"Yes, yes, I'll do that," she replied. She sounded a little nervous. It caused John to recalculate all the ways she might possibly be planning to screw them over; except he couldn't think of that many ways. If she really didn't want to feed on them, then the only thing they had that she wanted was her way home, and they were giving her that.
John put the jumper down gently near the dome as the others were adjusting their SCBAs, getting their masks on, and grabbing their equipment. They lowered the ramp and John went out first with Ronon and Teyla. The stirred dust settled slowly in the thin air, and he could see the dome had a triangular doorway, sheltered by a low porch roof extending out from the structure. "We're clear. Teyla, you're with Miko and the jumper. Ronon, find a good vantage point and keep an eye out for company."
Teyla nodded, telling them, "Good luck." Ronon jogged off toward one of the platforms that offered a good view of this section of the roof.
John went to the dome with Rodney and Zelenka. The door slid open to reveal a round chamber with a circular bank of consoles on stone pedestals in the center. It wasn't pressurized, though it had the round silver vents in the walls. But the lights that were set into the dark blue ceiling and along the top of the pillars glowed gently as they stepped inside. "Well, this makes sense," Rodney said, acidly thoughtful. "Recognize it?"
"No. Should I?" John circled warily around the room, P-90 aimed, making certain there weren't any lurking surprises.
"It's laid out like the inexplicable chamber of tantalizing energy signatures back in the ruin on the Stargate moon." Rodney frowned as he selected a console, hitting a couple of touchpads. A holographic display blinked into life above it.
"Oh, good," Zelenka said wearily, sitting down on the floor and opening his laptop. "Because we had such good luck with that room."
"Great," John said, and went out to watch the jumper, the life signs detector, and the sky.
Then things started to go wrong.
First the Mirror started to rumble again, a long low sustained groan, as if mammoth granite blocks were grinding against each other under the installation. Vibrations traveled through the roof, just strong enough for John to feel through the soles of his boots. He ducked into the control room to see Rodney frantically checking his tablet. "It's not building up for a discharge," Rodney said, before John could ask. "Signatures are still normal, pulse generator is erratic but working. We should be fine," he finished briskly, lifting his chin.
John pointed back over his shoulder. "Okay, because it sounds really-"
Rodney glared. "I know! Believe me, I know! But it's fine!"
John went out to the observation porch again. The pulse array at the roof's edge blocked the view from here. He keyed his radio and said, "Ronon, this is Sheppard. Can you see the Mirror from your position?"
Ronon's answer came a moment later. "Yes."
John thought, note to self.- teach Ronon to use proper radio protocol. "Is it doing anything?"
"Like what?"
John saw Teyla suddenly appear out of nowhere as she stepped out of the cloaked jumper, her expression caught between annoyance and amusement. John said, "Oh, glowing, turning colors, transporting an armada of alien spaceships into the galaxy-"
Ronon sounded thoughtful. "No, it looks the same."
"Thank you, Ronon. Sheppard out."
Teyla shook her head and turned back to the jumper, disappearing as she stepped onto the ramp.
John waited, and paced. The low rumble from the Mirror didn't seem to increase, as far as he could tell. Then Teyla reported via headset, "Colonel, Miko says the screens show that the darts are returning." Her voice was tight with tension. "They are all moving to the south, toward the shuttle."
John grimaced. "Trishen, you copy that?"
"Yes." Her voice in his headset sounded human, young, and very tense. "What should I do?"
Teyla stepped out of the jumper again, her eyes worried. John made his voice even, telling Trishen, "You want to widen your flight path and vary your pattern. They couldn't pinpoint you in the mountains, so they can't do it here. Just stay out of their way."
"Oh yes, I see." She sounded a little calmer.
"Okay. Just call if you have any problems." John exchanged a look with Teyla, who shook her head and winced. Trishen had suggested this part of the plan herself, and he had just assumed she could handle it. Yeah, there's one of those assumptions again. And they couldn't even see the damn shuttle on the jumper's sensors and follow her progress.
They had been here half an hour already for what Rodney had described as a five minute job, darts were circling the plain to the south and the Mirror was keeping up its steady grumbling threat. John stepped back into the doorway of the lab. "Rodney-"
"Busy!" Rodney snarled. He was standing at the center console, hitting touchpads and glaring at the results. Radek was still on the floor with the laptop and the tablet, apparently comparing one screen to the other while making little abortive gestures suggesting it was an effort not to tear his hair out.
"Rodney, this is going to be tight. I need an ETA," John persisted.
"I don't know," Rodney said through gritted teeth.
And everything's been going so well up to now, John thought. "What's wrong? I thought you had this all worked out."
"So did I." Rodney pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. He looked frustrated and desperate. "It should work, but it won't. The system isn't accepting our corrections."
"What does that mean?" John demanded.
"It means our corrections are so far from being right that the system is refusing to implement them because it would cause the entire installation to disappear in a massive naquadah explosion!" Rodney rubbed his face, then slammed his hands down on the console. "That's what it means.
"Figures cannot be right!" Zelenka shook his head furiously, hair flying. "There must be an error in our calculations, somewhere-"
Miko's voice in the headset said impatiently, "I've just run it again, Dr. Zelenka, it isn't-"
"We've run it over and over again, it's not an error, we don't have time for this!" Rodney snapped. He knotted his fists, as if it was an effort not to punch the console. "We're missing something."
"Right, right. We took account of orbital drift-" Zelenka began to tick the various points off on his fingers. "-of increased ionization in atmosphere, of degradation of singularity field-"
On the other channel, John could hear Miko muttering darkly to herself in Japanese. He stepped back out onto the porch and resisted the urge to beat his head against the wall. In his headset, Ronon's voice rumbled, "Sheppard. What's going on?"
John told him, "Something's wrong with their..something. What's your situation?"
"The same. This area's clear."
"Copy that." John was going to have to put a stop to this, they just didn't have the time to make the damn Mirror work. But he found himself reluctant to doom Trishen. She had held up her end of the bargain so far, and if they couldn't send her back to her own reality, he didn't know what the hell they were going to do with her. Even if she didn't need to feed on humans, they couldn't chance the Wraith finding her. It'll have to be Atlantis, he told himself reluctantly. And once she had seen it, they couldn't let her leave. Not unless the SGC had some sort of settlement program for displaced aliens in the Milky Way. And that was only if they could prove she was safe around people. "Ronon, Teyla-"
From inside the room, Zelenka was saying, "The field phase adjustment-"
Rodney snapped his fingers. "Wait."
John knew that tone. He stepped back into the control room.
Rodney fumbled at his headset, saying urgently. "You, Trishen! When did you say that data was recorded?"
John heard Trishen's voice on the radio channel. "As my ship was pulled into the Mirror. That's why I was so close to it, to collect the data from the buoys-"