By Way Of The Stars
The first official crossover story featuring the main characters from
Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis
A three part novella published in
The Official Stargate Magazine,
issues 28, 29 & 30
By Way Of The Stars
Part One
The mission was a bust. Surrounded by bare walls, SG-1 stared dispiritedly at each other. Every time they thought they were getting close to finding the Sangraal, they ended up with a big fat pile of nothing.
Mitchell turned away from the others’ disappointment and gazed out the closest window. The view hadn’t changed any; acres and acres of flat grassland stretched away in every direction until it blurred into the horizon. The only movement was the tall grass bending in swirling waves under the relentless wind. The building they’d gated into with such high hopes was the only feature to be seen. It would take days, maybe weeks, of walking just to get far enough to confirm there was nothing else on this planet. Sam’s scans couldn’t even find an underground bunker that might hide a secret weapon or two.
“Jackson. You’re sure this is the right address?” he asked. Cam tore his gaze away from the hypnotic view.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Daniel’s voice was tinged with resignation and a hint of irritation.
Cam sympathized. Weeks of research in stuffy English libraries and the end result was…grass.
“I’m still curious about what else you got up to in that ‘supposed’ library, Daniel,” Vala said suspiciously.
Daniel scowled at her, and she took cover behind Teal'c. He glanced at Cam. “The style of the building definitely suggests Ancient design, but the lack of—”
“Anything to relieve the boredom?”
Daniel quelled Vala with a full-on glare. “The lack of any signs of habitation suggests it was abandoned before it was ever used. That ‘supposed’ library was the pre-eminent research facility dealing with Arthurian lore.” He switched his focus back to Vala without pause. “And how can you be bored? We’ve only been here three hours.”
Vala narrowed her eyes at him, and Cam cut her off before she could start a row. “Sam, you got anything?”
Sam shook her head and looked up from her scanner with puzzled frustration. “Just this odd reading of power. Wherever the source is it must be shielded. I can’t even find a door.” She turned off the scanner and returned it to her pack. “I don’t see what else we can do.”
“Yeah, no door, no UAV to scan the rest of the planet.” Cam shook his head. He caught Daniel’s attention, and he too nodded his agreement. “Okay, I’m calling it. Dial us out of here.”
Daniel cast one last look over the empty room and stepped up to the DHD. Cam ushered Teal'c and Vala, conspiratorially muttering together, ahead of him. Sam joined him, and the four of them followed Daniel through the wormhole.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cam felt awareness return as the Stargate loosened its grip on him. Delivered, he stepped forward, only to lose contact with the floor. While his brain tried to comprehend why he was drifting, his open mouth filled with bitter water. Sensations bombarded him from all sides: there was no air, he was submerged in water – rank, freezing, salty – through which very little light penetrated. Alarmed, he clamped his mouth shut, brought his weapon up and thumbed the light on.
Beside him, Sam was a blurred shape outlined by the glow from the wormhole as she drifted away from him. Her gun light joined his, and they clasped hands. A few feet below them lay a metal floor, a path cleared by the forming wormhole bordered by growths of what looked like coral. Above, he could make out the legs of his team, kicking them toward a dim rippling of the surface. Cam pushed Sam ahead of him and surged hard upwards.
Lungs burning, it was impossible to judge the distance, but suddenly he broke the surface and dragged in a huge breath. Coughing echoed around him.
“We all here?” Water splashed in his mouth. He choked and spat. “Sound off!”
“Here,” Sam called, a few feet to his right.
“Here.” Daniel’s voice echoed beyond Sam.
“I am here.” Teal’c was off to the left. Cam could just make him out in the middle of a whole lot of splashing. “As is Vala Mal Doran.” Teal'c added. “Please do not struggle. I will not let you go.”
“You’d better not, muscles.” Vala’s voice was tight with anxiety. “Where are we? I’m guessing this isn’t Earth, unless General Landry decided to put in an aquarium. What did you do?” The last she directed at Daniel with an annoyed smack of water.
Daniel spluttered, paddling closer to the pool of lights, glasses clutched in one fist. “I dialed Earth, same as always.”
Cam glanced down at the blue glow of the Stargate, just in time to see it shut off and bring darkness close around them. “Okay. So. Not Earth. Sam, what the hell happened?”
