It sounded painful. He hadn't asked McKay about that because, well, frankly that wasn't the sort of thing majors in the USAF asked civilian scientists. But it had been niggling there in the back of his mind for a while now. Not that he was afraid of pain… he just wanted to know what to expect.
He was close to the Stargate now, he could feel the static prickling against his skin and smell the tang of ozone. Yeah, this was real. This was… crazy. At his side, a young lieutenant was watching him. Ford, was his name. He was SGC trained and had done this a hundred times, or so he'd said. And he was watching Sheppard now — waiting for him to baulk?
That wasn't gonna happen. "What's it feel like?"
"Hurts like hell, sir." The kid was deadly serious.
Crap. Sheppard hesitated on the brink, bracing himself. Suddenly Ford was grinning, turning his back to the wormhole like a kid at the side of the family swimming pool. With a whoop he flung himself in backward, and Sheppard knew he'd been taken for a ride.
Rolling his eyes he stepped through… and felt an awesome, ice-cold, stomach-dropping dive from 30,000 feet, slamming into a tight roll, and a screaming ascent at an angle that would shred the blades and-
Then he stepped out into a dark, vast room. It took a second to orient himself and shake off the effects of the ride — and to resist the urge to yell `let's do it again!' But orders were orders, and he had to clear the gate area. Moving carefully, trying to look everywhere at once, he saw the rest of his team milling around in awe. The place was astonishing, disappearing up into darkness. Mottled blue light seeped down from above, casting the curved, elegant design in shadows that stretched out in all directions. A wide staircase rose in front of him, leading to other levels and balconies that arched as if the place were a palace. Sheppard wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but this wasn't it. Perhaps he'd been expecting a place of war but this looked like a ballroom. In the dim light he could see Weir gazing around, as awestruck as any other member of the team.
Turning, Sheppard glanced at the Stargate and was surprised to see that it was different from the one on Earth. It looked more modern, if that was possible. The chevrons glittered blue, and the rim of the gate disappeared beneath the floor of the room in which they stood. There was no ramp.
"Teams one through four secure the immediate area." Sumner's voice came over the radio, and Sheppard glanced up to see him coming to stand next to Weir on the stairs. "Everyone else find an open space and plant yourself there until instructed otherwise."
Sheppard moved through the milling civilians toward the stairs. Someone seemed to have found a light switch, because as he moved small white lights were winking on all over the place.
"Who's doing that?" he heard Weir ask Sumner.
"Security teams, any sign of alien contact?" the Colonel barked into his radio. The answer was negative, but Sheppard didn't need to hear it. He understood exactly what was happening.
"The lights are coming on by themselves," he said quietly. The only person listening was Rodney McKay, who'd appeared out of nowhere and was blatantly ignoring Sumner's order to stay put while the security teams investigated. Sheppard decided to keep an eye on McKay, and together they crept up the stairs into what looked like the Atlantis equivalent of the SGC's control room.
Everything was covered with dust sheets. Sheppard smiled at the notion. Who knew aliens used dust sheets? It was strangely comforting, almost as if they'd been expected. But that was impossible…
From this level, Sheppard found he had a good view of the gate room. If that was what it was called. The last of the security teams were making their way through, blinking in astonishment and glancing around as they emerged from the high-octane ride.
"That's everyone," Sumner told Weir.
With a nod, Weir keyed her radio. "General O'Neill," she said. "Atlantis base offers greetings from the Pegasus galaxy." Sheppard smiled, and wondered how long it had taken her to come up with the line. That's one small step… "You may cut power to the gate. Weir out."
Nothing happened immediately, but then something slowly rolled out of the Stargate and came to rest at Weir's feet. What it was Sheppard couldn't quite make out, for at that moment the wormhole disengaged and the room was plunged into a deeper gloom. As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness he saw Weir bend down and pick up the object… It was a magnum of champagne.
"Bon voyage," read Weir on the label, "from General Jack O'Neill."
Sheppard grinned. Nice touch.
Taking a deep breath, Weir turned and looked at her team. Even from up in the control room Sheppard could feel the intensity of her gaze. "That's it," she said, her quiet voice carrying to everyone. "We're on our own.
And never had those words been so absolutely, incontrovertibly true. He wasn't sure if it was scary as hell or the biggest rush of his life. Both, probably.
It was more astonishing than anything she had dared to imagine. Never, not once, had she believed they would find Atlantis intact. At best she'd hoped for a vast ruin, undisturbed by looters and treated kindly by the ravages of time. At worst she'd imagined dust or a hostile reception from the descendants of the gate builders. But this… Elizabeth Weir tried to take it all in as she slowly climbed the stairs to the mezzanine level. She could see Sheppard and McKay already up there, their voices mingling with the constant chatter that drifted through the vast chamber and the stream of static and awed voices that came over her radio.
Her people were spreading out, exploring and securing this most alien of environments. The first humans ever to stand here! It was a giddying thought.
"They look like ships. Space ships!" an excited voice she didn't recognize burst over her radio. "Dr. Weir, you have to see this!"
She smiled at the schoolboy enthusiasm and kept walking up the steps. "I have a lot of things to see. Just be careful."
At the top of the stairs she realized what was fascinating McKay and Sheppard. They'd discovered what had to be a control room. McKay looked like a kid in a toy store, whipping off dust sheets and dashing from one bank of instruments to the next while muttering under his breath. He wasn't smiling, but she knew him well enough to recognize excitement when she saw it. Compared to his deadpan tension in the SGC control room, this was tantamount to a hurri cane. Sheppard on the other hand was more cautious, the center of calm to McKay's whirlwind of activity. The Major's eyes were moving across the controls, carefully watching them light up one by one.
As she stepped inside, he glanced at her and said, "I didn't touch anything."
"Relax, Major," Weir smiled. "It's like the entire complex is sensing our presence and coming to life." It was already clear they were talking about a technology that far surpassed their current understanding, but if they could just make sense of a fraction of it, the possible advances were beyond the power of her imagination.
"This must be the control room," McKay said, his brusque tone interrupting her musing. He was still moving, touching one of the consoles with nervous fingers. "And this is obviously their version of a DHD."
"Oh, obviously," Sheppard agreed.
But McKay wasn't listening, dashing back to another bank of lights. "This area could be power control systems, possibly a computer interface of some-