he came up with it." His admiration was clear and, despite his and McKay's history of butting heads, there was genuine affection in his tone.

So Rodney had been just right. "Not too big and not too small." Sheppard parroted under his breath, being reminded of an old fairy tale. In the original telling, things didn't end well for the human.

Zelenka offered his last word. "I'm sorry Elizabeth. I wish the news was better. I wish he was here." Zelenka said. "To thank I mean." he added. "Rodney saved us."

Elizabeth nodded. She knew. They all did. "Thank you Radek."

XXX

As she entered the tower, Elizabeth Weir walked to the main control consol and asked the young crewman "What's going on Josh? And why has the cloak been raised?"

Josh, a young bright engineer replied "A Wraith Hive just appeared on the edge of our sensor reach."

Weir could feel her heart rate double and her blood pressure suddenly spike. She cursed all Wraith. "What's it doing?"

"Nothing. It popped in from hyperspace a moment ago and now it's just sitting there."

That won't last long Weir thought. "Any indications of what it might do?"

Josh shook his head. "Not so far. I can detect no scans, no weapons testing, no engine power, no Darts, no activity of any kind."

"Thank god for small favors." Weir muttered. "Let's hope they're dead in space." She commented.

Josh nodded once. "Dead in every way would be even better."

"Yes." She turned away from the tiny blip on the screen. A tiny, dangerous and no doubt ravenous blip. "Let me know the second anything changes. And keep that cloak up."

"Yes ma'am." Josh's voice called her back. "Doctor Weir. Colonel Sheppard's Jumper is waiting to return home. It's his Gate-signature coming through."

"Very well. Drop the Gate's shield, and please tell him to join me in my office when he's ready."

Weir waited until Sheppard arrived before she poured herself a cup of coffee. Offering one to him, he accepted and took a seat opposite her desk. "By the look on your face," she began "I don't need to ask if your trip was successful."

Sheppard sipped the inky beverage. He shrugged. "Another five planets down, a hundred thousand or so to go. We saw what looked like Earth-type pyramids on one of them though – in complete ruins of course."

"Probably ancients." She speculated. "They seemed to have gotten their fingers into everything in this galaxy, but they were lousy house keepers. We've got all the ruins we could ever need but with all the mess you'd think they could have left a few more ZPM's lying around."

Sheppard allowed himself a very small smile but the humor never reached as far as his eyes. Their gentle back and forth banter that used to help ease the strain of the pressures of their mutual careers, now felt forced and hollow.

They were helpless, he knew. Cross off another five planets where Rodney wasn't. It was an impossibly long list Sheppard thought, not for the first time. He had been looking for Rodney for seven months and in that time he or his team had scanned one hundred and forty-three planets. When the team was occupied with other duties, he went alone whenever he could. Any time he was off duty, or when he had a few spare hours between routine missions, when others were on leave he'd grab a Jumper and spend hours checking out one planet after another - any time, actually, that he wasn't sleeping or when they could spare the power for the Stargate; power that was increasingly becoming a premium. It was a cost they soon were going to have to calculate against using the Stargate for anything other than their most urgent needs.

"John..." Weir began, broaching the subject of the power consumption once more, and a search that was swiftly becoming a Hail Mary task.

"We'll find him." Sheppard answered.

Weir lowered her eyes to her cup and then forced her by now customary though stiff, little smile of confidence. She looked at him. "Yes. Yes we will."

XXX

Sheppard let the hot water sluice his aches away. Nine hours he had spent in the seat of the Jumper – with small breaks now and then to stretch or empty his bladder.

Sheppard refused to let the fatigue or stiff muscles bother him. McKay had spent those seven months god-knew-where so a few sore muscles were nothing to complain about. Sheppard shed his uniform and stepped into the bottom half of a pair of blue cotton pajamas. Slipping between the sheets he tried not to let his mind speculate where Rodney might be spending the night. He chuckled as a vision of Rodney "trapped" on a paradise planet with ten naked women feeding him grapes and caramels. If he found Rodney on a planet like that, neither of them might come back to Atlantis.

Sheppard allowed himself to enjoy the vision for a few seconds. But, as always, it was quickly nudged aside by more likely scenarios of Rodney failing to find enough food, dying of thirst under the rays of a red giant or being torn to shreds by carnivorous monsters.

"Dammit." Sheppard scolded his own imagination and sat up again. Now it would be hard to fall asleep.