She craned her head back and directed the gun light into the gloom above them. Bare metal walls and ceiling loomed around them. “Beats me. Somehow the ’gate on P9H 506 misdirected Earth’s address,” she said.
“We are fortunate we only ended up in this situation,” Teal'c murmured.
“I’m not feeling particularly grateful, actually,” sniped Vala, coming closer to Cam as Teal'c towed her along. “In fact, I’m cold and starting to prune.”
“Could have been worse,” Doctor Pessimism offered.
“Worse? There’s worse than being stuck in a fishbowl?”
Daniel grinned evilly for a moment. “Vacuum of space, planet with no atmosphere, boiling lake of larva….”
Vala stuck her tongue out at Daniel, and clung even tighter to Teal'c’s vest.
“Judging by the marine growth on the floor down there, I’d say this place has been flooded for sometime,” Sam said.
“Yeah. Well, doesn’t look like anyone’s home. I think we should leave before the Creature from the Black Lagoon shows up.” Cam tuned out Vala’s startled query. “I’ll go dial out. Get ready to come down if I get the ’gate open.”
He took several deep breaths, then dove, letting the weight of the P-90 pull him through the cold, murky water. It was twenty, maybe thirty, feet down to floor level. Orienting on the Stargate’s approximate position, Cam directed the light to the most likely location of the DHD, and was rewarded with a vague mushroom shape just visible within a forest of slowly waving kelp. Exhaling a little, he kicked toward it, grabbed one of the upswept edges and hauled himself to face the dialing platform. The rest of the air in his lungs escaped in a drowned curse. Cam batted away drifting plant fronds and pushed off for the surface.
Four expectant faces illuminated by their slanted lights stared at him. Cam sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the dread building in his chest.
“Let me guess. The DHD is broken?” Vala sent another glare at the hapless Daniel.
“Not exactly. There aren’t any symbols on it. It’s just a blank face, like they forgot to finish building it.”
“Or someone removed them?” Daniel asked.
Cam nodded. Either way, they weren’t gating home any time soon.
The five of them bobbed in the water. Vala, Cam noted, was wrapped around Teal'c’s neck like a limpet.
“You can swim, Vala. I remember you passed all the tests.” He grinned as Teal'c arched an accusing eyebrow at her.
Vala smiled sweetly. “Of course I can swim. But I don’t float. I don’t have the figure for…buoyancy.”
“Uh huh. Okay. Plan B. We need to get back to dry land.” Cam eyed the wavelets lapping the featureless metal walls around them. Beyond the pool of their lights darkness hugged the room, and he couldn’t see any way out. Treading water, he turned in a circle, searching in vain.
“Extinguish the lights,” Teal'c spoke suddenly.
Cam paddled over to him. “What’ve you got?”
“A glimmer of illumination, perhaps.” Teal'c switched off his gun light, and the others followed suit.
Blackness smothered them and brought with it a primal fear that Cam had to deliberately eradicate with reason. Everything’s fine. Just floatin’ in a metal box, in the dark. No biggie.
“There!”
“I can’t even see you.”
“Thirty degrees to your right, Colonel Mitchell.”
He propelled himself around and stared hard. Dark walls, dark water, dark in between. The breathing of his team, the little splashes they made, and the echo of water against the walls were enhanced by the blackness. He blinked moisture out of his eyes. There – a faint pinkish glow rose out of the depths by one wall, roughly opposite the Stargate’s location.
“Got it. Could be an opening, Teal'c,” Cam grinned. Jaffa-trained senses were so damn useful. He shielded his eyes. “Lights on!”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Teal'c volunteered to investigate the glow and in short order was back to announce the light was seeping through a shaft which led to another, larger room. Cam assembled his team, made sure each was secured to the next in line, and gave Teal'c the go-ahead.
Bringing up the rear, Cam saw the dim outline of first Teal'c, then Vala, Daniel and Sam vanish into an opening in the wall some ten feet below the surface. He followed Sam’s boots, air dribbling slowly from his nose as he batted aside drifting fronds of plant life. Guided by Teal'c’s sure strokes they entered a tunnel, the floor caked in fine silt already stirred up by the others’ passage and leaving him near to blind. An upward tug from Sam told him they were through, and he pushed for the surface.
