Sheppard turned to Cumby. “My Biblical history isn’t too strong, but weren’t those cities destroyed by…”
“Fire,” Cumby said. “They were consumed in flames.”
“Very appropriate,” Rodney muttered. He barely paid any attention to the others. He was busy staring at the Ancient symbols and working out their meaning.
“You said you found a power signature over there,” Sheppard said. “You think there might be an active ZPM?”
Rodney glanced up and nodded distractedly. Then he turned away from the screen and began to pace. “A ZPM, yes. But that’s not all. This isn’t just another planet with a gate, it’s a city. A flying city. If there’s anything more left of it than ruins, we could be looking at a goldmine of Ancient technology. Computer banks — drones — it could be another Atlantis! My God — do you have any idea what this means?”
All three of the others stared at him.
Rodney stared back, and then said “What? Okay, so you do know, but…”
“Let’s forget that you’re the only one in the room for a minute,” Sheppard said. “How long before that city, or moon, or whatever it is takes a nose dive into that star?”
Rodney turned back to the monitor and brought up an image showing a steadily declining orbit that wound closer and closer to the flickering red image of the system’s sun.
“Taking into account the steepness of the orbit’s decline, the size and mass of the city and the sun, and the draw of gravity…less than a week,” Rodney said.
“If the city is like Atlantis,” Zelenka said thoughtfully, “the way it broke orbit makes sense. It could be moving under its own power. Maybe there’s a malfunction.”
“You mean they might have tried to break orbit and sent themselves straight at the sun instead?” Sheppard turned to Rodney. “If that’s true, they might need our help. If there was something wrong with the star drive, but it was still functional enough to move the city, could you fix it?”
Rodney turned to Sheppard in irritation. “We don’t even know if there’s anything to fix. We don’t know if it’s a star drive, we don’t know if there’s a city still standing, and we have no idea — given both of those things — what could have gone wrong.”
“But if there was, you could?” Sheppard prodded.
“Given enough time, of course.”
“We need to get a team over there before it’s too late to get a look at the city,” Sheppard said. “If there are people still living there, we need to see if we can help them, and if not, I can’t imagine leaving an Ancient city to burn and be destroyed without at least taking a look around.”
“There’s one problem,” Rodney said. “We don’t have an address.”
“Sir?” Cumby said.
“Not now,” Rodney said, waving a hand. “I think it’s possible that if we run a new search and cross reference everything we can find on the city, we can come up with — ”
“Sir,” Cumby said again.
“Not now,” Rodney snapped. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something important here? Or do you come from some part of Earth where people all talk at once? Maybe the reason you know so much about the history of the Bible is because you come from Babel?”
“I think you should take a look, sir,” Cumby said, unruffled.
Irritated, Rodney turned. “What? What is it that you think is so important that…”
He fell silent when he saw the sequence of symbols displayed on the screen.
“I ran a new search,” Cumby explained. “I input all the terms I could find associated with Admah that were unique. I found this address, but…”
Sheppard peered at the screen. “But what?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” Cumby replied. “There’s some kind of block. The final two symbols of the address are obscured.”
“Let me see that,” Rodney pushed forward.
“There’s a warning message,” Cumby said as he stepped aside. “Maybe…”
Rodney paid no attention. He typed furiously, frowned, grumbled, typed again, and then slapped his finger down on a key decisively. “Huh,” he said, then started typing again, frowning.
“What is it?” said Zelenka.
“It’s safeguarded. I’m trying to override it.”
The warning message on the screen blinked once, twice, and then disappeared. Rodney stopped typing and stared. “Great,” he said. “Just great. Now I not only can’t get in, but I don’t have the warning message that would have told us why I shouldn’t.”
Cumby was scribbling furiously. Rodney turned to him, trying to shift the focus of the moment. “What are you doing?”
“I think I got it,” he said.
“Got what?”
“The warning,” Cumby held out a piece of paper with a series of hastily scrawled symbols drawn across it.
Rodney stared at it, and then passed it back. “You must have gotten it wrong,” he said. “I can’t translate any of that.”
Zelenka reached out and plucked the paper from Cumby’s hand. “I’ll see what I can do with it.”
Cumby looked as though he couldn’t quite decide whether to be grateful to Zelenka or irritated with Rodney. Colonel Sheppard watched the entire exchange with a grin curling the edge of his lip. “There’s not a lot of time.”
“I’ll let you know what I find,” Zelenka said. He left the room with the paper clutched in his hand.
“He won’t find anything,” Rodney muttered. Sheppard laughed and turned away while Cumby continued to work at the controls of the computer console.
“How could you draw that?” Rodney asked him, turning back around. “You don’t have a background in Ancient and it was only on the screen for a couple of moments.”
“I don’t know what it says,” Cumby replied. “I have no idea how to translate any Ancient symbols.”
“Then how…?”
“Photographic memory,” he said, turning back to Rodney. “My IQ isn’t as high as yours, but I can keep things straight. It’s come in handy in research work; I’m not the best person to explain results, but I don’t forget them. I thought it was in my personnel record. Didn’t you review it?”
“Well, yes, obviously, but…” Rodney trailed off as Cumby turned away.
The younger man left the room, following Sheppard and Zelenka into the hall. Rodney stared after him for a moment, then turned back to the screen and shook his head. In silence he continued hitting keys, searching for a way past the security protocol on the address file for Admah.
Chapter Four
Mr. Woolsey sat at the head of the conference table. Gathered around it, Colonel Sheppard, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Rodney and Zelenka sat quietly, waiting for the commander to scan the documents they’d placed before him. To one side, Airman Cumby sat alone, looking uncomfortable.
“You’ve managed to piece together quite a story,” Woolsey said at last. “There’s more here than just a simple moon leaving its orbit but,” he smoothed the papers on the table and gathered his thoughts before looking up to meet their collective gaze, “it’s not exactly definitive, is it? There are a lot of random facts here, a lot of bits and pieces of stories, but not much concrete information. What exactly do you propose?”
“Rodney says we have about a week before Admah crashes into its sun,” Sheppard said, getting right to the point. “It’s not a lot of time, but it’s more than enough for an exploratory mission to the city. I want to take a team over there. If there are refugees to be evacuated, that would be our first priority. If there’s a city — a ZPM — Ancient technology…”
“It’s very tempting,” Woolsey said. “But I’m concerned by this gate address. You say there was a warning, but that you’ve been unable to translate its message?”