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gilascavePrevious parts are..uh.. in this lj. Yesterday.
Chapter Nine
The next day they were scattered around Carson's room. They'd determined that each of their beds could accommodate them all, but Carson's room had a window and was therefore the one they ended up spending the most time in.
John was sitting in one chair with his feet propped up on another, reading War and Peace. Rodney had no idea if he'd finished it once and was halfway through for a yet another time, or was still on his first reading. First Atlantean reading, anyway. Rodney was thinking about his latest version of the Theory of Unification -- and watching Carson sleep. Carson was proving over and over again that he was not a morning person; they'd quickly discovered that they had to let him go back to sleep after morning-sex, or he was grumpy all day.
As Rodney watched, Carson stirred and rolled onto his back. The blanket was wrapped around his hip and the motion had exposed his entire upper torso. The blanket was also nicely outlining Carson's lower half; Rodney decided this was better than unification. For now, at any rate. Until he could get his calculator and check some figures.
He let himself look at everything, taking his time. Curves of muscle, the jut of hip bone. The soft curve of his stomach and the wrinkle of fabric as the blanket was stretched not-tightly-enough over his genitals. Rodney thought about pulling the blanket back, even though he knew perfectly well what Carson looked like. Instead he let his gaze travel upwards, along Carson's chest and to his face.
With some surprise, Rodney saw that Carson was awake. He was staring at the ceiling, apparently unaware that Rodney was indulging himself. Rodney took advantage of the chance to look at Carson's face, thinking how he had never really been a beard man. He was rapidly changing his opinion, though.
Then he realised there was something odd about Carson's expression. He wasn't frowning, exactly, but he seemed intent. As though he were reading -- he looked like John did, only John had a book to stare at.
Oh. Of course. Rodney felt like a fool, and was glad he hadn't said anything out loud. "Hey," he said, quietly, not knowing if he would startle Carson or not.
But Carson just glanced over and raised an eyebrow. Rodney smiled.
"Morning, sleepy head."
Carson groaned and rolled his eyes, then pushed himself upright, scooting back to lean against the wall. Unfortunately he tugged the blanket up with him and let it cover his lap. Rodney frowned, but Carson seemed to miss the message.
"If people wouldn't insist on waking up at four in the morning," he began. Then he just shook his head. "It's a decent hour, now, for reasonable people to be waking up."
"What time is it?" The planet they were on had a 27 and a third hour rotation; no one had really adjusted to having an extra three hours and thirty three point three repeating hours every day. All the astrophysicists were still arguing over whether they should save up the point threes and have a longer seventh day of the week, or have a longer month once a year.
"It's nearly eight," Carson said. Rodney looked for the clock to verify the time; Carson shook his head and tapped his temple.
"That thing gives you the time, as well?"
"And temperature and, if I ask for it, a weather report. Don't," he added, giving Rodney a dark look. "I'm not asking. Go check the control center, if you want to know."
"Fine, be that way." Rodney sat back in his chair, pretending that he hadn't been about to ask. He was deeply envious, though. It hadn't occurred to him to ask what information was available on the maintenance interface. He'd had the impression it was just work orders and repair manuals. Even though Carson didn't seem to be enjoying it, Rodney thought that having all that information displayed right in your brain would be absolutely fantastic.
Wondering what other information there was, he gestured towards the ceiling and asked, "So. That's what you were looking at?" he asked, knowing he sounded as lame as it was possible to sound without asking someone what their sign was.
Carson nodded, and he looked tired. "Yes. There's a list. Murdoc and I are having a bit of a disagreement as to what counts as 'urgent' and what counts as 'get off your lazy arse and go to work'." He glanced over at them. "That's a paraphrase, by the way. It's not talking to me like...like I thought it was, before."
"Oh." Rodney sat upright and tried to keep himself from bouncing out of the chair. "So what's up? We could do that this morning. I'm going with you, you remember."
Carson gave him a long, unamused look. "I thought you'd tell me to stay in bed, instead of running off to work," Carson said.
