He hesitated, frowning as though he was trying to remember — or, more likely, Radek thought, trying to match what was still here with what had been. The door was open, certainly: it was missing altogether, the frame scorched and blackened. The stone to either side was pockmarked by shrapnel. A bomb, then, rather than fire, and that was a good thing.
“Yeah.” Ronon closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah. If we go in here, we should be able to go straight to the main hall, and then the Hall of the Ancients will be to the left…”
“Let us go,” Teyla said. She touched the switch that activated the P90’s light, and stepped through the broken doorway. Radek took a breath, and did the same. Ronon followed, looking over his shoulder.
“Dr. Lynn!”
“Coming.”
Radek swung his P90 carefully from side to side, letting the light pick out the details. They were in what looked like a service corridor, part of the museum’s functional space, not any of the exhibit halls. Here, by the doorway, there was plaster down, and cracked floors; to the right, another door hung half off its hinges, and the room beyond it was half filled with debris, chunks of plaster and a fallen beam covering what looked like a desk and chairs. Not far ahead, though, the damage was considerably less, and he let the light play over the supporting walls, assessing their stability. They looked remarkably solid, considering, and he picked his way carefully over the debris.
“I think this way is safe,” he said, and Teyla nodded.
“Ronon, you said we should go straight here?”
“Yeah.” Ronon stepped past them, blaster loose in his hand, like an extension of his arm. Teyla shifted to let her light play ahead of him down the corridor. It ended in a dark green door — a padded door, Radek saw, as they came closer, and guessed it must lead into the exhibit area. He shifted his own light to check the stability of the wall and ceiling.
“OK,” he said, and Ronon shifted his blaster to his left hand to try the latch.
To everyone’s surprise, the door opened smoothly, without even a whisper of metal on metal. Sunlight poured in, blinding, and for an instant Radek could see only a riot of color. And then his sight cleared, and the colors resolved to a vividly patterned tile floor — like an Oriental carpet in stone — and the peeling remains of painting on a carved pillar. Beyond the pillars was an open atrium, and multi-colored glass from the broken skylights glittered against the patterned stone. A bird scolded, and there was a whir of wings as it launched itself from among the pillars. It was pigeon-sized, and gray-blue, and Radek couldn’t help laughing at the sight.
“Not more pigeons.”
To his surprise, Ronon gave a rueful smile. “Choua. They’re everywhere.”
“Evidently.” That was William, looking with disapproval at a deposit of droppings at the base of one of the columns.
Teyla’s eyes were laughing, but her voice was grave. “I believe there are symbols from the DHD on the doorway here. Perhaps it leads to the Ancient collection?”
“Right.” Ronon looked around again. “Yeah. Through there.”
The corridor led back into the dark. Radek flicked his light back on, looked over his shoulder to see William carefully filming the doorway and its symbols. They were the familiar markings from the DHD, all right, and Sateda’s address arched above the doorway, the rest of the patterns trailing down the sides. The ones closest to the floor were damaged, the paint flaking away, but the words on the lintel had been carved too deeply to be erased in a mere decade.
“What does it say?” William asked, and Ronon looked back, impatient.
“Hall of the Ancients, Ancestors of Humanity. Come on.”
William made a soft sound that might have meant anything, but put the camera aside. Radek let his light play along the corridor’s walls. There had been fire here, he thought, perhaps the flash of a bomb; the paint was scorched in spots, dark and peeling, and when he checked overhead, there were only beams and emptiness where a ceiling had been.
“Here’s the Stargate,” William said, pointing to the wall. The circle of his flashlight caught a panel that was mostly intact, the gate standing empty in the center of a field, a few humans gathered by the DHD.
“And here also,” Teyla said. She let the light of her P90 play across the opposite wall, picking out a similar scene. This time, Radek thought he recognized some of the buildings surrounding the gate.
“That is here, the gate square, yes?”
“A history — it’s a history of Satedan gate use, right?” William swung his light back and forth, scanning the murals. “Oh, and that’s nice. The frames are the Stargate itself.”
Ronon was staring at him, and he shrugged.
“I suppose that’s what the captions say? You’ll have to teach me your alphabet, I hate being illiterate.”
“Perhaps later,” Teyla said, reluctantly. “Is that —?”
She stopped abruptly, eyes widening. Radek lifted his P90 in reflex, joining its light to hers.
The corridor ended in an arched doorway, and through its opening the lights flashed from glass and metal. Display cases, Radek thought, some broken, some intact — and then he saw it, too, the tripod of a portable lamp, a coil of rope and a woven basket, and the breath caught in his throat.
“Someone’s been here.”
“Did Cai mention anyone else?” Ronon asked.
Teyla shook her head. “He did not.”
“This is recent,” Radek said. The plaster dust had been swept off the cases, and the floor was relatively clean. He let the light play around the room again, picking out more display cases, metal and crystal glittering within, found a shuttered window. It looked as though it had been repaired, and he crossed to it, eased it back. The sunlight poured into the room in an almost solid wedge, dust dancing in its beam, and his breath caught again at the sight of the display cases. There were two ranks of them, stretching the length of the hall; on the walls to either side were more murals, scenes of what must be Ancient history alternating with stylized starscapes. At the end of the hall, part of the ceiling had fallen — nothing structural, just lathe and plaster and perhaps some light boards — and the display cases were broken but not crushed beneath it. Most of the rest were intact, and he saw what looked like a lifesigns detector laid between the panels of a lamp and the cracked crystal from a control board.
“This is Genii,” William said. He crouched beside the basket, poking cautiously at its contents. “The equivalent of an MRE.” He held up a box with unfamiliar lettering.
Teyla frowned. “Perhaps this has been here some time?”
William shook his head. “This says it was packed three months ago.”
Ronon lifted an eyebrow. “You can read Genii and not Satedan?”
“It seemed relevant at the time,” William answered. He set the box carefully back into the basket, stood up, dusting his hands on his thighs. “Food and water. I think they’re planning to come back.”
“That’s not good,” Ronon said.
“No.” Teyla turned slowly, surveying the room. “I think — this all looks valuable and important, and I think we need to examine it closely. But I would also like to know what the Genii are doing here. If they are still here at all.”
“I agree,” Ronon said. He took a breath. “We split up. Zelenka, Dr. Lynn, take stock of what’s here, collect anything that’s useful. Teyla, let’s you and me see if we can find any Genii.”
Teyla followed Ronon back to the hall with the atrium, frowning at the tracks they had left on the dusty floor.
“If the Genii are still here,” she began, and Ronon nodded.
“Yeah. I know. Let’s hope they’re not.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that, at least nothing that did not sound more critical than she meant. And she was to blame as much as anyone: she had trusted Cai — still more than half trusted him, if it came to that, and she frowned again. Everything he had said had seemed honest; she could not point to a moment when she had thought, he is concealing something, even in the details of their bargaining. That was disconcerting, and she put it aside, to be dealt with later. She would get answers from Cai on their return.