I've got it under control!

For foreverdirt mostly, I think.



Zelenka crooned to it softly in Czech as he worked, but commentary was in English - this was traditional working formula while in the labs and maintained even when everyone else had found other places to be. (Orders barked in Czech did little but intimidate scientists further, he had found; this was sometimes, of course, the point.)

"Possibly," he told it, "you are in need of panel beating, but I suspect dents and rust are all that holds you together. We will do what we can."

Stargate team 38 had found it on a desert planet, unusual energy readings and glint of metal in the sun. (It is true that there were unlikely to be thirty eight teams in Atlantis, but Radek considered the number unimportant. It was a team with two marines, linguist, botanist; the number was no doubt almost so high.) They had brought it back, a curiosity, and Radek had of course berated them for carelessness - for who knew what it was - even as he had started to assess damage, hypothesise possibilities for use.

It had become easier when metal had cooled after long term exposure to sun, when he had been able to brush away caked sand and observe structure; long after others had left the lab, which was a blessing. After seeing the shape, Colonel Sheppard would not have been pried away from lab with even Archimedes' lever. But he had been left alone with (yes) robot, and with his head inside the casing his songs had even more pleasing harmonics than the restroom two floors above the infirmary.

There was much work to be done if he was to fix it, and he was too tired to do more than simplistic repairs, but he could not rest until something was done, at least.

"Žijeme," he sang, as he started to replace the diodes down the left side, "Žijeme v hotelu Zlomených srdcí!"

(Unregarded circuits, deep inside Marvin's processors, flickered happily to life and started to hum.)