Rodney stared at him, confused. Instead of playing with brand new toys? "Have you *met* me?"
"I want you to stay in bed," John offered. They both looked at him and he shrugged. "Not really, but I thought someone should say it."
Carson was just still staring at them, disbelievingly. "For the last five days you two have barely let me get dressed, much less do anything that resembles a fair day's work. Or even a fair half hour's work. Now all of a sudden we're going on a field trip to the saline vats?"
"Is that where we're going?" Rodney tried to recall what the saline vats were. Had they encountered them yet? He didn't remember anything that could be described as a vat of saline.
He heard Carson sigh. "Yes, that's where we're going. The below levels, but in an area we've been to before and it checked out as safe."
"Excellent!" Rodney clapped his hands and leapt to his feet. "What do we need? Is there another one of those tool belts you have? I need something to take notes with. What are we doing? What are saline vats, anyway?"
He trailed off as he realised Carson wasn't even trying to answer his questions. After a moment Carson looked at John. "Is this why you wanted me here? So you'd have someone to foist him off on occasionally?"
John shook his head. "That's why I decided to invite him to bed with me. I figured when he got like this I could distract him more easily if I could just kiss him."
"Does that work?"
"Pretty well," John said. "Not so much when he really gets going. But if you can catch him early, you can sometimes derail him for an hour or so."
Rodney had his hands on his hips and was giving them both equally not-amused glares. It wasn't as though John wasn't telling the truth, but he was making it sound like it happened a *lot.*
"Excuse me," he tried to interrupt them.
"So, you'll be wanting to grab your laptop? Or would a datapad do as well?" Carson asked him, and Rodney *knew* he was asking just to distract him again.
"Datapad?" That sounded positively star trekkian. God! Transporters, datapads, ray guns! What would they find next? Androids? Giant, glowing balls of light that ate your head?
OK, maybe they could pass on that one.
"Datapad?" he repeated, since Carson wasn't even getting out of bed. "Come on! You can't just say something like that then sit there just grinning at me. If you made it up I'm going to be very unhappy."
"Um," John cleared his throat. "Actually, Dr. Myers' team found them about a week before everyone left. I guess in all the chaos, not everyone heard about it."
Rodney stared in disbelief at John. He glanced at Carson, who had also obviously heard about it. "Am I the only one who didn't know? Does it not say 'Chief Science Officer' on my uniform?"
"You're not wearing your uniform," Carson pointed out, giving Rodney's waist-region a nod. Rodney thought there was something a bit odd about Carson's quirk of a smile, so he glanced down. Right. He was naked.
"Hang on." John walked over and held up his hand to Rodney's chest.
"Hey!" Rodney yelped, as he realised John was holding a grease pencil. But he held still as John wrote on him. Reading it upside-down, he saw John writing "Chief Science Officer" on Rodney's chest.
Rodney grabbed the pencil once John was through, and John held still as Rodney wrote on him. "Head Dork (Acting)."
"Hey!" John protested. He started to wipe at the writing and Rodney slapped his hand down.
Then he looked at Carson, who shook his head and backed away -- which meant he got out of bed and left the blanket where it belonged. Rodney and John advanced and Carson continued backing up. He ended up against the wall, however, and Rodney and John moved forward, trapping him there.
John took the pencil from Rodney, which Rodney protested but allowed.
"This is very much not necessary," Carson objected.
"Hold still," John commanded.
Amazingly, Carson held still. Rodney wondered if it was because he knew it was inevitable, or if it was the particular way John had said it. Rodney peeked downward, to check.
Yup. Tone of voice.
John finished writing on Carson's chest, and stepped back so Carson could look down. Rodney grinned. It said "Chief Medical Officer and Maintenance," in big letters. Underneath, in smaller print, it said "Ass Property of JS/RM."
"It's a good thing you didn't use a permanent marker," Carson said sternly.
