"John?"
"We'll stay put and play possum for now. If we try to fly out, we might hurt more people, and there's no guarantee that they won't come after us with real weapons."
"You're right." Sighing, she settled back into the seat. "What do you think they're doing here in the first place?" she asked suddenly.
"Best guess?" He nodded up toward the sky that stretched red and riotous above the frantic mass of bodies outside the jumper. Somehow John didn't think that this was the usual state of atmospheric affairs on this planet-yet another version of Lantea, likely as not. "I'd say they're having some major natural disaster."
"Evacuees?"
"Yeah. Look at the gear they've got on them. Tents back there. Cooking fires. I mean, it could be some kind of citywide jamboree, but somehow I doubt it…"
It was a fact. Many seemed to have brought only the clothes on their backs, and they looked disheveled and dirty, as if they'd barely escaped with their lives from whatever had happened here. Others, who appeared to have had a little more advance warning, had brought vehicles-ground gliders, from what John could see-piled high with possessions ranging from bedding and cookware to ancestral portraits. So far, and discounting the righteous fury being vented on the jumper, either personal discipline or the authorities around here seemed to have been able to uphold the law, since there were no signs of looting.
"What do you think happened?" Elizabeth sounded tired, making conversation merely to stay awake-or to keep him awake, which probably wasn't a bad idea at all.
He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Flood, volcanic eruption, storms; hell, war, for all I know. Maybe they've got some kind of weapon that will do this to-"
For the first few seconds he thought his concussion had finally gotten the better of him. Trees, tents, rocks, everything around them began a slow-motion dance, swaying and heaving. Piles of belongings tilted lazily, as if deliberating whether to topple or not, some spilling to the ground, others somehow managing to find the rhythm of that odd motion and staying upright. A low, rolling noise filled the air, reverberated through the jumper, and seeped into his very bones, stirring up the marrow a bit.
Only when the people outside quit their concerted attack on the jumper and froze in their tracks, thunderstruck, wide-eyed, shouts stuck in their throats, John grasped that the phenomenon wasn't some kind of weird delusion. The shaking didn't stop, and suddenly, as if alerted by some silent signal, the crowd began to part, slowly at first but accelerating rapidly, like a wave rolling in to shore. Kicking and flailing, they shoved and jostled and scrambled over each other, trying to get away from whatever was coming. They weren't quite fast enough.
Weaving like a snake, the crack raced toward them at breathtaking speed, ripping the earth, widening into a maw as it went and swallowing everything and everybody that didn't get out of its way-goods, people, a ground glider that had been nosing its way through the crowd and now toppled sideways into the rift, its driver and passenger hanging on desperately.
"Oh my God!" Elizabeth gasped. "John, the gate!"
He'd realized the second she said it, felt fingers of ice running up his spine, hated the sense of utter helplessness. The fault was heading directly for the Stargate, and all they could do was sit there and watch. If they lost the gate, they more than likely lost any chance they'd ever had of making it back to their Atlantis. Then, as abruptly as it had begun to open, the fault stopped within scant feet of reaching the Stargate, leaving an eerie calm in its wake.
Time seemed to stand still, and the only thing moving was the dust that rose in silent coils above the chasm. Then, slowly and inexorably, the wails started and gradually built into a concert of misery. First it was the survivors crammed along the edges of the fissure, then there came other, fainter screams drifting up from below.
"John…" whispered Elizabeth.
"I know." The life-signs detector showed upwards of thirty people trapped in the abyss. And those were only the ones who had survived the fall. Even as John was staring at the detector's small screen, several of the bright blips winked out. "Crap," he muttered. "Hang on!"
The chasm was easily wide enough to fly a jumper in, and John did just that. Pulling up steeply, he turned into a loop, and then forced the nose of the little ship almost straight down, heading for the bottom. Within seconds he realized that he wouldn't get there. The further he descended the closer the walls grew, a gloomy prison of soil and rock-and remnants of a longburied structure.
"Atlantis," stated Elizabeth.
"Yeah."
It no longer came as a surprise and merely confirmed his earlier assumption that they'd come straight back to an othertimely version of the planet they knew.
At just over sixty meters down he was beginning to run out of space to maneuver in and slowed the jumper to a virtual stop. Hovering, he rechecked the life-signs detector. There should be two victims just ahead. Several others showed below his current position, and his throat tightened at the sight. There might be time to pick up ropes and helpers crazy enough to abseil from the jumper, but right now it made more sense to try and rescue those people who were lucky enough to be within easy reach. In the long run more lives would be saved that way.
"Get ready to open the hatch," he said to Elizabeth, who gave a sharp nod and hurried aft.
Squinting into the gloom, John eased the jumper forward. He didn't spot the victims until he was almost on top of them. Caked in dirt and unmoving, they could have been part of the earth, and it was impossible to tell whether they were male or female, though one of them definitely was a child. They lay slumped on a narrow ledge, with nothing beneath them but darkness.
And then there was movement; a pair of eyes snapped open, seemingly staring straight at him with a mixture of hope and terror. He swiveled the jumper around until it hovered at a right angle to the wall, with mere inches to spare at bow and stem, and carefully backed up until he nudged the rock just below the ledge.
"Now!" Peering over his shoulder, he watched as Elizabeth opened the rear hatch, admitting a small avalanche of dirt, tornoff roots, and pebbles into the jumper. "You need a hand?"
"No!" She didn't look back, but there was a smile in her voice. "I think we'll be fine."
The rescuees were mother and child, and they'd gotten lucky. When the ground had opened beneath them, they'd slipped rather than fallen, bouncing from ledge to ledge and root to root until that outcrop had finally stopped their slide. Between them they had all of two broken bones; all other damage-a comprehensive assortment of scrapes and bruises and plain shock-was relatively minor. John and Elizabeth plucked twelve more people off the fault walls, all in similar condition; the worst injury being what looked like a skull fracture. It made John wince in sympathy.
Some forty meters east and a little further down from their current position-it was going to be a very snug fit-the ground glider John had watched drop into the chasm was wedged between the walls. According to the life-signs detector both people aboard were still alive, and they were going to be the last victims he'd be able to pick up on this run. The approach was tricky, but he just about managed to ease the jumper into line with the bow of the glider.
From what he'd seen before maneuvering into place, the glider's windshield was broken, and the pilot lay slumped over the dashboard, bleeding from a head wound. The passenger was curled up in the foot well, and John thought he'd seen a twitch of movement-though, admittedly, it might have been a reflection. Neither of them looked as though they'd be able to make it over into the jumper under their own steam.