XXX

For the fourth long night in a row, Rodney found himself having to scramble onto the wet rocks to avoid the claws of the creatures he had decided to call Nocturnal Goliath Beetles after a similar species on earth. These, however, were the biggest beetles he had ever seen, each a half meter across and, in contrast to the harmless Earth variety, these carnivorous monsters apparently liked his smell well enough to have hunted him every night since his arrival. Luckily their talon-ed "fingers" could not get a grip on the slippery stone "hills". Rodney counted his lucky stars that he had stumbled upon the one place of safety in the vast expanse of the scrub brush desert where the worm-hole had spit him out.

The nights here were upwards of twenty hours in duration, the days as long. In the moonless dark it was cold and damp, and in the day burning hot and dry. The night air chilled him to the bone and the sun parched him. The gravity here was twice that of Atlantis and the air thinner. It seemed to be a planet of contrasts.

He shivered as he watched the last rays of the sun disappear behind the endless stretch of flat, arid landscape. At least now he could lap up the many small cashes of water that pooled in the depressions in the rocks. It was his only source of fluid thus far. He had eaten no food since the errant worm-hole had dumped him out onto this god-forsaken unknown planet. He was so hungry!

Rodney didn't recognise the planet. There was nothing specific enough about it to spark any clear recollections but then again he had seen a great many non-specific planets during his time with the Atlantis expedition.

Already the cold was creeping under his thin uniform. Rodney curled up into as tight a ball as he could manage and, while the rocks cut into his hips, tried to find a few hours sleep. He wondered if they were looking for him.

XXX

"John we have no choice!"

"It's only been a year." He argued. "He could still be out there somewhere. I can't believe you're giving up on him." She wasn't of course, and he knew it. But his instincts railed against abandoning the search. He wasn't being fair on Elizabeth, but he couldn't help himself. "Rodney wouldn't have given up until his last breath to save this city and you know it. He saved all of us in case you've forgotten." Of course she hadn't.

"I am not giving up on him. We can continue the search once we've restored more power to the city, but we're down to our last reserves. We have to keep the cloak up. Every week another Hive ship arrives."

"The reserves are stocked up. We can spare another few trips through the Stargate." She was right about the Hive ships. There were six in total now, all hanging on the edge of their sensors, all lying as still as 'possums. It was eerie. Sheppard liked a good stand-up fight, not all this lying in wait stuff. He was itching to do something.

"I disagree."Weir countered. "You know what will happen if the Wraith discover us. The Daedelus will be no match for six Hive ships. Rodney sacrificed himself to save Atlantis and we all owe him John, but he is one man. There are dozens of people on Atlantis and I am responsible for their lives."

"So Rodney's expendable?"

Weir looked not angry now but hurt. "That's not fair. I care about Rodney too, but he can't be my only concern and you know it."

Sheppard knew he had stepped over the line. He also knew that Weir didn't deserve it. Throwing himself into a chair he rubbed his face furiously with both hands. "I...I know." He waved away his own frustration. "I know." Softly "I'm sorry Elizabeth." It was a weak apology but it was all he had. Dispiritedly "How long before we have ZPM power back?"

"Zelenka's working on it."

Not as fast as if Rodney. Sheppard felt useless. He stood up. "Maybe I'll go see if he needs a hand." He was no engineer or scientist and knew he'd be as useless there as he was anywhere else at the present time. The Hive ships were doing nothing but sitting motionless in space. Maybe the damn things were hibernating? If so, he thought wistfully, couldn't they have chosen a better spot, like on the other side of the galaxy? At any rate they were not being a threat - yet - and now he couldn't search for Rodney either and that meant he had nothing to do.

XXX

"Yes but you know almost everyone's glad he's gone."

Sheppard paused in his travel to McKay's lab, except it was Zelenka's lab now, as he had been promoted to Lead Scientific Advisor in Rodney's absence. The voices were coming from somewhere around the corner. Probably one of the auxiliary control junctions Zelenka had a few of his team working on, trying to find more and more imaginative ways to conserve power.

Another voice protested, but not in earnest. "Come on, Roger, that's not nice. McKay wasn't so bad."

