“We can lower you,” one of the Satedans said. “No problem.”
Radek nodded. “Yes, it will be safer that way.” He paused. “You are clear on your location?”
“Yes,” William said again. This stairwell had led into the Museum’s largest storage area — where large incomplete fossils were stored before restoration, according to one of the women who had been married to a scholar and had spent a fair amount of time in the underground areas — but the map she had drawn for them showed a corridor that led to the room where the Ancient artifacts had been stored. If it was blocked, there was another way around — but perhaps they would be lucky this time.
He stepped into the harness, waited while Sinclair double-checked the buckles and the rope, and stepped to the edge of the opening. “All right.”
“Go,” Radek said, to the Satedans working the winch, and William felt the harness tighten as it took his weight. “All right. Stay in radio contact, please, and do not take chances.”
I didn’t know you cared. William swallowed that remark as thoroughly inappropriate, and adjusted his grip on the rope. “Ready.”
“Now,” one of the Satedans called, and William stepped gently into the empty air.
He let the light play ahead of him as he descended, grimacing as it picked out the signs of destruction. The floor was strewn with rubble, thick with brick dust, and something had fallen on a pile of crates, shattering the top tier and spilling their contents. He recognized pieces of armature, broken stone, shreds of some kind of packing material. None of that was a good sign. If the Satedans had been trying to move their best pieces to safety, there was no telling where the ZPM or the crystals had ended up.
As his feet touched the floor and the rope came slack, he swung his light in a wider arc, surveying the pile of crates. Teeth glinted among the shattered wood, the smallest as long as his hand, seemingly dozens of them poking from a bony snout. Tusks curled up from the lower jaw, the skull poking out of the wreckage like a dragon half buried in its hoard. He let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a curse, and Radek’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” William said. “I — stepped wrong.” The rope slackened further, and he unclipped himself, watching as it slithered up and out of sight. “I think — ” He switched on the camera as he spoke, panning slowly across the threatening skull — one of the incomplete fossils, presumably — and around the rest of the room. “It looks to me as though they’d started to pack things up to move them out of harm’s way.”
Radek’s voice tightened. “Understood.”
William let the camera linger a moment longer on a cracked black case that looked like plastic. More bones had spilled from it, along with another, weirdly crocodilian skull, and his fingers practically itched to examine it more closely. He compromised on a couple of close-ups, then switched off the camera and turned to look for the door.
There were more crates in the way, undamaged ones, and for an instant he hoped the passage might be clear. Then he came around the last crate, and his heart fell. The door was there, and open, too, but beyond it was a tangle of wood and plaster. He swore under his breath and moved closer, letting the light play slowly over the chaos.
At second glance, it wasn’t quite as bad. The debris didn’t look entirely structural, or at least there was only one large beam that looked as though it had come from the ceiling. The rest might have come from the furnishings, might have been shelves and boxes and packing materials. And artifacts, too; he winced at the glitter of broken crystal among the mess.
Still, there was a bit of a gap, and the camera’s light seemed to show more open space beyond. He could probably fit through it easily enough, especially without a pack or any heavy gear — He curbed himself sternly. That was a stupid choice at the best of times, on Earth, say, on an ordinary dig somewhere in Western Europe. Here it was utter folly. He touched his radio instead. “Zelenka.”
“Yes?”
“The door’s partly blocked. I think I can get through without causing any more damage, but I’d like your opinion before I try it.”
“Hell and damnation,” Radek said, in Czech. There was a pause, and he went on in English. “Ronon and I will come down.”
William lifted an eyebrow at that. He hadn’t expected Ronon to be at the dig at all, much less to participate. Especially when he was easily the biggest person around, not at all the sort you’d normally want to have crawling around narrow spaces underground… But it was his planet, his homeworld, and that made a difference, too.
Ronon came down first, as though he was expecting attack, and Radek followed, muttering to himself in Czech. As he landed, his light caught the tusked skull, and he swore more loudly. Ronon turned, amazingly fast, reaching for his gun before he saw the skull and relaxed again.
“That’s Tsuzhur. She used to be in the Great Hall.”
“Is that her name or her species?” William asked, and Radek sighed loudly.
“Nickname,” Ronon said. “Where’s the door?”
William pointed, and followed as they ducked around the piles of crates. Radek studied the debris for a long moment, running his light up and down the one long beam, then examining the frame and the walls.
“Well,” he said at last, and shrugged. “I think it is stable. I am smallest — ”
“But I know what I’m doing,” William said. He unbuckled his harness, not wanting it to catch on anything in the rubble, and Ronon gave him an appraising look.
“He should go,” he said, and Radek shrugged again.
“As you wish.”
William edged into the gap, turning sideways to scrape along what felt like a wall, then went to hands and knees to pull himself through the last low gap. There were sharp things in the debris, and he felt his trousers tear, felt something else jab into the heel of his hand. That he stopped to check, but there was no blood, and he crawled out at last into a larger space. A few rows of shelves were still intact, and several more had been tipped over, leaning against the wall like dominos. Crystal dust glittered on the bare tiles, but the shelves were mostly empty.
“Oh, damn,” he said. He had known better, had known not to hope too much, but he never managed to be sensible about such things, and the barren shelves were like a blow. There had been a ZPM — here, in this room, according to the dataleaves; after everything they’d been through to get it, it seemed unfair to lose the prize.
He swung the light again, focusing more carefully. The tilted shelves were definitely empty, what had remained of their contents broken on the hard tiles, but there were still a couple of boxes in the closest upright shelves. They were made of the same black plastic as the broken cases in the fossil room, only intact, and he lifted the smaller one from its place. The latches had held, though the hinges felt weak, and he opened the lid with renewed hope.
It was an Ancient crystal, all right, long and narrow and pale gold, but a jagged crack ran all along one narrow face. He sighed, closed the lid again, and moved on. The next case had more crystals, dulled and chipped, obviously unusable.
“Lynn!” Radek’s voice sounded in his ear. “What have you found?”
“Sorry.” William stretched to take another case down from the top shelf. “There’s not a lot left, I’m afraid. I did find a couple of crystals that look like the ones you wanted, but most of what I’m seeing is damaged.”
There was a fractional pause, and then Radek said, “Keep looking.” His voice was scrupulously neutral.
William worked his way down the row of shelves that were still upright, and was not particularly surprised when most of the cases turned out to contain only damaged crystals. One small box held what looked like a single Ancient data crystal, and he tucked it, box and all, into the pocket of his jacket. Not that it was likely to be that much help; what they needed right now was power, weapons, ways to defend the city, not random information.