Read Online STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air by James Swallow - Free Book Online Page B

feel it.” Telford used his hands to demonstrate the wingspan of an aircraft. “But I’m telling you, the moment you break through the atmosphere in an F-302 and you see the stars…” He paused, nodding to himself. “It’s incredible.”
    “Could I go for a ride?” asked Chloe.
    Telford nodded again. “Sure, I can arrange that.”
    Eli rolled his eyes. “So, Colonel,” he broke in. “You really have no idea where this nine chevron Stargate address is going to send you?”
    Telford was unfazed by the question. “No idea at all. But the Ancients built the Stargate with nine chevrons around it, and they weren’t the kind of people to do stuff just for show.” He took a sip of his drink. “It’s got to go somewhere.”
    “That’s a little vague, don’t you think?” Eli pressed. “I mean, when NASA did the moon shots, they could see where they were supposed to be going. You’re flying blind, here.” The room went a little quiet, and Eli realized that perhaps this was the wrong crowd for those comments. He glanced around, looking for support, and didn’t get it.
    “That’s true,” Telford offered, “up to a point. But the fact is, Columbus had no maps when he set off. People thought that Chuck Yeager’s airplane would explode if he tried to break the sound barrier. The first missions through the Stargate to Abydos, and then to Atlantis, they were all a roll of the dice. There’s always a risk.”
    “And if we don’t take risks, we don’t advance,” added Scott.
    “Well said,” nodded Armstrong.
     
    He ran out of numbers, and Rush’s hand stopped dead. Stepping back, he studied the whiteboard and his brow furrowed. Nothing had changed. The board looked almost identical to the way it had appeared before he erased it, the same lines of symbols and digits in Rush’s swift, looping hand, and more importantly the same damn solutions in the same damn places.
    The board loomed in front of him like a sheer wall, and that was exactly what it was. A blockade made of mathematics, stopping him from making that last step toward the solution. And as hard as he tried to force it, Rush could not find the connection that eluded him.
    You need Eli , said his wife’s voice. You know it. It doesn’t make you weak or wrong to admit that.
    Rush let out a sigh of exasperation, and reluctantly turned away.
    It was evening on the base, and the corridors were sparsely populated; even so, he didn’t register the handful of other people who passed him by, his focus buried deep in his own thoughts. Rush approached the officer’s mess. Despite what Young said, this couldn’t wait any longer. He was so close . Couldn’t the man understand that? And Eli, Eli Wallace could give him the boost he needed to surmount the last obstacle.
    Rush detoured through the mess hall kitchen and caught the sound of Young’s voice as he came closer. “We’ve also known for some time that the only way to unlock the ninth chevron was to solve the power issues.”
    Armstrong’s daughter replied immediately. “If anyone’s going to solve it, I think Eli will.”
    He stopped. The kitchen lighting was low, so Rush doubted that anyone was aware he was outside. Through the half-open door, in the mess hall beyond he saw Eli give a smug grin, playing up to the attention of the room. “Yes, it’s true. I’m Math Boy.”
    And all at once, the annoyance and the irritation churned up inside him, and Rush turned away on his heel, his face set in a stony grimace.
    “Doctor Rush?” He turned and saw the duty cook, an airman named Becker, offering him a food pack. He took it without comment and went back the way he had come.
    The quarters the Americans had given him on Icarus Base were basic but comfortable — twice the size of those given to the junior officers or the second-string scientists, apparently — but in truth, Rush had spent hardly any time in here during his weeks at the facility, returning only to crash out on the bed when