“Daniel, it’s in my hair.” Vala’s objecting voice greeted Cam, along with air tasting stale and slightly fishy. He took in their new surroundings: another huge metal room, easily the size of an aircraft hangar, the walls of which were layered in marine growth all the way up to a ceiling barely discernable in their lights.
“Well, hold still and let me get it off.” Daniel was trying to free whatever was snagged in Vala’s hair. “It’s probably just seaweed…or…oh. Um. Got it!”
Daniel flung the offending object away. It plopped down, then rose up in a fan of water and disappeared back into the depths, leaving a foot-high entry splash.
“What was it?” Vala demanded.
“Nothing.”
Cam grinned. Jackson was the worst liar he’d ever met.
“Oh, I think that certainly was something. I felt it moving.”
“It was just a little fish…thing.”
“It had legs, didn’t it?”
“It’s gone now,” Daniel offered placatingly.
“I’d really like to get out of here,” Vala said brightly. “Now.”
“Good idea.” Cam played his light over a mound of marine growth that rose out of the water along one wall. Paddling closer, the structure of it looked suspiciously uniform. “Is that a staircase under all that stuff?”
Sam dug at the growth with her knife and revealed a shiny metallic sub-structure. She grinned at him in the wavering light. “Definitely man- or alien- made.”
The encrusted stairway rose up the wall to join what Cam could just make out to be a walkway, ten feet below the ceiling. “Here goes.” He let his P-90 hang from its harness, and cautiously got a grip on the coral. It was rough and slimy, but felt rock hard. With a secure foothold he began to crawl gingerly upward. By the time he reached the top his hands were stung and bleeding, and the bite of the air on his wet skin set him shivering.
“C’mon up,” he called down. “Not much up here but at least it’s dry.”
The rest of SG-1 scrambled, slipped, pushed and pulled each other up and joined Cam to explore the walkway.
“I don’t think we’re getting out of here anytime soon,” Sam announced after a detailed examination. “And these growths….” Even this high up crustaceans covered the walls. She traded a concerned look with Cam. “If they’re anything like Earth’s corals, I’d expect they spend a significant amount of time under water.”
“Oh, don’t need to hear that! See if you can raise anyone on the radio.”
Sam raised her eyebrows at him.
“I know, it’s not SOP but I’d rather not find out how much air is left in here when the water rises.”
As Sam worked her way through the radio frequencies, Cam joined Daniel and Vala, peering down into the vast space of their confinement. “Spot something?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Daniel waved a hand at the water. “The phosphorescent glow – I don’t think it’s created by the plant life. It seems to be moving.”
Vala shifted back a couple of steps. “As long as it doesn’t move up here.”
“Cut the lights, guys.”
Without their illumination the room wasn’t as dark as he’d expected. As his eyes adjusted, Cam could make out clusters of tiny blue glowing objects, unmistakably progressing under their own power. Elsewhere, other larger creatures appeared: brilliant red tentacles on one, a soft pulsing green blob, an electric orange stick-fish that darted along in fits and starts. Wonder filled him as he discovered more and more amazing animals. “Whoa.”
Sam gave up the unacknowledged radio calls and joined them.
“It would appear there are currents of considerable strength,” Teal'c observed, appearing at Cam’s side.
Awed by the colorful display, they watched in silence as the bright animals launched themselves into the clouds of tiny creatures, apparently feeding while the school was swept through the cavernous space. On reaching the far side, the blue glow dimmed as they descended and eventually disappeared. Once the prey vanished, the large fish dispersed, their gaudy colors fading into the depths.
“Huh. If those little critters were sucked along by a current, then that would suggest….”
“Intake and outlet capabilities,” Sam finished for him. “This might be part of a cooling system, or power generation facility.”
“Uh, any idea why we’re glowing?” Vala blurted.
Cam looked at her, then Daniel, then down at his own clothing. Sure enough, all five of them were covered in streaks and spots of luminous gunk. Mostly it covered their clothing, but Vala sported a wide streak of red through her hair, where the creature had been entangled.
“This substance would appear to be generated by the marine life,” Teal'c dryly noted.
Vala’s eyes widened and she grabbed at her sodden pigtails. “Oh, yuck.” She dropped her pack and began to dig through its contents. “Join SG-1 they said. See new planets, meet interesting people they said. They didn’t say you’d end up half drowned and covered in something squeezed out of an alien fish’s bottom.” She pulled out a sterile wipe and a hair brush, and set about repairing the damage. “Just remember, I gave up a successful career in treasure hunting for this.”
