“Just the person we need,” he said.
Radek turned and regarded him dubiously over the rim of his glasses. “It is never a good sign when people say that.”
“The team out at the alpha site is having equipment problems. Weird ones. What about the water trailer?” he asked over the radio.
“It’s fine so far.”
There was something about this that was nagging at Lorne. “Stand by, Sergeant,” he said. “You too, doc.” He called up a view of the pier on the security cameras. Several tents were set up there, anchored with some ingenuity to the available supports. All of them looked structurally sound despite the chill wind that was whipping across the pier.
“Lt. Winston?” he said over the radio.
“This is Winston.”
“Have you been having any problems with the tents you set up on the pier?”
“No problems, sir,” Winston said. “All of them check out fine. I really think that the damaged equipment must have been mishandled. You’d be amazed how much damage Marines can do to supplies, sir. They’re beasts.”
“Let’s not start an inter-service war over some tents falling apart,” Lorne said.
“No, sir,” Winston said, sounding at least a little chastened.
Lorne switched the feed over to Anthony at the alpha site. “Sergeant, is any of your personal gear also damaged?”
“Let me take a look at my pack,” Anthony said. “Son of a bitch.”
“I’m assuming that’s a yes.”
“The strap tore when I picked it up.”
“Sir, my watch band broke,” PFC Harper said over the radio.
“Just snapped?”
There was a momentary pause. “Actually, it looks kind of melted,” she said.
“Okay. Sit tight. I’m going to get one of the scientists out there to figure out what’s going on.”
“You think it’s some kind of freaky radiation or something?” Anthony asked. He sounded more than a little nervous. “We ran all the standard scans.”
“Run them again.”
He turned to Radek. “My team out at the alpha site has their gear mysteriously falling apart. Several tents, water cans, a watch band, and the straps on Wilson’s pack. No unusual radiation, weird glowing rocks, people aging a hundred years in a day, or anything else out of the ordinary.”
“The people appear unaffected?”
“They seem fine. The jumper itself seems to be working fine. So does a water trailer we sent out.”
“Let us see what the radiation scan shows. In the meantime—"
“Yes, get coffee, go.” He waited while Harper fired up the jumper and used its systems to scan for unusual radiation levels or any other change from the baseline readings. Radek was back, travel mug in hand, by the time Anthony came back on the line.
“Nada,” Anthony said. “Nothing. But something weird’s happening out here. We’re not going to start falling apart, are we?” His voice rose to a perceptibly higher pitch.
“Calm down, Sergeant,” Lorne said. “You’ve already been working out there for hours, and you’re fine, right?”
“So far!”
“Just sit tight, and we’ll figure this out,” he said.
There was the sound of discussion in the background, and then Anthony said, “Harper just took another look at the water trailer.”
“Let me guess,” Lorne said. “It sprung a leak.”
“No, sir. But all its tires are flat.”
Radek leaned in to speak into the microphone. “It sounds from what you are telling us that all the gear that is affected is plastic or synthetic materials.”
There was brief discussion on the other end of the line. “I think you’re right,” Anthony said.
“You want to go out there and take a look?” Lorne said.
Radek hesitated, and then switched off his radio.
After a moment, Lorne did the same. “What?”
“I will send someone. But whoever we send will need to stay on the planet until we find an answer. I would prefer to remain in a position to analyze whatever data they can transmit to us here in Atlantis.”
“If there’s some kind of weird effect, we should get our people out of there.”
“If it were some form of radiation, I would agree with you, but the jumper’s scans say no. I will send someone to confirm that, but we have no reason to believe the jumper itself is malfunctioning.”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“So, either this is some effect we do not understand at all — in which case we should quarantine the affected personnel just as a precaution — or there is the possibility that I like the least. That we are dealing with some kind of microorganism that specifically attacks plastic and other synthetic materials.”
“That would be bad,” Lorne said after a moment.
“Yes. We have hazmat gear, but—”
“But it’s made of plastic,” Lorne finished. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ve been out to the alpha site. And in the supply depot with the equipment they brought back.”
“Have you noticed any effect?”
Lorne examined the soles of his shoes, and pulled out a plastic-coated pen from his pocket. He tried bending it experimentally between his hands, but it didn’t give in response to gentle pressure. “Apparently not.”
“Maybe I am wrong, then. Or maybe it requires longer exposure.”
“All right,” he said. “Get somebody out there and let’s figure this out. And get the linguistics people to step up trying to translate the inscriptions they found on those rocks. If whoever was there before left us a message, it’s starting to sound important to figure out what that is.”
Teyla could see the moment John saw Elizabeth, the moment he stopped, swallowing hard, and stood as if frozen in place as Elizabeth began to cross the square toward him. He had lost too many people, Teyla knew, too many friends and teammates dead or gone, never to return except to haunt his dreams. He had the expression of a man unsure whether he was dreaming or waking, and unsure, if it was a dream, whether at any moment it might turn to nightmare.
“Colonel Sheppard,” Elizabeth said.
He nodded wary acknowledgment. “Elizabeth?” he asked cautiously.
“It’s me,” she said, and then embraced him before he could say any more, a long, hard hug. “At least, I think it is,” she said, releasing him.
“That would be the problem,” he said.
She turned up her hands. “I know. You don’t know where I came from or who — or what — I really am. I asked Dekaas — he’s one of the Travelers’ physicians —”
“We met him,” Teyla said, coming up to them with the rest of the team trailing behind her. “He was the one who sent us here.”
“He ran tests to try to find out if I was human, and as far as he could tell, I was. But I know our equipment back in Atlantis is a lot more sophisticated.”
John nodded. “We’ll get Carson to meet us at the alpha site so that he can start checking you out.”
Elizabeth’s whole body went tense at once, all the openness draining from her expression. “Carson Beckett is dead.”
“It is a long story,” Teyla said.
“I’m sure it is,” Elizabeth said, but she took a step back from them. “I’d like to hear it.”
“At the alpha site,” John said.
“Before I go anywhere with you.”
“We need to go ahead and get you to the alpha site so that you’re somewhere we can secure until we’re sure that you’re really Elizabeth Weir.”
“Believe me, I understand that,” Elizabeth said, but she had that stubborn set to her jaw that Teyla remembered well.