"Why is that?" Rodney gave him an innocent look, and tried to remember where he'd left any of his sharpies. He was losing them pretty much constantly, but Radek had a talent for locating them. Radek wasn't here, of course, which meant he'd have to wait.
"You know, instead of working on any repairs, I think I'm going to sit by the window and watch the ocean. For eight hours."
Rodney pouted. "If I promise not to permanently deface your skin, will you show me the saline vats?"
"No marker, no tattoos, no anything," Carson said.
"Piercings?" John offered.
Carson looked at him, briefly. "I've already-- Look, I'm telling Rodney that he--"
"Where?" Rodney asked. He hadn't seen any piercings, and he'd had several thorough examinations of Carson's body. Hadn't seen anything that looked like a hole or grown-over scar, either, but he hadn't really been looking for those. He started trying to check the obvious spots.
"Do you *mind*?" Carson snapped, pushing Rodney's hand away from his nipple.
"Not until you tell us where," Rodney said.
Carson folded his arms and glared at him. "You'll have to figure it out on your own. But right *now* I am going to get dressed and get to work. Whether you follow or not is your own concern."
He stepped around John and headed to his closet. Rodney looked at John, who looked back and waggled his eyebrows eagerly.
"It's good to have a goal," John said.
"I thought our goal was to have sex in every square meter of Atlantis," Rodney said. But he went over to the dresser drawer he'd stashed some clothing in. John did the same, and they all proceeded to get dressed. Rodney tried to focus on the fact he was finally going to get learn how some of Carson's gizmos worked and how he went about fixing them.
"Not his ears," John said. Rodney looked up in time to see Carson pulling his head away from John's hand. "Well, not his *right* ear at any rate." John was trying to crane his head around to see Carson's other ear.
Rodney nodded. "One down, twenty seven to go." It was a completely random number, but it sounded good. He knew that by the time they reached 'seven' they'd have forgot which number they were on, anyhow.
Assuming Carson ever let them get to 'two.'
*********
"Stop that!" Carson snapped, hitting the modulator with the wrench.
"Stop what?" Rodney's voice came up the access tunnel at him, and Carson glanced down.
"Not you. The modulator isn't re-setting."
"So you hit it?" John asked from the hatchway below them both, sounding amused. "Is that in the manual?"
"Like you've never had to hit something to make it work?" Carson looked down, past Rodney. He could just see John's face as he peered up the tunnel.
He'd brought them here after spending all of ten seconds trying to talk them out of following him around. They'd been doing this for the last two weeks -- in between having sex in all sorts of places he'd rather not think about, and trying to get enough sleep they could have more sex.
Whenever there was some repair work Carson had to do, Rodney would leap up and find his tool belt and act for all the world like a six year old who'd been told he could help daddy in the garage. John, at least, made no effort to pretend he cared about the actual work. He said he was just coming along because it was more interesting than sitting alone in his room.
Carson knew he was really there to make sure no one got eaten by alien bugs; John was even wearing his side-arm. He'd tried explaining that Murdoc kept him away from things like the lab where the nanovirus had been kept -- and if he did have to go there, Murdoc would be able to warn him how not to release the things on accident.
But whenever he mentioned Murdoc, Rodney and John got weird looks in their eyes and seemed even more determined to follow him. So he'd stopped saying Murdoc's name and stopped trying to argue them out of following him. He'd even got a second tool belt from the maintenance workshop for Rodney to use. Not all the tools would work for him as he wasn't an official repairman, but Carson had simply removed those from the kit before handing it over.
It hadn't mattered -- Rodney never actually did any work until Carson had finished repairing the thing. He listened as Carson explained what he was doing while making the repairs, and he asked questions that demonstrated he at understood what was going on. But he never wanted to do any of the actual repair work himself.
As soon as Carson declared it fit, however, Rodney would swoop in and start pressing buttons and flipping switches. Carson had figured out quickly not to bother telling him what the thing did or how it worked. It kept Rodney more amused to play with it, so he and John would just sit back and let him.
