"I see sand. Lots of sand. Give me a minute." At least the SCBA kept him from having to breathe in the dust. John reached the top of the pit, and swore in relief. The outer wall of the installation was about five hundred yards away. The distance didn't quite add up; he didn't think the series of belowground rooms had covered that much ground. Rodney must have been right about the transporter; it hadn't been a straight shot down the shaft. It had taken them further outside the building, and Ronon must have called to them over an automatically activated comm system.
But however they had ended up out here, they were on the right side of the building. John could see one of the triangular doorways as the structure curved, and the rock formation not far to the south looked familiar. He fished the jumper's remote out of his tac vest. "Well hello, baby," he muttered as the readout told him the cloaked jumper was within close range. That must be the doorway they had used to enter the building, and the jumper was waiting only a short distance from it. "What, what?" Rodney was yelling in his headset as in the background, Teyla said, "Dr. McKay, please calm down," and Zelenka added helpfully, "You are using up all your air, Rodney."
"We're near the jumper," John reported, ignoring all the commentary. He shoved off from the dirt-encrusted stairs and went back to the shaft. His arrival caused another small cascade and some grumbling exclamations from below.
He dropped to his knees beside the open hatch, unslinging his pack to get the rope out. He figured Teyla, Miko, and Radek would need it, all being too short to reach as far up as John had been able to, and Ronon could only fling them so far up the shaft. There was no good spot to tie it off, the ladder set into the side just had handholds, not actual rungs he could wrap it around. John settled for anchoring the rope by bracing his body across the shaft, planting his butt and his feet against the stable stone and metal rim. He said over the radio, "Teyla, you're next."
She managed it with some scrambling, and another small landslide as more crusted dirt was dislodged. She struggled out, shook a spray of red sand out of her hair, and looked around. "We have been lucky for once," she said, her voice wry.
"Hey, hey, watch it," John told her seriously. "Remember, we talked about that." He said into his headset, "Come on, McKay."
Teyla lifted a skeptical brow at him, taking up the slack of the rope and bracing herself to help anchor it. "Yes, you believe if we speak of luck, it goes away. I do not share your superstitions."
"You were willing to humor the people on P6S-221 who thought wearing hats kept the Wraith away-" John leaned back, steadying the rope as Rodney started his climb. "You can humor us."
Teyla shifted to take more of the weight. "Wearing a hat because our hosts asked it was simply courtesy. I am not going to encourage your primitive-"
Rodney's head appeared near the top of the shaft and John reached down to give him a hand up. Rodney was looking down, apparently addressing Zelenka, "I can't tell if it's a power access port or not, do I look like I can make a complete assessment while hanging in midair?" John and Teyla heaved and Rodney dragged himself up, scrambling out of the shaft to thump down heavily on the sand. Breathing hard, he told John, "If the jumper's nearby, I don't see why you couldn't have gotten the winch and saved us the trouble of-" Rodney froze, eyes going wide, and that was when the shadow fell over the pit.
John threw a look over his shoulder and got a heartfreezing view of a big dark shape hovering over them. He twisted around, jerking up the P-90. It was a ship.
He heard Teyla take a sharp indrawn breath and Rodney gasp, "It's-It's-"
Gritting his teeth, his whole body tight in anticipation of a culling beam, John whispered tensely into his headset, "Ronon, fall back, get them away from the hatch, now, do it now."
But it didn't look Wraith; it didn't look like anything John had ever seen before. It was larger than the jumper, curved into a conch shell-like spiral, dark purple shaded to pink… It matches the tulip ship, John thought in shock. This thing went together with that ship like Lego bricks. A faint flush of cool air came from it, smelling of ozone; a cloud of dust rose slowly around it. John registered Ronon's terse, "Come on," a murmur of alarm from Zelenka, Kusanagi's breathless, "Hurry, Doctor."
"I sense no Wraith," Teyla was whispering, her P-90 aimed at the thing looming over them. "This ship is not of the Ancestors?"
"I have no idea," Rodney managed. He winced. "It's not killing us yet. That's probably wishful thinking."
John couldn't see anything that looked like the muzzle of a weapon. Since it had been maybe thirty seconds and they still weren't dead, he added, "Rodney, when I say go, grab the rope and get back down there. Teyla, you're right behind him."
Teyla flicked a worried look at him, but nodded. "But, I, it's-" Rodney swallowed noisily. "Right." He edged back toward the shaft, his eyes still on the ship. "What about you?"
"I'm going to be right behind Teyla," John assured him. "Go!"
Rodney swung his legs into the shaft and grabbed for the rope. John shifted, bracing his leg against the edge of the hatch, but Rodney let go of the rope, grabbing onto the dirt-encrusted ladder and half-climbing, half-falling down. "Teyla, go," John snapped.
She twisted around and grabbed the rope, and just as she swung down into the shaft, the ship moved. It rolled with a sudden rush of air, dust sheeting over the pit, and John twisted his face away. He felt Teyla's weight leave the rope and he rolled to crouch on the edge of the opening, trying to disappear into the dirt and sparse tufts of grass. He couldn't go down yet; if he fell he would slam Teyla and probably Rodney into the rocks at the bottom of the shaft. Then he heard Rodney yell "Go, go, we're clear!" and Teyla's breathless confirmation. John swung his legs over the side, scrambling for purchase. Then the shadow and the looming weight overhead were suddenly gone.
His heart pounding, John looked up. The ship was lifting away from the pit. It rolled gracefully, with a sound like wind rustling through pines, then moved out of sight toward the south.
John slid down another foot before he managed to stop himself. He couldn't hear the ship anymore, but he watched the edge of the pit warily. So did it leave? Wraith ships didn't have cloaking technology, but it sounded like the consensus had been that this wasn't a Wraith ship. And John had to admit that the evidence was in favor of it; if it had been some new kind of Wraith ship it would still have a culling beam, and he, Rodney, and Teyla would be well on their way to getting stuck to the wall of a hiveship as future items on the dinner menu. John winced as his headset crackled and Rodney's voice whispered furiously, "What the hell are you doing? Get down here!"
"It left. I'm trying to figure out where the hell it went." John dragged himself out, getting another ton of sand down his pants in the process, kneeling in the dirt to untangle himself from the rope.
Teyla's voice overrode Rodney's to ask, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Rodney, just out of curiosity, when did you last check the life signs detector?" John kept his head down as he made his way to the half-buried steps at the edge of the pit.
Rodney was saying to someone else, "Oh please, I have no idea what it is and unless you've got a copy of Jane's Fighting Intergalactic Spaceships hidden in your pack, neither do you." He answered John, "When you first climbed out, there was nothing on the screen but us. The ship must have been out of range. Or it's shielded against the detector, which frankly would be just our luck. And if it's still out there, I'm not getting a reading. So basically it could be anywhere so be very, very careful!"
John scrambled to the top of the steps and took a cau tious peek over the edge of the pit. "Oh, crap."
"What?" several different voices demanded.