Title: The Monster That Challenged Atlantis!
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not even the ideas.
Notes: Written for the B-movie ficathon. Prompt at end of fic.
Notes 2: Minor spoilers for Grace Under Pressure (2x14).
Summary: Radek has an interesting day.

Radek was working quite peacefully in the main lab, conducting a set of diagnostics on a device that Rodney would never have allowed past his own desk if he had not been off-world on a mission with his team; Radek did not understand the man's enthusiasm, for his own off-world experiences were, generally speaking, enough to make him wish he need never leave the lab again.

His calm was disturbed when Miko ran in, more agitated than she usually got except in the presence of the great McKay, and cried out, "Dr Zelenka!"

Radek sighed a little and put down his notepad. "Now, Miko, how many times..."

"I am sorry, Radek, but there is... I was..." She flushes in embarrassment as she trips over her words, and because Radek remembers how that feels, he smiles at her and waits. "The city structural sensors, you know, and... there are things moving down there!"

Radek took a moment to suppress his flinch at the thought of all that ocean beneath them, the vast expanse, and Radek had been busy enough for most of his underwater adventure that he avoided panicking; but later, he lay in bed for hours and all he could do was shake.

"Sit down, Miko. Deep breaths." She did so. At one time Radek had been used to following orders, to doing as he was told without questioning, but he had gratefully accepted the democratic anarchy of international science laboratories, and so to find himself in this position was always disconcerting. "Now. Tell me what you have discovered."

He let Miko tell him about her discoveries, about the readings that she had taken and the implications she thought they held, and then he followed her to the lab where she had been working and went over everything for himself. Then he visited Dr Weir, and told her all about it.

"In conclusion," he said, "it seems that several large and probably living things have attached to the underside of the North Pier."

Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully. "And we don't yet know what they are."

Radek shook his head. It was one of the disadvantages of working with non-scientists, that they expected either too much or too little, that they either wanted to know why they hadn't been told earlier, or why there wasn't more information ready for them.

"Are they causing damage?" Elizabeth asked. "Or threatening our safety in any way?"

Radek had to sigh. He forced his voice to be patient. "We do not yet know anything more than I have already told you."

Elizabeth looked at him with a doubtful mien. "All right, Dr Zelenka. Please make this a priority, and keep me informed."

Radek accepted the dismissal with a simple nod, and got out of there fast.

Three hours later, he was embroiled in argument with three of his staff and almost wishing that Rodney was there to silence them all with imprecations about their mothers and general ancestry. "Quiet!" Radek yelled instead, and it worked, more or less.

"The sensors are about as sophisticated as the ones that start your windshield wipers automatically," said James with a sneer. Nobody deigned to answer.

"We need more information," Nancy stated, and crossed her arms emphatically. "We need to go down and take a look at these things. We won't get anything else until something happens."

"The puddlejumpers can go underwater," offered Miko.

The hell of it was, they were absolutely right. Radek took a deep breath. "All right. Miko, get set up, and I'll find someone to take you down."

She blanched a little, and Nancy glared at him, but Radek could not find it in himself to be sorry. There was no way that he was going to be the one to do it.

After another hour or so, during which Radek managed to eat lunch and finish his earlier diagnostics, the puddlejumper submerged, and it wasn't long before it was transmitting images back to the control room. Clusters of round objects, half a metre or so across, were attached to the underside of the city. There was no sign of what might have been setting off the motion sensors, but presumably there was some connection, so Radek talked Miko through using the grapple to bring back one of the objects for testing.

When the results of the testing came back, Radek pretended to himself that he did not in fact want to hide in a corner with a copy of Komensky's Labyrint until everything went away - something he had to do on a regular basis - and went to find Dr Weir.

"The biologists tell me that those things are snail eggs," he informed her, and was pleased to see her eyebrows raise in shock, just as his had.

"Godzilla-sized snail eggs," she muttered, and then asked, "Is it possible that they have been affected by our people's experiments?"

Radek was surprised by the question. He never exactly forgot that Dr Weir was not a scientist, but he tended to expect her to at least have realistic concerns. "Frankly, no. I have found that people are always jumping to wild conclusions concerning atomic reaction. Science fact and science fiction are not the same. Not in the least!"

Elizabeth frowned at him. "I see, Dr Zelenka."

Radek wanted to kick himself, and probably would once he was out of her sight. "I am sorry, Dr Weir, but you must understand that this situation is not, as far as I can tell, one in which I have any relevant knowledge. I think nuclear weaponry would be, ah, overkill, no?"

That won him a small smile. "Yes, of course. I would rather not kill off the indigenous wildlife, if it's at all possible." She paused, looked away, and tilted her head as if in deep thought. "We don't even know if anything will need to be done," she said slowly. "They don't seem to be causing any actual problems."

It was nice, Radek thought, that she could continue to be so optimistic, despite the improbable frequency of occurrence of Murphy's Law that they experienced in Atlantis. He himself was simply waiting to see the exact nature of problem that the things would cause.