Carson made sure not to try any repairs on things Rodney could blow himself up with.
So far things had gone more or less well. Rodney was happy, John seemed happy, and Carson didn't find himself thinking about home quite as often as he'd feared. He was a bit more tired than usual, but that had obvious reasons and ones he wasn't complaining about.
"Can I take a look?" Rodney asked, crawling up the ladder, pressing Carson against one wall. The tunnel was big enough for the two of them to be side by side, but the ladder itself wasn't. Carson sighed and hung onto the rungs, swinging towards the edge of the ladder while Rodney climbed up to look at the modulator.
"Don't fall," John said calmly, and Carson saw that he'd climbed into the tunnel, now, and was at the ladder just below where Rodney had been.
It occurred to him that there might be another place John wanted to add to their list of places Carson could no longer be in without blushing.
"What does this do?" Rodney asked, pointing to the em-detector.
Carson sighed, and didn't even bother double-checking the diagrams in his head. "It lets us know whether or not the level of helium in the atmosphere is too high."
"Helium?" Rodney frowned. "We've never detected any helium in the atmosphere; why would they need to regulate it?" He'd already stopped looking at the modulator and Carson wondered if he could squeeze past him to have another go at fixing it. Not yet, he guessed.
"This area of the city was often used for guests who needed the environments of their quarters to be adjusted for comfort," he began.
"That is *so* cool!" Rodney interrupted. "What else could they do besides add or remove helium?"
Before Carson could answer, John asked, "How do you know that?"
Carson looked down to find John frowning slightly at him. "It's in the schematics," he said. The same answer he gave every time one of them asked him how he knew something. Eventually they'd catch on, wouldn't they?
"But that's...doesn't seem like something a repairman would have to know."
"You have to know what a thing is and what it's used for, so you'll know if it's working properly."
John didn't look convinced, which didn't make much sense to Carson. But John didn't say anything, so Carson turned his attention back to the modulator. Rodney was still poking at it, and having no more success than he had. He waited patiently for Rodney to grow bored, so he could get back to working on it.
**********
Chapter Nine
The next day they were scattered around Carson's room. They'd determined that each of their beds could accommodate them all, but Carson's room had a window and was therefore the one they ended up spending the most time in.
John was sitting in one chair with his feet propped up on another, reading War and Peace. Rodney had no idea if he'd finished it once and was halfway through for a yet another time, or was still on his first reading. First Atlantean reading, anyway. Rodney was thinking about his latest version of the Theory of Unification -- and watching Carson sleep. Carson was proving over and over again that he was not a morning person; they'd quickly discovered that they had to let him go back to sleep after morning-sex, or he was grumpy all day.
As Rodney watched, Carson stirred and rolled onto his back. The blanket was wrapped around his hip and the motion had exposed his entire upper torso. The blanket was also nicely outlining Carson's lower half; Rodney decided this was better than unification. For now, at any rate. Until he could get his calculator and check some figures.
He let himself look at everything, taking his time. Curves of muscle, the jut of hip bone. The soft curve of his stomach and the wrinkle of fabric as the blanket was stretched not-tightly-enough over his genitals. Rodney thought about pulling the blanket back, even though he knew perfectly well what Carson looked like. Instead he let his gaze travel upwards, along Carson's chest and to his face.
With some surprise, Rodney saw that Carson was awake. He was staring at the ceiling, apparently unaware that Rodney was indulging himself. Rodney took advantage of the chance to look at Carson's face, thinking how he had never really been a beard man. He was rapidly changing his opinion, though.
Then he realised there was something odd about Carson's expression. He wasn't frowning, exactly, but he seemed intent. As though he were reading -- he looked like John did, only John had a book to stare at.
Oh. Of course. Rodney felt like a fool, and was glad he hadn't said anything out loud. "Hey," he said, quietly, not knowing if he would startle Carson or not.
But Carson just glanced over and raised an eyebrow. Rodney smiled.
"Morning, sleepy head."