“Successful?” echoed Daniel, earning himself a haughty glare.
“Perhaps the predators in the water use the substance to identify potential food sources,” Teal'c continued.
Cam tore his attention away from the orange and white giraffe sticking out of Vala’s pack. “Right. Let’s stay out of the water then. Look for a door. There’s gotta be some way out of here.”
They prowled the walkway around all four walls, but were unable to find anything.
“Not even an air vent.” Frustration mounting, Cam followed Teal'c back to where the stairs began.
“There has to be a way out. Why else would the staircase be here?” reasoned Sam.
“You know where I would put a door if I were the designer of a big metal room full of water?” Vala stood, hands on hips, staring at the thickest part of the coral growth. “Right by the stairs so I could run away when the water starts to rise.”
“That actually makes sense.” Daniel peered closely at the tightly woven organic matter. “Guys, I can feel a breeze coming through here.”
Cam let out a whoop of delight. He drew his knife and started to chip at the barrier. The others joined in. It was slow going but eventually they opened a hole large enough to reveal an opening in the wall. He squinted past Teal'c’s light and saw a passageway beyond. “Bingo! There’s a hallway out there, and it’s not covered in this stuff.”
Teal'c, Sam and Vala joined him in a vigorous attack on the coral, but Daniel pulled back, a frown on his face.
“None of this makes sense.”
“Jackson, for now sense doesn’t matter. We’ll get out of here, find whoever’s at home and work out a way to get back to Earth.”
“But, we shouldn’t have been able to ’gate here in the first place. The DHD on P9H 506 didn’t misdial. The Stargate wasn’t hit by any kind of electrical surge that could bounce us here instead of the SGC. We dialed one address and arrived at another. Stargates just don’t do that.”
“What’s your point?” Cam grabbed a loose chunk and pulled with all his might. It popped free and fell to the walkway with a thump.
Daniel started pacing, his voice filled with concern. “The DHD was tampered with. Someone, somehow, programmed it to dial this address instead of the one entered.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Vala asked.
“They’d need a pretty good understanding of the DHD,” added Sam.
“Yes, they would.” Daniel stopped and stared at them.
“Colonel Mitchell!” Teal'c made a sudden grab for the hole they’d created. “The coral is re-growing.”
“What? No!”
Sure enough, the coral was slowly reforming, inching in over the considerable gap they’d made. Cam stared at it, and caught a flicker of light from beyond the resealing doorway. “Uh, oh….”
“I think the Ancients did it,” Daniel continued. “Either to protect Earth by diverting to here anyone who dialed Earth’s address….”
“Ah, we’ve got company coming.” Cam could see multiple lights moving toward them.
“…or they purposely directed the wormhole here when Earth’s – or any other for that matter – address was dialed, to protect the location of this world.”
“Jackson! Put a sock in it,” Cam hissed.
The lights were close, accompanied by a mutter of voices. Then one voice rang out, shocking them all.
“Daniel?”
Part One
The mission was a bust. Surrounded by bare walls, SG-1 stared dispiritedly at each other. Every time they thought they were getting close to finding the Sangraal, they ended up with a big fat pile of nothing.
Mitchell turned away from the others’ disappointment and gazed out the closest window. The view hadn’t changed any; acres and acres of flat grassland stretched away in every direction until it blurred into the horizon. The only movement was the tall grass bending in swirling waves under the relentless wind. The building they’d gated into with such high hopes was the only feature to be seen. It would take days, maybe weeks, of walking just to get far enough to confirm there was nothing else on this planet. Sam’s scans couldn’t even find an underground bunker that might hide a secret weapon or two.
“Jackson. You’re sure this is the right address?” he asked. Cam tore his gaze away from the hypnotic view.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Daniel’s voice was tinged with resignation and a hint of irritation.
Cam sympathized. Weeks of research in stuffy English libraries and the end result was…grass.
“I’m still curious about what else you got up to in that ‘supposed’ library, Daniel,” Vala said suspiciously.
Daniel scowled at her, and she took cover behind Teal'c. He glanced at Cam. “The style of the building definitely suggests Ancient design, but the lack of—”
“Anything to relieve the boredom?”
