Beside Carson, Radek stopped fussing with the collar of his HAZMAT suit long enough to give him a distinctly unsympathetic look. "You? I did not want to take this trip the first time. Now I am doing it twice "
"At least it's your research we're following. I had planned a quiet afternoon of sample analyses, just me and my ultraviolet lamp. Enter Dr. Weir, and suddenly I'm being dragooned into a voyage to the bottom of the bloody sea"
Judging by Radek's humorless expression, the reference was lost on the scientist. "You are here because you can pilot the jumper and because the owners of the life signs we seek may be injured." He somehow managed to sound both fatalistic and resolute. "I am here only because Rodney McKay is a tyrant of the first order."
"Relax, Doctors," said Sergeant Stackhouse, sitting behind them. "This is a cake walk."
The battle over who had suffered the graver injustice was destined to end in a stalemate, so Carson surrendered. Ignoring the Marine, he asked Radek, "How has your lab been managing these days, anyway?"
"We survive through metric tons of caffeine and regular offerings of power bars to the self-proclaimed deity of science," Radek answered morosely. "I am thinking we need airline meals as addi tional tribute."
Carson winced. "Rodney has been a bit tetchy lately." Visibility was diminishing as they descended, so he followed Jumper One's lead and activated his craft's external lights. If anything, the limitations of the lights only added to the gloom.
"The difference from his usual charm is slight, but noticeable." Radek resumed the adjustment of his suit.
"Can't blame it on the concussion any longer. It's been a couple of weeks now." Carson wasn't a psychiatrist, but as Atlantis's chief medical officer he had a fair idea of the sort of nightmares that no doubt plagued their highly-strung resident astrophysicist. Peering out into the depths, he noted that he had lost sight of the whale-which was not the slightest bit reassuring. Although he could track it on the head-up display in the jumper's windshield, he would have much preferred to keep it within visual range. There was no telling if the animal might decide to come back and give them a nudge. "Rodney was stuck down here alone for a damned long time."
Radek nodded agreeably. "The situation would have made even a Wraith…what was your word? Tetchy?"
"Aye." And that was an odd mental image if he'd ever had one.
"Hmm. Tetchy. Strange word. Useful in this instance"
"Keep a close eye on your positioning, both of you." Rodney's voice erupted from the com unit in Carson's ear, startling him. "If you can get the jumpers within, say, one meter of the positions I indicated relative to each other, the resultant shield bubble should extend far enough to cover one of the city's anchor points"
It was not something that Carson had given a lot of thought to, but of course the city still had to be tethered to the ocean floor in some manner, or they'd have bobbed around like a cork the moment Atlantis had surfaced. And that would have been just lovely given his predisposition to motion sickness.
"Copy," Colonel Sheppard replied from Jumper One. No doubt referring to the whale, he added, "Our escort is now circling overhead."
The American officer's easy drawl should have provided Carson with a measure of confidence, but the Colonel had years of flight training to aid him. Until coming to Atlantis, Carson had never considered that his genetic ability to use Ancient technology would be employed for the purposes of flying-especially when the jumper mostly operated by reading his mind. Precision vehicle maneuvers of any sort certainly hadn't been covered in medical school.
"Just as it did when we pinpointed Rodney's jumper," Radek confirmed.
"Admittedly the life signs in those pods are the priority, but we need to know that whatever triggered the avalanche doesn't pose a risk to the moorings," Rodney continued. "If we ever manage to acquire sufficient ZPMs, I might be able to submerge the city again, and it'd be strategically useful to know whether or not the mechanism for doing so is still intact."
"Rodney," Radek commented with false patience, "our assignment is to examine four jumpers and their contents, and possibly effect a rescue of the ten-thousand-year-old occupants. All this while wearing uncomfortable suits, separated from several tons of very deep, very cold ocean only by energy. It has surely occurred to you that this will be difficult enough without adding to our list of tasks, yes?"
"Of course, yes. I'm fairly certain I face similar situations on a regular basis." Rodney's impatience was unmistakable, even through the radio. "Choir, preaching, all that. You're down there, so the least you could do is take a look."
"I'm sure they'll do right by you, Rodney." Elizabeth's voice held a touch of tolerant amusement. "Let them work."
"Okay, gang." Sheppard cut into the conversation. "End of the line."
Below them and ahead, the lights from the Colonel's jumper revealed a sloping section of the ocean floor strewn with rubble. Carson brought Jumper Three around so that its lights could cover a wider area. "What next, Colonel?" In the distance, he could just make out the oddly rounded shape of the whale's tail. Apparently satisfied that they had responded, the animal was now heading off into the depths.
"We're losing our St. Bernard, so let's check out the place," Sheppard suggested.
As the jumper's sensors moved slowly across the debris field, Carson learned a great deal more from the head-up display than from the eerie scene outside. According to the HUD, most of the rocks that he was seeing consisted of nothing but calcium carbonate. "That's incredible," he observed. "It looks like a massive coral reef grew around the outside of the city's force field."
"Isn't it kind of cold for a tropical reef?" Sheppard asked. "Not to mention deep?"
The biologist in Carson was intrigued. Uneasiness now forgotten, he replied, "Not all coral polyps prefer tropical waters, Colonel. On Earth, many species thrive in extreme temperature conditions. The wee animals here were most likely attracted to the residual heat given off by the city's force field, and once they began to build, well-" The coral structure now visible before them was well over thirty meters high. "You're looking at ten thousand years of accumulated animal skeletons."
"Unbelievable," said Stackhouse, a trace of awe in his voice. "You mean animals actually built that thing?"
"Tiny animals at that " Carson had been off-world before. Indeed, `off-world' was an accurate description of Atlantis itself in his view. Even so, this was the most alien environment he'd yet encountered.
He edged Jumper Three closer to the wall, and the lights transformed what had at first appeared to be an indistinct mass of graygreens into a riot of color typical of a thriving community of marine life. Schools of tiny fish darted by, flashing silver in the glare from the jumper's lights. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of unidentifiable aquatic creatures whirled around like a swarm of butterflies, while a few larger animals stuck their heads out from cracks and crevices just long enough to size up the jumper before making a strategic withdrawal to whatever caves they inhabited. It was all very much like a National Geographic documentary, except that none of these odd-looking animals-assuming they could all be classified as animals-had ever been seen on Earth.
Gliding along the edge of the precipice, the jumper soon came to a sharp indentation in the reef. A glance down at a particularly large volume of rubble on the seabed confirmed that this section had collapsed. Very likely it had occurred in the none too distant past, for while the polyps of hard corals had not yet had time to attach to the cutaway section, faster-growing sponges and soft corals or perhaps some form of sea-pens were prolific. Also abundant were the clouds of rainbow-striped fish that clustered over the waving tips of… anemones, perhaps?