Carson groaned and rolled his eyes, then pushed himself upright, scooting back to lean against the wall. Unfortunately he tugged the blanket up with him and let it cover his lap. Rodney frowned, but Carson seemed to miss the message.
"If people wouldn't insist on waking up at four in the morning," he began. Then he just shook his head. "It's a decent hour, now, for reasonable people to be waking up."
"What time is it?" The planet they were on had a 27 and a third hour rotation; no one had really adjusted to having an extra three hours and thirty three point three repeating hours every day. All the astrophysicists were still arguing over whether they should save up the point threes and have a longer seventh day of the week, or have a longer month once a year.
"It's nearly eight," Carson said. Rodney looked for the clock to verify the time; Carson shook his head and tapped his temple.
"That thing gives you the time, as well?"
"And temperature and, if I ask for it, a weather report. Don't," he added, giving Rodney a dark look. "I'm not asking. Go check the control center, if you want to know."
"Fine, be that way." Rodney sat back in his chair, pretending that he hadn't been about to ask. He was deeply envious, though. It hadn't occurred to him to ask what information was available on the maintenance interface. He'd had the impression it was just work orders and repair manuals. Even though Carson didn't seem to be enjoying it, Rodney thought that having all that information displayed right in your brain would be absolutely fantastic.
Wondering what other information there was, he gestured towards the ceiling and asked, "So. That's what you were looking at?" he asked, knowing he sounded as lame as it was possible to sound without asking someone what their sign was.
Carson nodded, and he looked tired. "Yes. There's a list. Murdoc and I are having a bit of a disagreement as to what counts as 'urgent' and what counts as 'get off your lazy arse and go to work'." He glanced over at them. "That's a paraphrase, by the way. It's not talking to me like...like I thought it was, before."
"Oh." Rodney sat upright and tried to keep himself from bouncing out of the chair. "So what's up? We could do that this morning. I'm going with you, you remember."
Carson gave him a long, unamused look. "I thought you'd tell me to stay in bed, instead of running off to work," Carson said.
Rodney stared at him, confused. Instead of playing with brand new toys? "Have you *met* me?"
"I want you to stay in bed," John offered. They both looked at him and he shrugged. "Not really, but I thought someone should say it."
Carson was just still staring at them, disbelievingly. "For the last five days you two have barely let me get dressed, much less do anything that resembles a fair day's work. Or even a fair half hour's work. Now all of a sudden we're going on a field trip to the saline vats?"
"Is that where we're going?" Rodney tried to recall what the saline vats were. Had they encountered them yet? He didn't remember anything that could be described as a vat of saline.
He heard Carson sigh. "Yes, that's where we're going. The below levels, but in an area we've been to before and it checked out as safe."
"Excellent!" Rodney clapped his hands and leapt to his feet. "What do we need? Is there another one of those tool belts you have? I need something to take notes with. What are we doing? What are saline vats, anyway?"
He trailed off as he realised Carson wasn't even trying to answer his questions. After a moment Carson looked at John. "Is this why you wanted me here? So you'd have someone to foist him off on occasionally?"
John shook his head. "That's why I decided to invite him to bed with me. I figured when he got like this I could distract him more easily if I could just kiss him."
"Does that work?"
"Pretty well," John said. "Not so much when he really gets going. But if you can catch him early, you can sometimes derail him for an hour or so."
Rodney had his hands on his hips and was giving them both equally not-amused glares. It wasn't as though John wasn't telling the truth, but he was making it sound like it happened a *lot.*
"Excuse me," he tried to interrupt them.
"So, you'll be wanting to grab your laptop? Or would a datapad do as well?" Carson asked him, and Rodney *knew* he was asking just to distract him again.
"Datapad?" That sounded positively star trekkian. God! Transporters, datapads, ray guns! What would they find next? Androids? Giant, glowing balls of light that ate your head?
OK, maybe they could pass on that one.
"Datapad?" he repeated, since Carson wasn't even getting out of bed. "Come on! You can't just say something like that then sit there just grinning at me. If you made it up I'm going to be very unhappy."
