A/N: Again, Sheppard and McKay wouldn't shut up, so I just let them play. Blame them, not me. Warning for Sheppard's potty-mouth and McKay's almost-potty-mouth, but it's mild so I'm not upping the rating. ;)

I just want to thank all my loyal readers who have stuck with me during my hiatus, and a special thanks to the handful of readers who were willing to go back and read parts of old chapters in order to refresh their memories. You guys rock my socks off!

A very special thank you to my wonderful beta aaobuttons, who makes my stories worth reading. Also, only you could tempt me with spoilers and have me love you for it! (If anyone's interested, check out the spoilers for the episode "Echoes" on GateWorld, it's a hoot! E-mail me and I'll send you a link.)

oOo

After about an hour of chasing down strange sound readings only to come up empty handed, Sheppard was getting ready to call it quits.

"Look, McKay, I'm not saying we should pack it in for good, but it's going to get dark soon. Besides, don't you want to get back? They're serving your favorite tonight!" Sheppard tempted.

"While I'll admit that I'm not exactly happy about missing Meatloaf Surprise night, I am willing to bravely face the prospect of hypoglycemic fatigue in the name of science." McKay replied, holding his head high and playing the martyr.

"Yeah, well maybe I'm hungry, did you consider that? You ate both your Powerbars and the only one I had!" He snarked back.

Not willing to give up on the search, at least while a little daylight remained, McKay looked for a way to convince Sheppard to stay out just a little longer. "Look, Sheppard, you've got to admit that we've made some valuable discoveries out here."

He grinned wistfully. "Yeah, those half-shark, half-iguana things were cool."

"If by 'cool' you mean 'terrifying and reminiscent of creatures created by Dr. Moreau,' then yes, they were 'cool.'"

A familiar female voice cut into their argument and buzzed in Rodney's ear. "Dr. McKay, please switch to a private channel."

"What, again?" He was getting used to Whale-Sam calling to have a private "chat" whenever she wanted to offer advice on the search or just generally mess with his head.

"Just do it, McKay," came her exasperated reply.

"Fine," Rodney spat, switching his radio frequency.

"Who is that anyway? And why does she keep calling you?" Sheppard asked, confused.

"Um…Just some new scientist brought over on the Daedalus. You don't know her." Before Sheppard could reply, McKay tapped his radio to connect. "Yes, what do you want now?"

"Now now, Rodney, is that any way to greet somebody who saved your life?" she chided humorously.

"It is when I'm tired and that certain somebody has been sending me on wild goose chases for the last hour," he replied snippily.

Sam heaved her put-upon sigh across the radio. "Listen, I was just going to tell you that I agree with Sheppard, you should probably head back. Trust me, you don't want to be around when some of the nocturnal creatures wake up and come out to play. Besides, I think one of your sensors is broken."

Rodney's brain stopped conjuring images of sea monsters to focus on the problem at hand. "Wait, which sensor?"

"The one Zelenka installed. From out here, it looks like a few wires are disconnected."

Rodney immediately began running a diagnostic on the piece of offending equipment, and the results were returned with an angry beep from the computer. "Of course," he groaned.

"What's wrong?" Sheppard asked.

"The power conduit to one of the sensors has been knocked loose. It probably happened when you were driving around in frantic circles, trying to see your own bubble trail," he said pointedly.

"Okay, I'll admit that I may have been a little…over exuberant in the use of resources, but you've got to lay off the 'Colonel German Sheppard' jokes."

"What? All I said was there are better uses for an Atlantian mini-sub than chasing your tail for ten minutes. Although, if I were to carry the analogy to its logical conclusion, the next thing I know you'll be bent over, trying to lick your—"

"Aht!" Sheppard held up a warning finger. "We're agreed, no more dog jokes. Ever. Now, what's the big deal with this sensor? We've still got one working one, right?"

"The 'big deal,' Colonel, is that we can't determine the location of the sound." Rodney glared at Sheppard's blank expression, obviously perturbed at his lack of understanding. "Look, the sensors work like your ears…Okay, well maybe not your ears, Spock, but normal people's ears." He completely ignored Sheppard's offended shout. "Sound reaches each ear at different times, usually only a split second apart. Your brain uses that difference to determine what direction the sound came from. With only one working sensor, we have no way of determining the direction we need to travel to find the sound source."