Daniel quelled Vala with a full-on glare. “The lack of any signs of habitation suggests it was abandoned before it was ever used. That ‘supposed’ library was the pre-eminent research facility dealing with Arthurian lore.” He switched his focus back to Vala without pause. “And how can you be bored? We’ve only been here three hours.”
Vala narrowed her eyes at him, and Cam cut her off before she could start a row. “Sam, you got anything?”
Sam shook her head and looked up from her scanner with puzzled frustration. “Just this odd reading of power. Wherever the source is it must be shielded. I can’t even find a door.” She turned off the scanner and returned it to her pack. “I don’t see what else we can do.”
“Yeah, no door, no UAV to scan the rest of the planet.” Cam shook his head. He caught Daniel’s attention, and he too nodded his agreement. “Okay, I’m calling it. Dial us out of here.”
Daniel cast one last look over the empty room and stepped up to the DHD. Cam ushered Teal'c and Vala, conspiratorially muttering together, ahead of him. Sam joined him, and the four of them followed Daniel through the wormhole.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cam felt awareness return as the Stargate loosened its grip on him. Delivered, he stepped forward, only to lose contact with the floor. While his brain tried to comprehend why he was drifting, his open mouth filled with bitter water. Sensations bombarded him from all sides: there was no air, he was submerged in water – rank, freezing, salty – through which very little light penetrated. Alarmed, he clamped his mouth shut, brought his weapon up and thumbed the light on.
Beside him, Sam was a blurred shape outlined by the glow from the wormhole as she drifted away from him. Her gun light joined his, and they clasped hands. A few feet below them lay a metal floor, a path cleared by the forming wormhole bordered by growths of what looked like coral. Above, he could make out the legs of his team, kicking them toward a dim rippling of the surface. Cam pushed Sam ahead of him and surged hard upwards.
Lungs burning, it was impossible to judge the distance, but suddenly he broke the surface and dragged in a huge breath. Coughing echoed around him.
“We all here?” Water splashed in his mouth. He choked and spat. “Sound off!”
“Here,” Sam called, a few feet to his right.
“Here.” Daniel’s voice echoed beyond Sam.
“I am here.” Teal’c was off to the left. Cam could just make him out in the middle of a whole lot of splashing. “As is Vala Mal Doran.” Teal'c added. “Please do not struggle. I will not let you go.”
“You’d better not, muscles.” Vala’s voice was tight with anxiety. “Where are we? I’m guessing this isn’t Earth, unless General Landry decided to put in an aquarium. What did you do?” The last she directed at Daniel with an annoyed smack of water.
Daniel spluttered, paddling closer to the pool of lights, glasses clutched in one fist. “I dialed Earth, same as always.”
Cam glanced down at the blue glow of the Stargate, just in time to see it shut off and bring darkness close around them. “Okay. So. Not Earth. Sam, what the hell happened?”
She craned her head back and directed the gun light into the gloom above them. Bare metal walls and ceiling loomed around them. “Beats me. Somehow the ’gate on P9H 506 misdirected Earth’s address,” she said.
“We are fortunate we only ended up in this situation,” Teal'c murmured.
“I’m not feeling particularly grateful, actually,” sniped Vala, coming closer to Cam as Teal'c towed her along. “In fact, I’m cold and starting to prune.”
“Could have been worse,” Doctor Pessimism offered.
“Worse? There’s worse than being stuck in a fishbowl?”
Daniel grinned evilly for a moment. “Vacuum of space, planet with no atmosphere, boiling lake of larva….”
Vala stuck her tongue out at Daniel, and clung even tighter to Teal'c’s vest.
“Judging by the marine growth on the floor down there, I’d say this place has been flooded for sometime,” Sam said.
“Yeah. Well, doesn’t look like anyone’s home. I think we should leave before the Creature from the Black Lagoon shows up.” Cam tuned out Vala’s startled query. “I’ll go dial out. Get ready to come down if I get the ’gate open.”