"Um," John cleared his throat. "Actually, Dr. Myers' team found them about a week before everyone left. I guess in all the chaos, not everyone heard about it."
Rodney stared in disbelief at John. He glanced at Carson, who had also obviously heard about it. "Am I the only one who didn't know? Does it not say 'Chief Science Officer' on my uniform?"
"You're not wearing your uniform," Carson pointed out, giving Rodney's waist-region a nod. Rodney thought there was something a bit odd about Carson's quirk of a smile, so he glanced down. Right. He was naked.
"Hang on." John walked over and held up his hand to Rodney's chest.
"Hey!" Rodney yelped, as he realised John was holding a grease pencil. But he held still as John wrote on him. Reading it upside-down, he saw John writing "Chief Science Officer" on Rodney's chest.
Rodney grabbed the pencil once John was through, and John held still as Rodney wrote on him. "Head Dork (Acting)."
"Hey!" John protested. He started to wipe at the writing and Rodney slapped his hand down.
Then he looked at Carson, who shook his head and backed away -- which meant he got out of bed and left the blanket where it belonged. Rodney and John advanced and Carson continued backing up. He ended up against the wall, however, and Rodney and John moved forward, trapping him there.
John took the pencil from Rodney, which Rodney protested but allowed.
"This is very much not necessary," Carson objected.
"Hold still," John commanded.
Amazingly, Carson held still. Rodney wondered if it was because he knew it was inevitable, or if it was the particular way John had said it. Rodney peeked downward, to check.
Yup. Tone of voice.
John finished writing on Carson's chest, and stepped back so Carson could look down. Rodney grinned. It said "Chief Medical Officer and Maintenance," in big letters. Underneath, in smaller print, it said "Ass Property of JS/RM."
"It's a good thing you didn't use a permanent marker," Carson said sternly.
"Why is that?" Rodney gave him an innocent look, and tried to remember where he'd left any of his sharpies. He was losing them pretty much constantly, but Radek had a talent for locating them. Radek wasn't here, of course, which meant he'd have to wait.
"You know, instead of working on any repairs, I think I'm going to sit by the window and watch the ocean. For eight hours."
Rodney pouted. "If I promise not to permanently deface your skin, will you show me the saline vats?"
"No marker, no tattoos, no anything," Carson said.
"Piercings?" John offered.
Carson looked at him, briefly. "I've already-- Look, I'm telling Rodney that he--"
"Where?" Rodney asked. He hadn't seen any piercings, and he'd had several thorough examinations of Carson's body. Hadn't seen anything that looked like a hole or grown-over scar, either, but he hadn't really been looking for those. He started trying to check the obvious spots.
"Do you *mind*?" Carson snapped, pushing Rodney's hand away from his nipple.
"Not until you tell us where," Rodney said.
Carson folded his arms and glared at him. "You'll have to figure it out on your own. But right *now* I am going to get dressed and get to work. Whether you follow or not is your own concern."
He stepped around John and headed to his closet. Rodney looked at John, who looked back and waggled his eyebrows eagerly.
"It's good to have a goal," John said.
"I thought our goal was to have sex in every square meter of Atlantis," Rodney said. But he went over to the dresser drawer he'd stashed some clothing in. John did the same, and they all proceeded to get dressed. Rodney tried to focus on the fact he was finally going to get learn how some of Carson's gizmos worked and how he went about fixing them.
"Not his ears," John said. Rodney looked up in time to see Carson pulling his head away from John's hand. "Well, not his *right* ear at any rate." John was trying to crane his head around to see Carson's other ear.
Rodney nodded. "One down, twenty seven to go." It was a completely random number, but it sounded good. He knew that by the time they reached 'seven' they'd have forgot which number they were on, anyhow.
Assuming Carson ever let them get to 'two.'
*********
"Stop that!" Carson snapped, hitting the modulator with the wrench.