"Okay, so let's fix it," Sheppard shrugged.

"How?" Rodney snapped. "It's on the outside of the Jumper!"

"Okay, I get it!" Sheppard rolled his eyes in exasperation. "And from now on, no dog jokes OR ear jokes. And nothing about the hair, either!" he added hastily just as McKay opened his mouth to speak.

"If you're done…" Sam's irritated voice buzzed in his ear, "I think I know someone who can help us. Stay here."

There was a click as the connection closed, and all Rodney could manage was a confused, "What?"

The HUD sprang to life, showing a large blip moving quickly away from the Jumper. "Uh, Rodney? I think we just lost our whale." Letting out an aggrieved sigh, Sheppard started to turn the Jumper around. "That's it, we're going home."

"No!" Rodney put a hand on the controls, effectively stopping the Colonel in his tracks. "We have to stay here."

Sheppard looked baffled. "Why? Our equipment is shot, our whale has lost interest, we have no way to find the source of the sound, and I can hear your stomach growling from here. The view is great," Sheppard sarcastically added, motioning to the blackness outside, "but other than that, I really can't see why you would want to stick around any longer!"

Rodney was stuck on how to respond, so he answered with the first thing that popped into his head. "Will you just trust me?"

And there it was, the word he'd been dreading ever since Duranda. Sheppard just looked at him for a long time, quietly mulling over his response. Judging by the narrowing of his eyes and the way he cocked his head suspiciously, Rodney was sure his answer would be no, but then, slowly, Sheppard asked, "Rodney, you'd tell me if Atlantis were in some kind of trouble, right?"

"Absolutely," was McKay's immediate response.

Sheppard nodded then, and took his hands off of the controls. Leaning back in his chair, he propped up his feet and said breezily, "Okay, then we'll stay."

Rodney felt the corner of his mouth turn upwards in a surprised smile, and he settled back in his chair along with Sheppard, to wait.

oOo

About twenty minutes later, the HUD came on automatically, rousing McKay from a half-doze. He spied four life signs approaching, and slapped Sheppard in the leg, waking him with a snort.

"Hello," Sheppard greeted the blinking lights warily. "That's new."

The two men sat forward in their chairs, watching the dots as they drew closer and closer to the ship. One stopped several meters from the Jumper, but the other three continued their approach. "If I'm reading this thing correctly, they should be right in front of us. Can you see anything?" Sheppard asked.

McKay turned off the HUD and squinted into the water along with Sheppard, each of them inching closer to the windshield of the Jumper until their noses almost touched the glass. Unable to see anything in the murky, deep water, Rodney was about to answer in the negative when three glowing blobs blinked into existence like light bulbs and zoomed forward, hitting the glass right in front of his face with a rapid thud-thud-thud.

"Gah!" Both men yelped and fell back into their chairs. The life forms looked like the result of a freak high-speed collision between a jellyfish and an octopus, and Rodney could see the suckers where they had attached themselves to the glass. They were each glowing green, blue, and orange, respectively. As Rodney watched they began slowly crawling across the windshield until they disappeared around the edge of the Jumper.

"Well, that was…interesting," Sheppard remarked, nonplussed. "What were those things? Octojellies?"

"Stop channeling Ford. We can name them later." McKay rolled his eyes and began pressing buttons on his data pad, having just realized what side of the ship they had disappeared to. Calling up his diagnostic program, it beeped happily. "Ha! I knew it!"

"What?"

Rodney showed him the green flashing results of the diagnostic program. "They fixed it!"

Sheppard just looked at him in much the same way he had looked at the blobs, right after they crashed into the windshield. "You mean…those glowing octojelly things fixed the sensor?"

"I thought we agreed that was a terrible name."

"You're just jealous you didn't think of it first. And would you please explain to me how glowing jellyfish with suckers and tiny brains managed to locate and fix our sensor for no apparent reason?"

Rodney frowned. "Sheppard, I—"

"No! You know what, don't even bother with the excuses, McKay." Sheppard was kicking into full angry rant mode. "I said I'd trust you, but trust goes both ways. You've been acting weird all day, talking to yourself, going on this bizarre 'save the whales' quest, and you obviously know more about what's happening here than anyone else. So tell me, McKay, what the hell is going on?"

