The jumper shot up and sideways. With a hair's breadth to spare, the vortex exploded past the small ship and sent it dancing in the backwash of the engaging wormhole — until John got it back under control, pulled it into a steep loop, and brought it around, backing toward the gate in the wake of the retracting event horizon.
"What is he doing?" murmured Elizabeth to no one in particular.
"I guess he's trying to catch whatever comes out of that." Radek had joined her and was staring at the event horizon in dismay. "It's getting worse," he whispered.
That was one way of putting it. For Elizabeth's money, the event horizon looked terrifying, a deep, joyless red, as if the wormhole were sucking the lifeblood out of everything living and breathing in the universe. And if Charybdis acted as they suspected it would, this notion wasn't far off the mark at all. She fought off a shiver, watched crimson reflections play across the hull of the jumper. The rear hatch gaped open, a black void punched into shocking red.
"It's taking too long already. I don't think there's anyone coming through," said Radek.
He probably was right. Maybe someone, somewhere, in the same kind of desperate quandary as they, had attempted to escape destruction and dialed this address, but without a `key' nobody would be able to travel. And for all she knew, she and John Sheppard and now Radek were the only ones aware of-
A trio of figures tumbled from the wormhole and into the jumper, slack and floppy-limbed like puppets cut from their strings.
John could tell from the various impacts that his newly acquired passengers were unconscious at the very least. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed it. A tangled heap of three people, none of them stirring. Not that it surprised him. The really amazing part was that they still looked recognizably human after coming through that garish red mess. Which disengaged as he was looking, and good riddance to it. The thought of having to go through that in the increasingly unlikely event that they managed to persuade the Stargate to take them any where was enough to pitch his stomach into a queasy roll.
"Welcome aboard, folks. Buckle in and enjoy the ride," he muttered. "Even though I doubt it's gonna be half as interesting as what you just did."
Hatch closing, he peeled away from the gate at last and steered the jumper into a gentle landing alongside the tent. When he tried to let go of the stick, he realized that his fingers were curled into a claw, joints frozen around an ergonomically uncomfortable piece of plastic, and he had to make a conscious effort to straighten them. Getting up out of the seat was even less fun. For a moment there his vision blurred to black and he had to grope for support. Eventually the cockpit got bored with spinning, though his head showed no intention to follow that shining example and stop hammering. He'd have to wheedle a couple more of those nice Tylenol-type things out of the medics just as soon as he got a second. For now, though…
John staggered aft and into a wall of stench, a potent combination of sweat, filth, blood and a bunch of components he didn't want to contemplate. Dead fish? Whoever his passengers were, they'd either had a really exciting time lately or their religion forbad the use of soap and water.
Apparently it also forbad motion. None of them had moved as far as he could tell. Suppressing a curse and doing his best to ignore the smell, he crouched beside that pile of bodies. Their clothes were soaking wet and there was a puddle forming on the floor of the aft compartment. Obviously at least water was familiar then. Grimacing, he eased the topmost body of the heap. The weight made it a woman and on closer inspection the curves were obvious. He turned her over, wiped matted, muddy hair off her face… and sucked in a gasp that was somewhere between shock and pure disbelief. Dirt-streaked as they were, Teyla's features might have been unrecognizable, but she'd been on his team virtually from the day he arrived in the Pegasus galaxy. Teyla was a part of home. She also was… his fingers reached for her neck, found a pulse, weak but steady. She was alive.
While he was still checking her for injuries, the person at the bottom of the heap groaned, a deep rumble, familiar in its grumpiness. "Get off-me!"
What was left of the heap started heaving, allocated sets of limbs to their rightful owners, and then someone tall and broad and unimaginably grubby sat up, dreadlocks dripping water. Ronon's eyes snapped as wide as saucers when he saw John, and he broke into one of those rare smiles. Not that feral baring of teeth that suggested whoever was around should go and mess with somebody their size, but a genuine smile. "Don't take this the wrong way, Sheppard," he growled, "but right now I want to hug you."
John grinned. "As long as you take a shower first."
"Just show me where" A little stiffly Ronon scrambled to his feet, stretched, did a quick, habitual scan of his surroundings and relaxed when he recognized the jumper. "Can't believe we finally caught a break," he mumbled. "'Bout time, too."
"How did you-?"
Before John could finish, Ronon pointed at the skull lying next to Teyla. "Yours. I'm guessing you twigged on to that whole business with the `keys'?"
"Yeah. Except, we ran out of body parts"
"We?"
"I've got Dr. Weir and Zelenka. The only one missing is-"
"McKay!" Ronon dropped to his knees and rolled that last sprawled form on its back.
Under the mudpack Rodney's face was ashen, drained of blood. The dirt stood out starkly from pale skin, and the shallow breaths he drew raised a soft wet whistle.
John suppressed a curse. "What happened?"
"What didn't happen?" snarled the Satedan. "He's cracked at least one rib, probably punctured his lung. The trip through that thing the wormhole turned into didn't help…" He flicked a glance at the overhead storage lockers. "You got any medical supplies left?"
"I can do better than that," John said. "We've hooked up with the locals, and they've got some pretty decent doctors here."
"Good."
Ronon's reply was overlaid by the hum of the rear hatch opening on Zelenka and Elizabeth Weir. The worried look on their faces changed to the same incredulous surprise John reckoned he'd worn a couple of minutes ago.
"Look what I found," he flashed them a quick grin.
"My God," whispered Elizabeth. "Are they okay?"
"They're a bit dented and they don't smell very good. Teyla's still out, Ronon's strictly unpresentable, but other than that…" He turned serious. "Rodney needs medical help right now."
Somebody had carried her. Somebody familiar, and her first reaction of anger at being taken for helpless had come up against a memory of that bone-crushing trip through the wormhole and faded to nothing again. Teyla hadn't been able to see what Rodney and Ronon had seen in the Stargate, but she'd gathered that something was wrong. Rodney had said there was no choice, that they'd surely die if they stayed. He'd been right, and she'd known it even then… but they'd come very, very close to not surviving. She'd felt the rage of Charybdis, whitehot rage at their stubborn refusal to let it run its course, and she'd felt eons of time folded into nanoseconds, different versions, different lives, all of them trying to pull her apart. It had been nearly as bad as those endless moments after Charybdis had roared into existence.
Now, as she slowly drifted toward consciousness a second time-to remain there, she promised herself-things didn't seem so bad at all. On the contrary. For the first time in what seemed like forever she was warm. Too warm, as a matter of fact, though that thought struck her as sacrilegious. She wasn't complaining. She was dry. She was warm. Not so long ago that had been all she wanted. At least in the short term…