Free 02 - Reliquary by Martha Wells - (ebook by Undead)

restlessness, I suppose.”
    Teyla could understand that. She felt restless herself. “Do you truly
think… I cannot believe that the Ancestors would use this place to experiment
on humans, even if they meant to find a way to destroy the Wraith.”
    Kavanagh didn’t hesitate. “They wouldn’t. McKay’s an ass, but he’s right
about that. Frankly, they wouldn’t need to. Their science was so advanced, they
could run their experiments as simulations on artificially created genetic
material. They wouldn’t have needed human test subjects at all, much less
unwilling ones.”
    Teyla nodded, feeling a flash of relief. It was just one other learned man’s
opinion, but from what she knew of him, Kavanagh was a very unsentimental
person. She thought that he didn’t romanticize the Ancestors the way her people
and many of the expedition members did.
    He took a deep breath, putting his hands in his pants pockets. “There’s some
other factor here. Something we aren’t quite understanding, or interpreting correctly. You know, I thought I had it
earlier today, but now I’m not so sure.” He shook his head, started to turn away
back toward their shelter.
    Teyla heard stone click and slide, and reached out to steady him as his boot
slipped. He caught her arm, leaning heavily on it for a moment, then found his
footing. “Sorry,” he said. He lifted a hand to his head, saying a little
vaguely, “Maybe I’m more tired than I thought.”
    “You should go back and rest,” Teyla urged him. Like McKay, like all the
scientists, Kavanagh would work himself to exhaustion if allowed to. “We have
another long day tomorrow.”
    “I will,” he said, still sounding distracted. “Good night, Teyla.”
    “Good night, Dr. Kavanagh.” Absently scratching her arm, she watched him make
his way back toward their shelter, just a dark shape in the shadows. He had
spoken of “another factor” and she thought he was right. There was something
here they just didn’t understand yet.

 
 
CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    “This is odd.” Rodney crouched near the lip of the shaft, frowning at the
life sign detector.
    John, checking the safety rope for today’s descent, looked up sharply.
“What?”
    Rodney gave him that look. “Again, I point out that if I had seen indications
of a ravening horde of something, I would have said, ‘My God, Major, run!’
rather than, ‘This is odd.’”
    John rolled his eyes and deliberately turned his attention back to the safety
rope. “Fine, then. Golly gee whiz, Dr. McKay, what’s so odd on this lovely
morning?”
    So he was still jumpy. Last night hadn’t helped. John was used to Marines and
airmen, who slept when it was time to sleep. Scientists who got up every five
minutes and wandered around, he would never get used to. McKay’s ability to
function on little or no sleep for long periods of time was great when lives
were in danger, irritating when he was standing on the edge of your sleeping bag
chewing loudly on a power bar and contemplating the meaning of life and time or
whatever the hell he was doing in the middle of the fricking night. What made it
intolerable this time was that Kavanagh and Kolesnikova shared this bizarre
behavior. John had stopped asking people where the hell they were going when
Kolesnikova had replied with some annoyance, “I’m going to pee, Major, and I
didn’t think you all would like it if I did it in here.”
    And it also didn’t help that it was a lousy morning. The sky was dark and
overcast and the white-capped sea like dull pewter. The forest on the other side
of the Stargate’s platform was a brighter green against the purple-gray clouds,
and the wind blew sand through the ruins and across the plaza. John had taken
the jumper up into the atmosphere to look around and check the long range
sensors, making sure this coast wasn’t about to be hit by a hurricane or a tropical storm. All he had found
were ordinary rain clouds, and he had landed