"Oh, come off it, Sheppard. You know exactly what's going on." A decidedly female voice came from the back of the Jumper, and both men yelped in fright, turning to see Sam standing there in all her pink-uniform-attired glory.

She looked past them and raised her hand in a wave, calling, "Thanks guys, I owe you one. Now get home before dark, or your mother will have my hide." Turning, McKay saw the three glowing octojellies wave goodbye with their sucker-covered arms, then their lights faded as they turned themselves off, and they shot off into the navy blue waters. Sighing, Sam added, "They're so cute when they're that age. It's a shame they grow up to be giant squids."

Recovering himself enough to speak, but apparently not enough to form coherent sentences, Sheppard pointed to Sam, looked at McKay, and asked, "Is that…?"

"Colonel Carter?" McKay finished. "Not exactly…"

"Actually, I was going to ask if that's the alien whale in Carter's form, but—"

He blinked. Then blinked again. "Wait, you KNEW?" Rodney's shout filled the Jumper.

"Wow," Sheppard continued, oblivious to McKay's outburst. "She's a babe."

"Standing right here!" Sam added.

"How could you know?" Rodney continued, incredulous.

At Sheppard's guilty look, Sam answered for him. "He's known the whole time. He woke up that night I visited you in the infirmary. When my pod showed up today and you started running all over Atlantis trying to help me, he put two and two together."

McKay glared daggers at the Colonel. "'Trust goes both ways?'" He repeated Sheppard's words acidly.

"Look, maybe I just wanted you to tell me I wasn't crazy! I'd had some strange food that night, and I thought maybe it was just some weird alien-taco-induced dream."

"Of course," Rodney rolled his eyes. "The old 'alien-tacos-made-me-delusional' defense," he countered, liberally applying the air quotes.

Sam held up her hands. "Enough, you two! We've got bigger issues to deal with right now." She indicated the data pad beeping insistently in McKay's lap.

"We've got a signal," he announced proudly.

"Can you tell where it's coming from?" Sam asked, moving to stand by his chair.

Pressing a few more buttons, Rodney answered, "It looks like it's coming from somewhere around…here." He initiated the HUD once more, showing a bright red dot near the ocean floor on the coast of the mainland.

Sam bit her lip anxiously. "I don't know, Rodney. Are you sure you can make it there and back before dark?"

McKay glanced at Sheppard for confirmation, who looked out into the water as if calculating how much longer the lingering traces of daylight would last, and how much of that light would reach the Jumper at those depths. He almost missed the manic gleam in those eyes that was so typical of Sheppard's sense of adventure over-riding his "danger-dar." McKay refused to admit that he probably would see that same look in his own eyes if he had a mirror at the moment. "Oh, yeah," Sheppard replied confidently. "We'll be there and back in time for supper."

"We've already missed supper," McKay replied, his stomach adding a helpful growl.

"You know what I mean," Sheppard gave him a look and retrieved a Powerbar from his pocket, handing it to McKay.

Rodney took it with grateful, but narrowed, eyes. "I thought you said you didn't have any more left?" Sheppard didn't even bother to try looking innocent as he shrugged. Rodney mumbled past a mouthful of chocolate-chip Powerbar, "When we're done here, you and I need to have a little talk about 'trust.'" Sheppard just grinned and rolled his eyes, unfazed.

oOo

After several minutes' descent, Sam had started looking pale and complained of a headache. McKay told her to hang back and let them go on alone, and she predictably had refused.

"Look, we've got to be on the right track," McKay argued. "But it will only slow us down if we have deal with you while you're all green around the gills."

"Whales don't have gills, Rodney. And I feel fine," she retorted, loosing any sense of credibility when she swayed slightly and had to grab McKay's outstretched arm for support.

Taking the brunt of her weight as she leaned in to him, Rodney answered softly, "No, you're really not. Now just stay here. You're no good to us like this, and you're only hurting yourself."

"I don't understand!" Sam replied, groaning. "This shouldn't even be happening! Even if my body gets sick, my projection should still be okay."

Rodney's concern grew. "All the more reason for you to stay here. We still don't really know how this signal is affecting you."

Meeting his eyes, she reluctantly nodded. "All right, Rodney, just…be careful." With a fiendish grin only slightly hampered by her weakened state, she added, "And Godspeed!"

