CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rodney McKay stared at the work one of the scientists had done or, rather, the lack thereof.
"Why isn't this done? I told you that I wanted it done by this morning."
"I'd have had to stay up most of the night to get it finished by this morning," Doctor Kraft explained. "I was really tired, so I went to bed."
"Oh. Well, forgive me for thinking that finishing this project, which is vital to what I'm working on, which, in turn, is needed for half a dozen other projects here, was more important than your beauty sleep," McKay said with biting sarcasm.
"Doctor McKay, I've been working eighteen to twenty hours a day since we got here."
"So? So have I. Yet I somehow still manage to do everything I'm supposed to."
"Maybe because you're not human," Kraft muttered.
"Excuse me?"
Saying nothing, Kraft walked away across the room and sat at his computer.
"All right, just get the job done, okay? Or is it too much for you to handle."
"I'll do it."
"Fine."
McKay turned and was heading for the door when something slapped him in the back of the head hard enough to make him stumble. Rubbing his head, he spun back around.
"Did you just hit me?"
Kraft turned to look at him. "What?"
"You just hit me!" McKay exclaimed, outraged.
"How could I hit you from clear over here?"
"Then you threw something at me." McKay's eyes scanned the floor, looking for something that could have been used to hit him. The floor was spotless, not a thing on it.
Kraft turned back to his computer. "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't throw anything at you," he lowered his voice, "as much as I may have wanted to."
A little yelp made him look at the Canadian again. The man was rubbing his behind, staring through the open door.
"Somebody just slapped me in the butt . . . really hard." He winced. "It still hurts."
'Maybe a good spanking is what he needs,' Kraft thought to himself. "Sorry, Doctor McKay. I have no idea who slapped your butt or who would even want to, except maybe your mother."
McKay gave him a humorless smile. "Oh, very funny. No, really. I'm laughing uproariously here."
Still rubbing his posterior, McKay left, muttering to himself. Unseen by him, someone stepped out from behind a piece of equipment.
Daniel smiled slightly, thinking about following McKay and letting "Casper" have a bit more fun with him. But he needed to get to work, too. He'd been on his way to his office when he overheard the Canadian scientist unfairly chastising Doctor Kraft and decided to do something about it.
Wondering if Rodney McKay believed in ghosts, Daniel resumed the journey to his office. This morning, they were going to call the SGC and have them try the gate address. Daniel had decided to hold off on doing that until his team was there so that they'd all find out together if the address worked.
In his office, Daniel got busy examining some more data retrieved from the outpost's computers. A while later, shortly before he was due to give the next Ancient language lesson, he found something that had him sitting straight up in his chair, his heart rate rising as, all at once, all the pieces fit into place.
"That's it," he murmured.
Excitedly, Daniel jumped to his feet and went in search of Doctor Weir and Sam. As luck would have it, he found both of them in McKay's lab with the Canadian.
Sam immediately recognized the expression on Daniel's face.
"You found something."
"Yes," he confirmed, smiling.
All three of them went with Daniel back to his office. He walked over to the whiteboard. "Over the last two days, we've gotten closer and closer to finding the location of the Lost City, but it turns out we've been looking in the wrong place all along." He gestured at the whiteboard, which had the six gate address symbols marked on it. "Now, we thought we had a Stargate address, six symbols representing coordinates in space that determine the location of the planet the Ancients went to after they left Antarctica. Last night, we determined a seventh symbol." He drew Earth's symbol on the board.
"The point of origin. Earth," Elizabeth said.
"That's not it."
"Then your address must be incorrect," McKay stated. So much for the infallible Doctor Daniel Jackson.
"Not incorrect . . . incomplete." Daniel drew another symbol.
"What are you saying, Doctor Jackson?" Weir asked.
"It's an eight symbol address. What we're looking for may be further away than we ever imagined. But it's not out of reach."
McKay stared at the address. "Atlantis."
Daniel gave a nod. "Atlantis. I think we can go there." He looked at them one by one. "But this isn't all that I learned. I had determined that the Ancients originally left Earth between five and ten million years ago, which fits in with what we already knew. But when I found the eighth symbol, I also discovered something else. The Ancients didn't just leave Earth, they left with their city."
"What do you mean?" McKay asked.
"Their city, Atlantis, was also a spaceship."
"You're joking."
