Cumby sighed. “That’s not helping.”
Ronon glanced up at the ceiling, then stepped between Rodney and the door.
“What are you doing?” Cumby asked.
“If they have security cameras in this room,” Ronon said, “the logical place to aim them is at that panel. If I stand here, it might help buy some time.”
Cumby glanced up and squinted, trying to see if he could make out a camera. The walls appeared solid, but the pattern was very intricate. He nodded and stepped closer to Ronon. The two stood as nonchalantly as possible, creating a wall of flesh between Rodney and any hidden surveillance.
“The problem isn’t getting in,” Rodney said, working quickly at the fasteners on the panel. “The problem is we still don’t know what message to send to Atlantis — assuming anyone there is bright enough and quick enough to decipher it.”
“Let’s think about what Saul told us,” Cumby said. “The gate is rigged so that it can only open once to any particular set of coordinates. Obviously we aren’t going to get it to open back to Atlantis.”
“Obviously,” Rodney grunted, pulling the panel off the wall and quickly working his computer cables into place. He snapped the connection together tightly and watched as several lights shifted through a sequential pattern and then pulsed gently. “I’m in.”
“If we can’t go back to Atlantis,” Teyla said thoughtfully, “we have to go somewhere else. But we need to know where.”
“Can you check the database for a usable gate?” Cumby suggested. “Can you tell what coordinates have already been locked by their security protocol?”
“Just a minute,” Rodney said. He flipped through several pages of data, entered a code, and watched the screen. “Okay, I’m into the DHD control system.” He typed another command and watched the screen.
“There are two tables of data,” he said after a few moments. He scanned the data on the screen.
Cumby leaned in over his shoulder, then reached out and pointed. “Those are the coordinates for Athos, and that’s the Genii home world. That looks like Hoff, and that one — ”
“Wait.” Rodney eyed him narrowly. “You memorized all the gate addresses?”
“Eidetic memory,” Cumby said with a shrug, then pointed again. “Oh, and that’s Atlantis.”
Rodney batted his hand away. “I know the coordinates to Atlantis,” he said. “Give me some room here.”
He started going through the data in the other table. “Here’s a planet with an active gate,” he said. “Cumby, do you recognize it?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “We’ve never been there.”
“Well, it’s flagged with a symbol I don’t recognize but no one has traveled through it. We can dial it, but there’s no way to know what’s there. It might sustain life, it might be a dead planet, or a Wraith stronghold.”
“So…all we have to do is get through to Atlantis and tell them where we’re going?” Cumby said. “Maybe they can send a team to meet us there.”
Rodney turned on him and rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure, why not? Maybe we could all have a picnic too! All we have to do is get a message through to Atlantis giving them the coordinates to a planet none of us knows a thing about — a planet that might not even have a breathable atmosphere! Then we have to escape from this cell, find Sheppard, and make our way back to the gate without the entire population of a city stopping us. Oh, and let’s not forget the shield they’ve put up over the upper city. So, really, no problem at all.”
“You finished?” Ronon said.
Rodney started to speak again, rolled his head in a sort of confused circle, and nodded. “I think so.”
“Then send the message. We’ve only got one chance.”
“Right.” Rodney bent back over the data. He opened the program he’d used to find the carrier frequency of the phase shift and locked onto it. Using the microphone on his computer, he modulated the carrier signal very slightly. The spikes of data were so small they were barely visible on the original signal, but they were there.
“This is Dr. Rodney McKay,” he said. “We are trapped in the city of Admah. You cannot reopen the gate to this address, and we can’t open it to Atlantis. We’re attempting to gate out to the following address and could really use some back up.”
He continued the message, speaking slowly and carefully. When he was finished, he played it back, and then nodded.
“I have it recorded,” he said. “I’m going to program it to repeat on a loop any time someone in Atlantis tries to dial the Admah gate. There’s no way to know if they’ll see it, but if they are paying attention and analyzing the signal…”
“Like you would be?” Teyla smiled.
“Exactly. If they’re on the ball.”
“We won’t know if they’ve picked it up,” Cumby said. “All we can do is hope for the best.”
Rodney programmed his signal into the system and then closed the access panel. He lifted the poster back into place and then they all sat down to wait.
“We have to find a way to tell Sheppard what we’ve done,” Teyla said. “He’s on the outside — maybe he can find a way to get us out in time.”
“I gave them a window,” Rodney said. “Allowing time for them to get the message, decipher it, and open a gate to that world, we have to be out of here in about eight hours, ten at the most.”
“They’ll wait for us,” Teyla said, with absolute certainty. “They’ll be there.”
Rodney shrugged. “It’s a moot point,” he said. “Not much more than ten hours, and we’ll all be cooked. Literally.”
“The ‘entertainment’ starts soon,” Ronon said. “If we don’t get out before then, someone will have a fight on their hands.”
They all caught his grin.
“It probably won’t be you,” Rodney said. “Sheppard and I are the only ones with the gene, as he conveniently told them so. I’m sure they’ll come for me.”
“Well,” Ronon said, “at least the weapons will work.”
They fell silent again at that. Rodney turned away, his hands on the computer in his lap, staring at the wall. He felt very pale.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dr. Zelenka leaned over the console, his hands on the desk, gripping it until his knuckles turned white. With a deep breath he punched in the coordinates for Admah and stared at the readout. Everything seemed fine. The circuits were aligned and calibrated — none of the diagnostics showed any anomaly — but he knew in the pit of his stomach it wasn’t going to connect.
There was a hesitation in the system, as if it might actually break through whatever confounded it this time. Then it shifted. The coordinates changed and suddenly they were connected to a different gate on a different planet. There were no symbols in common between the address he’d dialed and the one that connected.
“Damn!” he growled. “I thought I had it that time.”
Commander Woolsey, who’d been watching from a few feet away, pushed in closer. “Did it disconnect? Again?”
“Not this time,” Radeck sighed. “This time, it shifted to another address completely. I have no idea what world these coordinates lead to, but it has an operational gate.”
“Close it down,” Woolsey said. “Could it be the DHD? Is it possible that the error is on our end?”
“I’ve dialed three separate known addresses,” Zelenka replied. “All of them connected without errors. Whatever it is that’s blocking us, it’s only associated with the Admah gate.”
“There’s nothing else you can try?”
“Let me see.” Zelenka turned back to the console. His fingers worked furiously at the keys and he squinted at the console readout. “I keep thinking that maybe with a change in the modulation of the signal I might overcome whatever it is that’s preventing the gate from locking on and opening. It’s as if the dialer connects, and then something shifts the signal just enough to prevent a lock.”