“You would think that’s how they got in,” Rodney said. “If you didn’t notice that someone’s wired their own controls to the original fixture.” He finished digging the angular control box out of the dirt, and held it up.
“Please don’t actually dig things up before I even get a photograph,” Daniel said, snapping a picture.
“I’m sorry, I thought we were trying to get in.”
“We are, but… ” Daniel clenched his jaw. “All right, you’re right, we have limited time, and this isn’t the part that matters most. So if that box was wired to the door panel, where’s the wire?”
“Wires burn,” Rodney said. “Especially in a high-oxygen atmosphere, which, hello. Actually I’m impressed that our scavengers managed to wire this thing up and run current through it without setting themselves on fire. Either they knew what they were doing, or they got awfully lucky.”
“Many people who make their living scavenging culled worlds know something about technology,” Teyla said. “But few would have the ability to measure the oxygen level in the atmosphere.”
“Wraith?” Ronon asked.
Rodney shook his head. “This isn’t a Wraith design.”
“The Travelers could do it,” John said.
“This could be theirs,” Rodney said. “I mean, pretty much anything could be theirs. Still, this is… weird.” The control box was heavier than seemed reasonable in his hand. “If the Travelers scavenged this, I’d like to know where they got it.”
“Weird how?” John asked sharply. “Weird as in it’s going to blow up in our faces?”
“No, the interesting kind of weird.”
“Like I said.”
“It’s not going to blow up,” Rodney said, reconnecting it to the door panel with a twist of insulated wire. “All it’s going to do is… ” He pressed one of the two triangular buttons, and was rewarded by seeing the door slide jerkily open. “Open the door.”
“That’s what you always say,” John said. He shone a light inside cautiously, and then stepped inside. On the other side of the door, another of the angular door panels was connected in place of the original Ancient controls.
“They pried the door open first, and then they rigged these controls,” Daniel said.
Rodney nodded slowly. “I hate to say it, but he’s right.”
Daniel gave him a sideways look. “You mean you hate to say it because that suggests that the site was used as a base by scavengers long enough for it to be thoroughly stripped?”
“No, I… never mind.”
Daniel was already shining a flashlight around the entry room. Stairs descended from the rear of the room further down; at least part of the installation was underground, then. The stairs were typically Ancient in design, with decorative cutouts in the railings.
Rodney waved a hand at the nearest lighting fixture, but it remained stubbornly dark. “Sheppard, can you turn the lights on?”
“Nope,” John said after a minute.
“Or the light switch might work,” Daniel said, thumbing a control panel.
Rodney squinted at it in the abruptly bright light. “Okay, yes. Clearly that’s a later addition to the site, too.”
“Similar design.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“What are we thinking?” John said.
“Not Wraith,” Teyla said.
“Definitely not,” Daniel said. He shone his flashlight around the room and walked a slow circuit of it, stopping once or twice to brush dust away from markings on the wall, all of which proved to be geometric and probably entirely decorative in function. It was mildly interesting as an example of Ancient decorative arts, but they had enough of those. He stopped at the top of the stairs and shone his flashlight down them toward the still dark lower level. “If there was anything in this room but the walls, it’s gone now. Let’s go see if they left anything downstairs.”
The stairs led down into darkness. Rodney took them cautiously, listening for any sound that might have been something large and taloned preparing to launch itself out of the shadows. The only sounds were mechanical, the soft thrum of water running through pipes and the occasional clunk of metal on metal.
He shone his light toward the noise, intrigued, and revealed one end of a long bank of pipes and metal tanks. “What have we got here?”
“You tell me,” John said, as the rest of the team came down behind them. Daniel was already investigating the machinery.
“Don’t touch that,” Rodney said.
“You know, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Daniel said. “I know not to press buttons.”
“Everyone says that, and yet they always press buttons.”
“So do you,” John said. “Let’s focus. What is this thing?”
“I can tell you right now it’s not Ancient,” Rodney said.
“Janus’s records didn’t say anything about experimental machinery,” Daniel said. “He said this was an observation post for a settlement.”
“I told you, it’s not Ancient. Believe me, I have seen examples of just about everything they ever built, and they didn’t build this. Between this and the lighting controls upstairs, which I’m pretty sure are incorporating high levels of neutronium… ” Rodney looked the machinery up and down, and couldn’t come to any different conclusion. “I’m pretty sure this was built by the Asgard.”
“The fact that it has Asgard writing on it might be a clue,” Daniel said.
“I would have noticed that in a moment,” Rodney said, craning his neck over Daniel’s shoulder to read. “It’s, okay, something about the settings—”
“Do not alter settings without authorization,” Daniel said. “Basically, ‘don’t press buttons.’”
“I knew that.”
“I thought the Pegasus Asgard didn’t leave their own planet,” John said.
“Well, they haven’t for a long time,” Daniel said. “Not since the Wraith went after them and they retreated to a single world.”
“A single toxic and unpleasant world,” Rodney said.
“Before that, though, they were exploring the Pegasus galaxy just like we are now. I’d guess they found this installation abandoned by the Ancients, and moved in.”
“It’s a lot cooler down here,” Ronon said, leaning back against the metal wall.
Teyla nodded. “We are some distance underground.”
“All right,” John said. “You two check this thing out. We’re going to keep an eye out upstairs in case our friends come back.”
Rodney settled down to examining the machinery, while Daniel took pictures of the various inscriptions along its length, most of which seemed to be warnings not to tamper with the device. “Like we’re doing right now,” Daniel said warily, shining his flashlight into the depths of the machinery but carefully not touching it.
“I’m not tampering. I’m examining. This looks like the original power supply,” Rodney said.
“Original?”
“Yeah, it’s dead, but this thing is still doing something. Ronon’s right that it’s cooler down here than it ought to be, and that’s not just being underground or the water running through these pipes. Feel the air coming out of these vents.”
Daniel held his hand very gingerly six inches from the air vent. “It’s blowing cold air.”
“Some kind of air conditioning effect.”
“Is that possible without electricity?”
“You can build an evaporative cooler, but I think there’s a backup power source somewhere in here. Enough to run the air conditioner, but not to activate the other functions.”
“What other functions do we think this thing has?”
Rodney sat back on his heels, considering the long bank of machinery. “I think what we’re looking at is some kind of climate control device.”
Daniel shone his flashlight down the length of the machinery, illuminating its curves and angles. “It’s a lot more primitive than most of the Asgard equipment we’ve seen.”