"He wasn't so good either." Sheppard recognised it as Abigail Brewster, one of Zelenka's newly promoted assistants. Prior to working along-side Zelenka, Rodney had had her delegated to non-vital areas and duties. The two science heads had argued often regarding her abilities. Rodney liked to test his new assistants out by metaphorical fire-bombing them with impossible duties before granting them more rigorous responsibilities. Zelenka was more lenient towards fresh faces, believing that regularly assigned new tasks promoted enthusiasm and allowed them to acquire the necessary experience.

Sheppard had summed McKay's complaints about it as: When it came to Atlantis and her precious technology, Rodney was a control freak and Zelenka wasn't.

A different voice, a younger man perhaps without the experience to know any better, said "I heard McKay was bi-polar or something. Maybe even a bit schizoid."

"McKay was an ego-inflated ass." Said voice Number One.

"Come on, guys, that's not nice."

The first voice, the one that Sheppard had first heard, countered with "What - you afraid to speak ill of the dead?"

That was about all he could stand and Sheppard appeared around the corner without warning, walking right up to them; getting right in their faces; his eyes blazing. "He's not dead!" Sheppard recognised the guy now. "Barry." He said the name like it was a family embarrassment.

Sheppard glared at them all, his lips grim, keeping his fists clenched tight so as to resist punching someone in the nose. "And in case you missed the memo, Rodney McKay saved all of our asses. So I'd better not hear any more disparaging remarks about him from any one of you. In fact if I even hear a hint of a rumor of disrespect tossed McKay's way, I'll personally put every last one of you on report and you can kiss any second tour on Atlantis goodbye. You got that? Am I getting through to any of you?"

All were frozen in place, their mouths clamped shut. Sheppard didn't wait around to hear any lame apologies. Instead he turned on his heel and walked back the way he came. He would be no use to Zelenka anyway.

Sheppard did what he usually did when the tension was getting to him; he took Ronan up on some friendly sparring.

Ronan, his enormous hands encased in the relatively soft padding of the sparring gloves easily dodged Sheppard's less focused pokes. Ronan waited until he had an opening and swung hard, sending Sheppard to the mat on all fours. Sheppard pounded one furious fist down hard and then staggered to his feet again.

"You're off your game." Ronan said. At bare hand to hand combat, Ronan could usually best Sheppard but in boxing Sheppard was the faster and more experienced opponent. Except for today.

Sheppard bent over double, winded. He'd been spending too much time sitting in the Jumper and not enough keeping in shape. He looked up at Ronan. "Bad day."

Ronan asked "Any word on when we can start looking for McKay again?"

Sheppard shook his head. "Not enough power yet." He started to untie his gloves. "The Daedelus is trying to make a trade with the Shah-vites..." At the crinkle in Ronan's brow, Sheppard clarified "Allies of the Genii who supposedly have a ZPM. No word yet."

Sheppard towelled his face off and took a seat on a bench against the wall. Ronan joined him. "He's okay you know."

Sheppard was starting to have his doubts. It had been nearly two years now. Soon after the search had begun Zelenka had written a program to sift out the frankly hostile worlds since if Rodney had ended up on one of those, he'd have been killed instantly. And if that was indeed the case, they would be unable to retrieve his body anyway. That left just under one hundred thousand possible worlds where Rodney might be marooned. Sheppard was losing hope. The worst part was he had no idea how close he and Rodney had become, no inkling about how much the man's friendship had meant, until he was no longer around to receive it.

And Ronan was right, he felt off his game, and not just recently. It had been building for a long while. He knew it was because a member of his team had disappeared under his watch, and not just a member, a friend. His best friend. A few years back Sheppard had been shocked to awaken to that realization. Rodney was his best friend and such an animal was a new experience for John Sheppard. John had always fancied himself as a likeable guy, a good leader, and a loyal pal. A back-slapping buddy to all but close friend to none.

And one day Rodney McKay, all high pitched whining and ridiculous brain, had casually strolled through the Stargate and into his life and turned John Sheppard's carefully controlled, predictable life up-side-down. Missing Rodney didn't just feel uncomfortable, it hurt.

Sheppard hardly ever spoke of personal things to Ronan. Never had shared his feelings or his private heart.

As though reading his mind "We all miss him, Sheppard, but I know for you its worse." Ronan stood. "Because it's Rodney." He added and in that single word he let John know that he understood. The tall, intensely private Satedan obviously saw a lot more than he let on and then Ronan did something he had never done before, not ever; he laid one giant hand on Sheppard's shoulder - to comfort him. It was a first.

"Don't lose hope, Sheppard. We're going to find him."

XXX

Part III soon