Thus, Radek was unsurprised when a panicked call was broadcast from the North Pier. "A giant snail! It tried to eat Parker!" yelled an unfamiliar voice. Parker - if it was the man that Radek was thinking of - would be no great loss to the science team, but on general principle, he joined the rush of people towards the transporters.

It was very odd. He had somehow become one of the people who ran towards danger, at least in circumstances when he knew he could help. And he could, now; in this case, after the soldiers had shot at the huge creature - with little effect - Radek could seal off that portion of the city entirely, and a little more effectively than David's proposed ring of salt.

A short while later, Radek found himself in Elizabeth's office yet again, and he took a moment while drinking his coffee to observe her. Elizabeth's hair hung lower than usual, faintly greasy and tangled, and the make-up around her eyes was smudged. Usually, she did not allow the stress to show, and Radek felt almost privileged to be witnessing it. He wondered if this was how she looked during those last-minute department-head crisis meetings, if Carson or Teyla (or Sheppard or even Rodney) knew this face well enough to see it underlying the one she presented to the bulk of Atlantis every day, the fearless Doctor Elizabeth Weir, compassionate and diplomatic and always - but always - perfectly presented.

"All right," said Elizabeth, face set in hard lines. "I want those things gone and I don't particularly care how."

Radek nodded. "We are working on it."

Elizabeth did not appear to be reassured. "Do we need to recall the first team?"

What she was really asking was, should we get Rodney, who has come through so many times before. Radek could understand her need to ask the question, but the answer was still the same. "No, no, their mission is important." He sniffed disdainfully. "And despite what Rodney may tell you, the science department does exhibit some competence."

"Of course. I didn't mean to disparage your skills..."

Radek cut her off - sometimes, diplomacy was simply an unnecessary waste of time. "No matter. I should be working." He left, only seeing her nod from the corner of his eye as he turned away.

His next cup of coffee was sipped as the bulk of his hastily-assembled task-force threw ideas (and occasionally balls of paper) at each other. He had even called in a botanist for information on traditional chemical warfare, not that it was especially useful. Perhaps he missed Rodney, a little, because there was nobody else with whom the exchange of ideas, the back-and-forth, was so rapid, so vital, as if their neurons fired in rhythm and... Neurons used electricity. Electric shocks were nasty.

Radek stood, and his stool clattered to the floor. "We electrocute them," he said, and for a moment everyone in the room gawped at him. Then they got to work.

Time passed quickly for Radek, absorbed in work, attempting to electrically isolate the necessary areas, and he was surprised to hear Dr Weir's voice over the radio, telling him that it was two o'clock in the morning and she wanted to be woken as soon as he came up with something that would work.

"Actually, Dr Weir, we have a plan, and the programming is almost complete. We will be able to implement it in... perhaps thirty minutes."

"Oh!" Elizabeth's surprise filtered through the radio. "That's good to hear. Call me when you're ready to start."

He didn't call her for another forty minutes, because James managed to trip the power for the whole lab and so everything had to be rebooted and information recovered. "We are all tired," Radek told a tearfully angry Miko, "and mistakes are inevitable. At least this was not, ah. Permanently damaging."

James wisely remained silent.

Radek didn't really see the point of calling, but he knew that Elizabeth liked to oversee such things, and so he invited her to meet him at the entrance to the North Pier. The two Marines on guard duty were playing an idle game of cards, and jumped to their feet when he stepped out of the transporter. Radek was amused, but didn't show it.

He hooked up two naquadah generators to the semi-conductor lining of the external surface of the pier, and allowed Elizbeth to make the final connection. A sizzling sound was audible through the sealed doors.

"Is that..." Elizabeth's face wrinkled in distaste.

"Fried snail. Hopefully. Perhaps we should ask Dr Valjean to investigate."

"You think we'll need an anthropologist?"

"No, but she is French, is she not?"

Elizabeth chuckled.

There was a small balcony not far off which looked over the North Pier, so Radek led the way, and they stood at the railing together to survey the area. There were metre-wide trails of slime over a lot of the surface, which would probably be rather nasty to clean up, but apart from that, there was no sign of the beasts. Later, another jumper trip underwater would show no eggs remained attached to the city.

Radek slept in the next day. He was only just out of his bed when Rodney bustled back into the lab.

"Congratulations, you didn't destroy the city while I was gone!" the other man commented, pulling out two laptops and a powerbar and setting himself up at his usual desk. "Anything exciting happen?" he asked absently.

Radek thought about it.

"No. Not really."

My prompt was: The Monster That Challenged the World. An earthquake in the Salton Sea unleashes a horde of prehistoric mollusk monsters. Discovering the creatures, a Naval officer and several scientists attempt to stop the monsters, but they escape into the canal system of the California's Imperial Valley and terrorize the populace. I went WTF. Then I realised they meant giant snails, and all was well.