"No, I am certain that I'm right. On the Nox world, we saw an entire city floating thousands of feet above the ground, so is it all that impossible to believe that the Ancients, a highly advanced civilization, could have a cityship? Anubis' mothership was enormous, equally as large as a small city, if you totaled up the cubic feet."
"You're right," Sam said. "There's no reason why it couldn't be done."
Elizabeth smiled brightly. "Excellent work, Doctor Jackson. I must admit, I wasn't expecting you to find Atlantis this quickly. We're not prepared to get this expedition underway quite yet. But in another week or two, we just might be ready to go."
"Daniel, if Atlantis is in another galaxy, we're going to need an extra power source to dial the gate," Sam said.
"I know, and the only one we have is the module that powers this outpost."
"But, if we use that module, it could completely drain it, and we'll no longer have the power to operate the weapon."
"I think it's worth the risk, Sam. There's a good chance that there are more . . ." Daniel looked at McKay. "You called it a ZPM, right?"
"Yes, zero point module. I determined that it generates its power from vacuum energy derived from a self-contained region of subspace time."
"Yes, that's what Sam told me. There is a good chance that there are more ZPM's in Atlantis, and who knows what other technology that we could really use. This outpost is a fantastic find, but it's nothing compared to the Lost City of the Ancients."
"Okay, I want to be sure I understand this," Elizabeth said. "It's possible that using the ZPM to dial this address will completely deplete it?"
"Yes," Sam confirmed, "which means that this would be a one-time deal."
"And anyone who goes to Atlantis could be stuck there, if there are no ZPM's there," McKay added.
Doctor Weir nodded once. "All right. We need to contact General Hammond. He will have to get approval from the president for this. I'll go make the call now." She looked at Daniel. "Oh, and I'd say that today's language lesson will have to be postponed."
"Right. I'd better go tell everyone."
Elizabeth and Daniel left, leaving Sam and McKay alone in the office.
"Two days," the Canadian murmured.
Sam turned to him. "What?"
"He figured it out in two days."
Sam smiled slightly. "Yes, he did."
McKay stared at her. "You don't look the least bit surprised."
"That's because I'm not. Daniel does stuff like this all the time. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd done it in one day. When the colonel interfaced with the Ancient repository over five years ago, he read an inscription in the Ancients' language, which Daniel translated as saying 'We are the Ancients'. That one thing led him to guess that the Ancients referred to in the inscription were the Ancient Ones spoken of by the Romans, the ones they claimed taught them about building roads. From that, he determined that it was the Ancients who built the Stargates."
"Just from that?" McKay questioned, shocked.
"Yes, just from that. Nobody believed him because he had no real evidence to support it. Yet he was right. And here's another one for you. Back when the rogue element of the NID was stealing advanced technology from other planets, two of its members, Colonel Grieves and Lieutenant Kershaw, took apart a weapon called the Sentinel on P3Y-294 so that they could see how it worked. They put it back together, but there was a problem. During the operation, Grieves killed a man called the Caretaker, and, without the Caretaker, the weapon wouldn't work. The Sentinel had been protecting the people on the planet for three hundred years. Without it, they were defenseless when the Goa'uld showed up. The Sentinel is protected by a force field, and the code to shut it off uses a mathematical progression of the harmonics between the tones being emitted in each of over a hundred randomly changing patterns, relative to its spectral equivalent. It had taken Grieves and Kershaw over two days to deactivate the force field. Daniel did it in less than an hour." Sam almost smiled at the look of stunned amazement on McKay's face.
"An hour?!" he exclaimed.
"Uh huh, and he did it using just his brain and his sense of hearing."
"Okay, that's, uh . . . kind of impressive," McKay said, knowing that he'd never have been able to do the same.
"Those are just two examples," Sam told him. "And I didn't even mention the one that started it all. Do you know the circumstances behind Daniel figuring out the Stargate?"
"I know that he was the one who found the seventh symbol and figured out that the symbols were constellations used to chart a location in space. I heard he did it in two weeks."
Sam nodded. "After everyone else had been trying to figure it out for two years. Did you also know that he figured all that out when he didn't even know that the Stargate existed?"
McKay gaped at her. "He didn't know about the Stargate?"
"No! He had no clue. Information about the Stargate had been made classified, and Daniel, being the new guy, wasn't given access to the information. All he was ever allowed to see was the coverstone. Heck, if he'd known about the Stargate and what we suspected it was, he'd probably have figured the whole thing out in a day, maybe less. It was Daniel who came up with the answer that stellar drift was the reason we hadn't been able to connect with any other Stargates . . . and he didn't know about stellar drift either!"