He took several deep breaths, then dove, letting the weight of the P-90 pull him through the cold, murky water. It was twenty, maybe thirty, feet down to floor level. Orienting on the Stargate’s approximate position, Cam directed the light to the most likely location of the DHD, and was rewarded with a vague mushroom shape just visible within a forest of slowly waving kelp. Exhaling a little, he kicked toward it, grabbed one of the upswept edges and hauled himself to face the dialing platform. The rest of the air in his lungs escaped in a drowned curse. Cam batted away drifting plant fronds and pushed off for the surface.
Four expectant faces illuminated by their slanted lights stared at him. Cam sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the dread building in his chest.
“Let me guess. The DHD is broken?” Vala sent another glare at the hapless Daniel.
“Not exactly. There aren’t any symbols on it. It’s just a blank face, like they forgot to finish building it.”
“Or someone removed them?” Daniel asked.
Cam nodded. Either way, they weren’t gating home any time soon.
The five of them bobbed in the water. Vala, Cam noted, was wrapped around Teal'c’s neck like a limpet.
“You can swim, Vala. I remember you passed all the tests.” He grinned as Teal'c arched an accusing eyebrow at her.
Vala smiled sweetly. “Of course I can swim. But I don’t float. I don’t have the figure for…buoyancy.”
“Uh huh. Okay. Plan B. We need to get back to dry land.” Cam eyed the wavelets lapping the featureless metal walls around them. Beyond the pool of their lights darkness hugged the room, and he couldn’t see any way out. Treading water, he turned in a circle, searching in vain.
“Extinguish the lights,” Teal'c spoke suddenly.
Cam paddled over to him. “What’ve you got?”
“A glimmer of illumination, perhaps.” Teal'c switched off his gun light, and the others followed suit.
Blackness smothered them and brought with it a primal fear that Cam had to deliberately eradicate with reason. Everything’s fine. Just floatin’ in a metal box, in the dark. No biggie.
“There!”
“I can’t even see you.”
“Thirty degrees to your right, Colonel Mitchell.”
He propelled himself around and stared hard. Dark walls, dark water, dark in between. The breathing of his team, the little splashes they made, and the echo of water against the walls were enhanced by the blackness. He blinked moisture out of his eyes. There – a faint pinkish glow rose out of the depths by one wall, roughly opposite the Stargate’s location.
“Got it. Could be an opening, Teal'c,” Cam grinned. Jaffa-trained senses were so damn useful. He shielded his eyes. “Lights on!”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Teal'c volunteered to investigate the glow and in short order was back to announce the light was seeping through a shaft which led to another, larger room. Cam assembled his team, made sure each was secured to the next in line, and gave Teal'c the go-ahead.
Bringing up the rear, Cam saw the dim outline of first Teal'c, then Vala, Daniel and Sam vanish into an opening in the wall some ten feet below the surface. He followed Sam’s boots, air dribbling slowly from his nose as he batted aside drifting fronds of plant life. Guided by Teal'c’s sure strokes they entered a tunnel, the floor caked in fine silt already stirred up by the others’ passage and leaving him near to blind. An upward tug from Sam told him they were through, and he pushed for the surface.
“Daniel, it’s in my hair.” Vala’s objecting voice greeted Cam, along with air tasting stale and slightly fishy. He took in their new surroundings: another huge metal room, easily the size of an aircraft hangar, the walls of which were layered in marine growth all the way up to a ceiling barely discernable in their lights.
“Well, hold still and let me get it off.” Daniel was trying to free whatever was snagged in Vala’s hair. “It’s probably just seaweed…or…oh. Um. Got it!”
Daniel flung the offending object away. It plopped down, then rose up in a fan of water and disappeared back into the depths, leaving a foot-high entry splash.
“What was it?” Vala demanded.
“Nothing.”
Cam grinned. Jackson was the worst liar he’d ever met.
“Oh, I think that certainly was something. I felt it moving.”
“It was just a little fish…thing.”
“It had legs, didn’t it?”
“It’s gone now,” Daniel offered placatingly.
“I’d really like to get out of here,” Vala said brightly. “Now.”
“Good idea.” Cam played his light over a mound of marine growth that rose out of the water along one wall. Paddling closer, the structure of it looked suspiciously uniform. “Is that a staircase under all that stuff?”
Sam dug at the growth with her knife and revealed a shiny metallic sub-structure. She grinned at him in the wavering light. “Definitely man- or alien- made.”
