Teyla answered, "No, we live far away. We only discovered this place a short time ago." She hesitated, flicking a look at John as she gauged how much to say. "We have explored many ruins of the Ancestors, but we have never before found a device such as this Mirror."
John thought this was a good time to ask, "You didn't send any distress calls or anything like that, did you? Because there's some things out here whose attention you really don't want to attract."
Trishen made a little gesture, turning her palms up. "No. My ship has an automatic beacon, but I turned it off. I admit, I was afraid." She did something on the device that caused the hologram display to freeze, and twisted around to face them. "We had long speculated that the Creators came to our galaxy fleeing a terrible force."
John looked away, out toward the platform and the looming frame of the Mirror. He hated giving the bad news. "It's true. The Ancients were wiped out in this galaxy.
Teyla added, "The enemy you speak of is called the Wraith. They use humans for food, and have destroyed many worlds." She tilted her head, watching Trishen carefully. "There are no Wraith in your reality?"
"Food," Trishen repeated nervously. She laughed a little weakly. "I was hoping that part wasn't true." She looked up. "No, my people have never been attacked by anything." She hesitated again, then added tentatively, "I have never seen people like you before."
John exchanged a baffled look with Teyla. The hell? He said, "Uh, okay."
Teyla began, "I am not certain I understand what-"
"That's it," Rodney interrupted, cutting off his radio with a sharp gesture. "Our data confirms it. The problem is definitely with the accretion disk itself, it's size is causing the singularity to react to any energy fluctuation with these instabilities. The Ancients must have had some sort of tuning process to get it to work in the first place." He turned to Trishen. "I need to see the whole range of data before the Mirror activated and pulled your ship in, everything your research group collected. Do you have that with you?"
Trishen nodded anxiously. "Yes, but this device doesn't have enough storage space to contain it. Can you come to my ship to view it on the system there?"
"Of course, I-" Rodney stopped, flustered, obviously recalling their situation. He looked at John, brows lifted. "Ali, can we do that?"
John had been thinking about their next step, and had been ready to say yes. It was what they had agreed to do, and he wanted a look at the inside of that ship as bad as Rodney did. But that last comment of Trishen's had thrown him a little and he couldn't exactly pinpoint why. "People like you" coming from somebody from another planet, let alone another reality, could mean anything, from his and Teyla's relative heights to their skin or hair color to their obvious hair-trigger wariness. Or the way she had heard them bitching at each other over the comm system. Whatever it was, though, she seemed okay with it. He said, "Yeah, we can do that."
Trishen gathered her equipment hurriedly, and she and Rodney stopped in the big doorway out onto the platform, both taking readings. "If the Mirror discharges while we're out on the platform, the concussion wave would slam us into the walls with possibly lethal force," Rodney explained, studying the detector intently.
"Great." John was looking at the ship, sitting on the platform about a hundred yards away. The oddly organic shading of blue and purple on the hull didn't fade into the darker stone of the installation as much from this angle, so it was easy to see the round shape of the hatch and a small ramp leading up to it at the base. The conch-shell shuttle seemed to fit neatly into the top of the tulip, not easy to recognize as a separate craft unless you knew to look for it.
Rodney admitted that the readings suggested that for the moment the Mirror was not inclined to kill them, and they started across the platform toward the ship. They were moving quickly, Rodney and Trishen a few steps ahead. Trishen said, "I'm beginning to wonder if my ship's energy signature itself is causing the increase in the Mirror's instabilities. If it's affecting the accretion disk, even from a distance-"
Rodney launched into a theory of his own, and Teyla took the opportunity to say, low-voiced, to John, "She said `people like us.' What could she mean?"
"I don't know. Unless she's got fur or scales or something under that suit." Teyla looked up sharply, her brow furrowed in worry, and John said, "That was supposed to be a joke."
"She said we shared the Creators as a common ancestor. She must be very close to human." Teyla shook her head helplessly. "She sounds entirely human. And I think she is harmless to us."
"Yeah, probably," John found himself reluctant to admit it. They had just gotten burned too many times in the past. "But we don't know what the rest of her people are like."
"I should ask more questions," Trishen was saying. "When I return, our historians will be very angry with me if I have no answers for them." She made a vague gesture back toward John and Teyla. "I don't even understand how your hierarchy is organized."
Rodney began, "Yes, of course. I'm head of the expedition's science team, and our-" John cleared his throat pointedly. It was mission policy not to go into detail about their organizational structure on short acquaintance, and he wasn't ready to relax the restriction on that yet. Rodney threw John a glare, not happy to be reminded, and finished, "But if you could tell me more about the collection method you used for your energy readings-"
As they reached the ship, Zelenka's voice in John's headset said, "Colonel, I'm hoping it is still okay to talk, but your transmissions are breaking up very badly. If you remain close to the Mirror, we will not be able to hear you.
John said, "Copy that," and clicked an acknowledgement.
Trishen touched a control on the black data device, and the round hatch started to rotate, spiraling open instead of sliding up in one piece. John caught Rodney's eye, telling him with a slight jerk of his head to hang back. Rodney huffed impatiently but fell back a little, obviously torn between eagerness to see the inside of the ship and the paranoid caution they had all had beaten into them by life in the Pegasus Galaxy.
The open hatch revealed what a seemed to be a standard airlock, except the walls were dark-colored, almost matte black. Following Trishen's lead, John stepped in, seeing it was big enough for all of them without crowding, which was a relief. He signaled Rodney and Teyla to come in, noticing the controls were recessed into the wall surface, barely visible.
The outer hatch shut and the lock cycled quickly, and John's ears popped again. Rodney was bouncing with impatience. As the inner hatch dilated open and Trishen moved inside, John took hold of the handy strap on the back of Rodney's tac vest, making certain he remembered to let John go first.
The interior was poorly lit, the light purple-tinted, and if John hadn't been already used to the relative dimness outside he would have been temporarily blind. The funny smell struck him next, even filtered as it was through the SCBA's breathing mask. It was peaty and rich, like walking into the organic fertilizer storage bay in the Botany lab. Not unpleasant, just different and not what he had been expecting. As Rodney and Teyla stepped in behind him, John looked around, squinting, still wary, seeing that the walls were a dark purplish rubbery substance. Teyla was looking around too, frowning uncertainly. There was a scatter of weird-looking tools and equipment near a wall cubbie, as if someone had been making a repair. Trishen was fussing with her suit, gesturing around a little anxiously with the air of someone hoping her guests would excuse the mess. She said, "The atmosphere in here should be breathable for you, since we can both tolerate the air inside the pressurized portion of the installation. I've been lucky that none of my environmental systems were damaged." She laughed a little nervously. "Though I didn't know what I would do if I was trapped here long enough to run out of provisions."