"I didn't know any of this," McKay said in a slightly subdued voice.
"Daniel is the most intuitive person, the most out-of-the-box thinker I've ever known. He taught me to think outside the box, to trust those little leaps of logic I sometimes have, when, before, I'd have wanted to connect all the dots, to find the evidence, and facts, and figures to support my theory. Yet, even though I've come to trust and use that side of my intellect now, I will never equal him in that regard. I'd give a lot if I could."
'So would I,' McKay said silently. "I, um . . . I guess I owe you an apology."
Sam shook her head. "It's not me you owe the apology, it's Daniel."
McKay grimaced. "I suppose you told him all about what I said before."
"No."
The Canadian stared at her in surprise. "You didn't?"
"I figured that he didn't need to know. It wouldn't have surprised him, though. Daniel's used to being underestimated. Actually, that's not quite right. It's not that he's accustomed to people underestimating his intelligence, it's more a case of . . . of accepting that, sometimes, he's all alone in seeing something."
"And it doesn't bother him when people don't see that he's that smart?" McKay knew that he couldn't stand it if it was that way for him.
"Well, there have been a couple of times that he got a little frustrated by everyone else's inability to see what he could, but I really don't think he has an ego in regards to his intelligence. He values it, but only because it allows him to gain the knowledge that's so important to him. For Daniel, it's all about knowledge, about learning, the quest to know all that he possibly can about the things that he's passionate about."
McKay was silent. Looking at Sam and thinking of everything he'd just learned, he finally accepted that Daniel Jackson was truly worthy of her. He didn't want to accept it. He wanted to keep that air of superiority and the belief that he was a better match for her. But he couldn't do that anymore. Jackson really did deserve to have a woman as brilliant and fantastic as Sam.
As McKay had that thought, he suddenly realized that, in a way, it made him feel good. Sam had someone who was a good match for her and made her happy. He would always wish that someone was him, but, since it couldn't be, he was glad that she'd found it with somebody.
McKay left to go back to work. They might know where Atlantis was, but they weren't ready to go there yet, and, until they did go, there were still things to do here.
A little while later, the Canadian spotted Daniel talking to Doctor Beckett. He waited until the doctor left, then approached the archeologist. The man met his eyes a little warily.
"Thank you," McKay said.
Daniel blinked in surprise. "Uhhh . . . you're welcome. What's, um, the thank you for? Figuring out where Atlantis is? There's no need to—"
"For making her happy," McKay interrupted. "For . . . for giving her something that I probably never could."
Daniel simply nodded, giving him a small, gentle smile that held no gloating, no triumph, just understanding and compassion.
McKay turned and walked away, feeling better about himself as a person than he had in a long time.
Doctor Weir received a call back from General Hammond later that day. The general told them that he would be flying out to the outpost to discuss things personally, but that, before he could leave, he needed Jack back at the SGC to assume temporary command. A plane would be leaving for Antarctica tomorrow to pick Jack up, who would be catching that ride back to McMurdo on the supply helicopter the following day.
"You've got this whole place buzzing, Daniel," Jack said in the archeologist's office. "Everybody's hopping up and down like a bunch of kids whose parents told them they're going to Disneyland."
"It's an exciting discovery, Jack. After more than a year of searching, we've finally found the Lost City of the Ancients. Just think of all the knowledge we could gain, not to mention the potential technology. There might even still be unascended Ancients living there."
"Has anyone considered that this Lost City might no longer exist?"
"Yes, that is a possibility, but we're all hoping that's not the case."
"And has anyone realized that, with the power it's going to take to get there, it might max out that power module thing, making this trip a one-way ticket?"
"Yes, Doctor Weir knows that, but I'm willing to bet that she and a lot of the other people here are willing to go to Atlantis even if they would be stranded there. But we're hoping that there will be another ZPM in the city, perhaps more. If all else fails, we could ask the Asgard to go there."
"To the flying city."
"Yes." Daniel saw the older man smirk. "What?"
"Flying city."
Daniel shrugged slightly. "Well, keeping in mind this is the race who built the Stargates. They did everything big."
"So why'd they leave?"
"Why'd they leave? Uh, who knows? We know the Ancients who stayed on Earth were suffering from a plague. Maybe some of them wanted to start over, seek out new life in a new galaxy. Maybe that's what Ancients do. The point is we know where they went."