McKay rolled his eyes as she dissolved into thin air, silently wishing he didn't have such a thing for sarcastic blonds.

A few minutes later, he was also wishing he didn't have such a directionally challenged pilot.

"You're bearing too far right! Turn back."

"I am not! Look at the screen, McKay."

"I am looking at the screen, and you're too far right!"

"Fine, have it your way," Sheppard turned the Jumper left. "Better now?"

McKay paused for a second as he studied the screen and calculated their new bearing, then cleared his throat self consciously. "Actually, I, uh…Now you're too far left. Turn back to the right."

Sheppard rolled his eyes and did as instructed, barely withholding the "I told you so" threatening to burst out. Instead, he chose to ask, "How much further, McKay?"

"Not too much further now. We're almost to the caves."

Sheppard's eyebrows shot up, even if his voice sounded a little too calm. "Caves?"

"Yes, the caves. Didn't I mention the caves?"

"No, McKay, you seem to have left that part out. How exactly am I supposed to pilot the Jumper through a network of caves?" No sooner had the words left his mouth than the HUD brought up a complete map of the cave system, with the best routes highlighted in green. Sheppard beamed, "I love this thing."

"Yes, yes, we can set a date for the wedding later. Right now, just pick a route and go."

After several minutes of navigating deep into the tunnels, the HUD showed a brief blinking life sign just in front of them, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Rodney and Sheppard both stared at the screen, hoping the blip would rematerialize, but it never did. "Huh," he finally said, unable to express his confusion more eloquently.

"Malfunction?" Sheppard offered hopefully.

McKay just shot him a withering stare. "It's a finely tuned piece of technology built by an advanced race of uber-geniuses."

"I take it that's a no," Sheppard replied. "And aren't you usually the one pointing out that the Ancients obviously aren't all they're cracked up to be, seeing as how they got beat by the Wraith and all?"

McKay's biting rejoinder was cut short as the life signs detector beeped again, showing that whatever was out there, it looked like it was right on top of them. While their eyes were still locked on the HUD, something brushed past the side of the Jumper. They both froze as the slow scraping noise went on forever, gently rocking their tiny ship. When it had finally passed, Rodney released the breath he didn't even know he'd been holding. "So," Sheppard said quietly, "not a malfunction." As if in answer, the life sign blipped again, showing that the creature was behind them now. "What do you think, McKay? Another whale?"

Rodney shook his head numbly. "I don't think so. It sounded…bigger."

The blip appeared again briefly, this time farther away from the ship. "Well, whatever it is, it's moving away from us. I think we're in the clear." He began moving forward again, slowly and cautiously, into the black of the cave.

"Sheppard, what if there are more of those things down here?" Rodney began, gazing into the dark water as if he could distinguish their shape.

"I don't think so. I'm guessing that guy's at the top of the food chain around here, and I doubt he wants to share his territory."

Sadly, that thought only sent McKay's over-active imagination spiraling in new directions of panic, and he locked wide eyes on Sheppard. "But what if he's not the top of the food chain? There could be something bigger down here, and we wouldn't even see it coming! The tunnels could be creating some sort of interference, blocking them from our sensors! It would explain the sporadic life sign readings."

"Just try to relax, Rodney. I'm sure the gigantic scary sea monster is just as scared of you as you are of it."

"Thank you, that's very comforting," McKay replied, sarcasm heavy. Just then, Sheppard leaned forward slightly in his seat, as if spying something.

"Hey, what's that?" Sheppard peered out the front of the Jumper.

Rodney snapped his eyes to the front window, expecting to see another giant sea monster headed their way. Instead, he was struck dumb, and his jaw immediately dropped in awe. "Oh my god," he breathed.

"Exactly," Sheppard agreed with a similar expression.

There before them, lit up like a Christmas tree, was a small domed structure. There was a tall spire attached to it on one side, and several circular docking ports near the base, perfectly designed to accommodate the back hatch of a puddlejumper. "Is that what I think it is?" Sheppard asked.

"I hope so, or Mensa can claim the dumbest genius in two galaxies."

Sheppard's face beamed. "It's an Ancient outpost."

"That's not all," Rodney added with a matching smile, "It's also the source of the signal."

oOo

A/N: Isn't foreshadowing fun? I know, I know, evil cliffhanger, but I'll do my best not to leave you hanging for long. ;)