“You let Cadman check it out?” For some reason that sounded alarming to Rodney.
Lorne stiffened. “Look, Cadman’s a good kid. Don’t give her a rough time for something that wasn’t her fault.”
“I wasn’t. I…”
“Good,” Lorne said. “She’s a good kid, and she’ll make contact without shooting up the place. I like that.”
“Yes, of course.” Rodney felt himself perilously close to turning red. It was true that what had happened hadn’t been Cadman’s fault. She hadn’t asked to be sucked up by that Wraith Dart anymore than he had. It wasn’t her fault they’d been stuck sharing a body for three days while Zelenka tried to figure out how to fix it. If it was anybody’s fault it was Zelenka’s. Three days to reverse engineer a Wraith culling beam? He could have done it in two, if he hadn’t had Cadman in his head. But if he hadn’t had Cadman in his head, they wouldn’t have needed to do it.
“There’s no sign of hostiles or any kind of action,” Lorne said. “No casings, no bullet scrapes on the walls. Ronon wouldn’t go down without a fight. I’m guessing that Zelenka and Ronon got sick of waiting around and left. We just need to figure out where they went.”
“The lifesign detector isn’t much use,” Rodney mused. “The planet’s full of humans whose lifesigns are indistinguishable from ours.”
“We’ve been making radio calls periodically,” Lorne said. “No answer yet. If we need to, we can fly a search pattern making calls, but that’s going to take a while. It’s a big planet.”
“And it’s better to pick up Zelenka and Ronon before we start hunting for Sheppard,” Rodney said. “I get that. Especially since with the other jumper Sheppard could be anywhere.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Lorne said. He gave Rodney’s shoulder a squeeze. “You did your bit fixing the jumper, doc. This is my bit.”
Rodney nodded. Coffee would clear his head, but there wasn’t any, and a few hours sleep had left him bleary. Just as well to sit still for a few minutes. There was no need to jump up and run around until Cadman got back from walking however far it was to the village and back. More waste of time, as the jumper could have had her there in moments. But perhaps it would intimidate the villagers the way Cadman on foot wouldn’t.
Lorne sank down into the pilot’s seat. He looked out the windscreen at the Ancient ruins and the pristine sky with something like satisfaction. “There’s some pretty keen stuff around here.”
“If you like alien planets and being shot at,” Rodney said.
Lorne shrugged. “I came here from the SGC, doc. I’ve seen my share of alien planets and been shot at before. I was on P3X-403 when we had that little problem with the Unas.” He leaned back in the seat. “This isn’t all that different, except you never get to go home at night and have a beer.”
“Yes, that would be a big difference,” Rodney said sharply. “I was at the SGC too. It’s entirely different.”
Lorne cocked his eyebrows at him. “Yeah, but I hear you were a lab rat at the SGC. You weren’t on a gate team.”
“If by lab rat you mean scientist,” Rodney began.
Lorne grinned. “By the way, what’s the story about you and Lt. Colonel Carter?”
“Carter?” Rodney gulped.
“I heard you had some big thing going on.”
“Oh, that thing.” Rodney leaned back in his chair, assuming what he liked to think of as a worldly slouch. “Well, you know. Long distance relationships are hard to make work.” He put his head back against the head rest and gave Lorne a mysterious smile. “Sam is certainly hot. And she’s got those gorgeous eyes. But you know how it is. Duty calls. The Atlantis Expedition needed me.”
“Oh.” Lorne looked momentarily confused. “I thought she hated your guts and said she hoped you were transferred to Siberia.”
“She said that?” Rodney sat upright abruptly. “No no no. She did not. It’s just that our working relationship was fraught with unresolved sexual tension. It’s kind of perverse, really, that her admiration for my professional acumen was seasoned both by jealousy and desire.”
“I thought she said you were a jerk and Atlantis could have you.”
“Obviously Sam has very strong feelings about me,” Rodney said with dignity. “And I think that out of regard for her privacy we should probably stop discussing them.”
“Ok.” Lorne still looked confused. “Just asking. You hear all kinds of things at the SGC, and if ten percent of them were true…”
“If ten percent of them were true, every gate team would be an orgy to go,” Rodney said. “And I’m here to tell you it’s not.”
“My team is three Marines,” Lorne said. “I don’t really think we’re in orgy territory.”
Out the front of the windscreen they saw Cadman emerge from the trees, walking quickly toward the jumper.
Lorne got to his feet, and Rodney heard his footsteps on the metal decking in the back of the ship. “What’s the story?”
Perhaps, Radek thought, they might survive this. Perhaps they might even get this well in hand. They were in a boat that was right side up, with the sodden and torn sail spread out over it to dry in the sun, and had daylight and calm seas. They had no water, and by now Radek was beginning to get thirsty, but it was not quite yet a pressing problem. Surely many of the heroes of literature had been in similar and worse positions. Edmond Dantes, for example. He had gotten out of a situation very like this one. Only Radek could not quite remember how. He had read the book so long ago.
Ronon shaded his eyes with his hand. Radek couldn’t see what he might be looking at even with his glasses. “What do you see?” he asked.
Ronon squinted. “Shadow on the horizon. Might be an island.”
“That would be good, yes?”
“Yeah, except for the no way to get over there part,” Ronon said. “No oars, and the sail’s not dry enough to get up yet.”
“It will dry soon, surely. And then we can raise it again somehow.”
“The sea’s running pretty strong still,” Ronon said. “It’s hard to tell, but I think we’re being pulled pretty much west at a good speed. We’re going to wind up a whole lot north of where we intended.”
“There is nothing for that, is there?” Radek said. “Once we have the sail to give us speed for steerage, then we can try to use the rudder. But the sail will not dry faster than it will.” He looked at Ronon over the top of his glasses. “This is an exercise in frustration, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Someday we will laugh about this,” Radek said.
“It isn’t funny.”
“You know what I mean.” Radek shrugged and shaded his eyes as well, looking off to the west. He could see nothing. Haze blurred into distance.
“It means you laugh at things that aren’t funny,” Ronon said.
“Sometimes one must laugh,” Radek said. “Don’t you ever laugh at yourself?”
“I’m not funny.”
Radek put his head to the side, not quite certain if Ronon was putting him on or not. “Perhaps you are not,” he said. “But don’t funny things ever happen to you?”
“No,” Ronon said flatly.
Perhaps they did not. There was very little in seven years as a runner that any sane person could find funny. Maybe Ronon’s sense of humor was dead with all the rest of it. And yet he had thought he had heard, in the story in the dark, a different man than the dour one who sat before him. Once he had been a young man, fervent and generous, and perhaps that person lived in him still. He had been only a few weeks in Atlantis. Perhaps the man he had once been was not dead, but only buried within the man he had become.