Jack studied the archeologist closely. "Admit it, Daniel. There's a big part of you that's just aching to go."
"Of course there is, Jack. I talked about this with Sam last night. If the Goa'uld were no longer a threat, and if Sam could go, too, I'd be pretty tempted to ask General Hammond for permission to go."
"Even if it meant that you'd never see Earth or anyone here again?"
There was a long silence before Daniel answered. "If I knew that it really was a one-way ticket, I . . . I don't know. Finding and seeing the Lost City has been like a dream for me, Jack, but . . . but I'd miss the people here," he met Jack's eyes, "especially some."
Jack looked right back into his eyes without wavering. "We'd miss you, too, Daniel, both of you."
The archeologist's gaze left his and looked over at the whiteboard with the gate address for Atlantis. "But this is all just talk. I won't be going there, at least not for the foreseeable future."
"Oh, I don't know about that, Daniel. You never know what the future will bring."
Daniel turned back to him. "What happened to all that stuff about turning my place into a halfway house for homeless ex-cons if I went to Atlantis?"
"Well . . . that was just if you were going to be gone for months. If it was just a short visit, a couple of weeks or so, that would be okay. We could manage without you for that long."
Daniel smiled slightly. "A couple of weeks or so, huh?"
"Three weeks, tops."
Daniel's smile widened. "I'll keep that in mind."
By the end of the day, it had been determined that the gate address to Atlantis went to the Pegasus galaxy. The discovery of the city's location had energized everyone, but it also gave them a tough decision to make. Because of the chance that this would be a one-way trip, every one of them had to decide if they were willing to leave their family and friends forever. When Doctor Weir began choosing personnel for the Atlantis expedition, she limited it to people who were unmarried and had no children in their care, knowing that, wherever Atlantis was, the team would most likely be living there on permanent assignment, perhaps for years. Even so, now that they knew there was a good chance that they'd never go home, every member of the team had to think long and hard about whether or not they wanted to go.
Out of all the people in the expedition, the ones that Weir worried the most about backing out were the twelve people who had the Ancient gene. Fortunately, she knew that all of them were very committed to the project. Unfortunately, every one of them would need extensive training to gain proficiency with the Ancient technology. Elizabeth sincerely wished that Daniel was coming with them. He could control the chair with great ease and could probably do likewise with any other Ancient technology. Jack, too, was better at controlling the Ancient devices than the others, but, obviously, he couldn't go either.
There was one person they hadn't tested yet, however. Doctor Beckett kept refusing to sit in the control chair, which seemed pretty strange considering that he was the one who discovered the Ancient gene.
Now that Atlantis had been found, Daniel devoted all of his attention to doing translations, gathering as much information about the Ancients and Atlantis as he could and teaching people how to speak, read and write Ancient with greater proficiency. He'd found that Elizabeth already had a very good grasp of the language, both written and spoken. With Daniel's help, McKay started working on a translation program that would help them tremendously once they got to Atlantis.
The Canadian's attitude toward the archeologist had changed a lot. For some reason, Daniel seemed to have earned McKay's respect, both as a man and as a scientist. He asked Sam about it, but all she said was that McKay had come to realize some things that changed his viewpoint.
Tuesday morning, the supply helicopter arrived. Jack and Daniel watched as the supplies were unloaded.
"So, you and Carter will be coming home with General Hammond, right?" Jack asked.
"That all depends. If the general and the president give the expedition a green light, Sam and I will stay to help pack everything up. The general's coming on the weekend, right?"
"Yes. It's the earliest he could manage to get away."
"So, you'll be running things at the SGC for at least a couple of days."
"Yep. It's not like I haven't done it before. Remember that time he took the four-day leave?"
"How could I forget?" Daniel looked at Jack. "You do realize, though, that he made sure that not a lot of paperwork came through during that time. He didn't want you to get overwhelmed."
"For which I will be eternally grateful. I hope the same is true this time as well. I've got enough of my own paperwork to deal with."
The last of the supplies were unloaded, and the pilot put the bag of letters to be mailed on the helicopter.
"Well, I guess it's time for me to leave this lovely vacation paradise," Jack said. He turned to Daniel. "Don't get into any trouble while I'm gone. You know, like finding another repository."
"Don't worry, Jack. I intend to stay far away from those things in the future."
Daniel watched at Jack got on the helicopter, and it took off. Then he went back down into the outpost to continue learning about the city that he might never see.