"Stop what?" Rodney's voice came up the access tunnel at him, and Carson glanced down.
"Not you. The modulator isn't re-setting."
"So you hit it?" John asked from the hatchway below them both, sounding amused. "Is that in the manual?"
"Like you've never had to hit something to make it work?" Carson looked down, past Rodney. He could just see John's face as he peered up the tunnel.
He'd brought them here after spending all of ten seconds trying to talk them out of following him around. They'd been doing this for the last two weeks -- in between having sex in all sorts of places he'd rather not think about, and trying to get enough sleep they could have more sex.
Whenever there was some repair work Carson had to do, Rodney would leap up and find his tool belt and act for all the world like a six year old who'd been told he could help daddy in the garage. John, at least, made no effort to pretend he cared about the actual work. He said he was just coming along because it was more interesting than sitting alone in his room.
Carson knew he was really there to make sure no one got eaten by alien bugs; John was even wearing his side-arm. He'd tried explaining that Murdoc kept him away from things like the lab where the nanovirus had been kept -- and if he did have to go there, Murdoc would be able to warn him how not to release the things on accident.
But whenever he mentioned Murdoc, Rodney and John got weird looks in their eyes and seemed even more determined to follow him. So he'd stopped saying Murdoc's name and stopped trying to argue them out of following him. He'd even got a second tool belt from the maintenance workshop for Rodney to use. Not all the tools would work for him as he wasn't an official repairman, but Carson had simply removed those from the kit before handing it over.
It hadn't mattered -- Rodney never actually did any work until Carson had finished repairing the thing. He listened as Carson explained what he was doing while making the repairs, and he asked questions that demonstrated he at understood what was going on. But he never wanted to do any of the actual repair work himself.
As soon as Carson declared it fit, however, Rodney would swoop in and start pressing buttons and flipping switches. Carson had figured out quickly not to bother telling him what the thing did or how it worked. It kept Rodney more amused to play with it, so he and John would just sit back and let him.
Carson made sure not to try any repairs on things Rodney could blow himself up with.
So far things had gone more or less well. Rodney was happy, John seemed happy, and Carson didn't find himself thinking about home quite as often as he'd feared. He was a bit more tired than usual, but that had obvious reasons and ones he wasn't complaining about.
"Can I take a look?" Rodney asked, crawling up the ladder, pressing Carson against one wall. The tunnel was big enough for the two of them to be side by side, but the ladder itself wasn't. Carson sighed and hung onto the rungs, swinging towards the edge of the ladder while Rodney climbed up to look at the modulator.
"Don't fall," John said calmly, and Carson saw that he'd climbed into the tunnel, now, and was at the ladder just below where Rodney had been.
It occurred to him that there might be another place John wanted to add to their list of places Carson could no longer be in without blushing.
"What does this do?" Rodney asked, pointing to the em-detector.
Carson sighed, and didn't even bother double-checking the diagrams in his head. "It lets us know whether or not the level of helium in the atmosphere is too high."
"Helium?" Rodney frowned. "We've never detected any helium in the atmosphere; why would they need to regulate it?" He'd already stopped looking at the modulator and Carson wondered if he could squeeze past him to have another go at fixing it. Not yet, he guessed.
"This area of the city was often used for guests who needed the environments of their quarters to be adjusted for comfort," he began.
"That is *so* cool!" Rodney interrupted. "What else could they do besides add or remove helium?"
Before Carson could answer, John asked, "How do you know that?"
Carson looked down to find John frowning slightly at him. "It's in the schematics," he said. The same answer he gave every time one of them asked him how he knew something. Eventually they'd catch on, wouldn't they?
"But that's...doesn't seem like something a repairman would have to know."
"You have to know what a thing is and what it's used for, so you'll know if it's working properly."
John didn't look convinced, which didn't make much sense to Carson. But John didn't say anything, so Carson turned his attention back to the modulator. Rodney was still poking at it, and having no more success than he had. He waited patiently for Rodney to grow bored, so he could get back to working on it.
**********