The encrusted stairway rose up the wall to join what Cam could just make out to be a walkway, ten feet below the ceiling. “Here goes.” He let his P-90 hang from its harness, and cautiously got a grip on the coral. It was rough and slimy, but felt rock hard. With a secure foothold he began to crawl gingerly upward. By the time he reached the top his hands were stung and bleeding, and the bite of the air on his wet skin set him shivering.
“C’mon up,” he called down. “Not much up here but at least it’s dry.”
The rest of SG-1 scrambled, slipped, pushed and pulled each other up and joined Cam to explore the walkway.
“I don’t think we’re getting out of here anytime soon,” Sam announced after a detailed examination. “And these growths….” Even this high up crustaceans covered the walls. She traded a concerned look with Cam. “If they’re anything like Earth’s corals, I’d expect they spend a significant amount of time under water.”
“Oh, don’t need to hear that! See if you can raise anyone on the radio.”
Sam raised her eyebrows at him.
“I know, it’s not SOP but I’d rather not find out how much air is left in here when the water rises.”
As Sam worked her way through the radio frequencies, Cam joined Daniel and Vala, peering down into the vast space of their confinement. “Spot something?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Daniel waved a hand at the water. “The phosphorescent glow – I don’t think it’s created by the plant life. It seems to be moving.”
Vala shifted back a couple of steps. “As long as it doesn’t move up here.”
“Cut the lights, guys.”
Without their illumination the room wasn’t as dark as he’d expected. As his eyes adjusted, Cam could make out clusters of tiny blue glowing objects, unmistakably progressing under their own power. Elsewhere, other larger creatures appeared: brilliant red tentacles on one, a soft pulsing green blob, an electric orange stick-fish that darted along in fits and starts. Wonder filled him as he discovered more and more amazing animals. “Whoa.”
Sam gave up the unacknowledged radio calls and joined them.
“It would appear there are currents of considerable strength,” Teal'c observed, appearing at Cam’s side.
Awed by the colorful display, they watched in silence as the bright animals launched themselves into the clouds of tiny creatures, apparently feeding while the school was swept through the cavernous space. On reaching the far side, the blue glow dimmed as they descended and eventually disappeared. Once the prey vanished, the large fish dispersed, their gaudy colors fading into the depths.
“Huh. If those little critters were sucked along by a current, then that would suggest….”
“Intake and outlet capabilities,” Sam finished for him. “This might be part of a cooling system, or power generation facility.”
“Uh, any idea why we’re glowing?” Vala blurted.
Cam looked at her, then Daniel, then down at his own clothing. Sure enough, all five of them were covered in streaks and spots of luminous gunk. Mostly it covered their clothing, but Vala sported a wide streak of red through her hair, where the creature had been entangled.
“This substance would appear to be generated by the marine life,” Teal'c dryly noted.
Vala’s eyes widened and she grabbed at her sodden pigtails. “Oh, yuck.” She dropped her pack and began to dig through its contents. “Join SG-1 they said. See new planets, meet interesting people they said. They didn’t say you’d end up half drowned and covered in something squeezed out of an alien fish’s bottom.” She pulled out a sterile wipe and a hair brush, and set about repairing the damage. “Just remember, I gave up a successful career in treasure hunting for this.”
“Successful?” echoed Daniel, earning himself a haughty glare.
“Perhaps the predators in the water use the substance to identify potential food sources,” Teal'c continued.
Cam tore his attention away from the orange and white giraffe sticking out of Vala’s pack. “Right. Let’s stay out of the water then. Look for a door. There’s gotta be some way out of here.”
They prowled the walkway around all four walls, but were unable to find anything.
“Not even an air vent.” Frustration mounting, Cam followed Teal'c back to where the stairs began.
“There has to be a way out. Why else would the staircase be here?” reasoned Sam.
“You know where I would put a door if I were the designer of a big metal room full of water?” Vala stood, hands on hips, staring at the thickest part of the coral growth. “Right by the stairs so I could run away when the water starts to rise.”
“That actually makes sense.” Daniel peered closely at the tightly woven organic matter. “Guys, I can feel a breeze coming through here.”
Cam let out a whoop of delight. He drew his knife and started to chip at the barrier. The others joined in. It was slow going but eventually they opened a hole large enough to reveal an opening in the wall. He squinted past Teal'c’s light and saw a passageway beyond. “Bingo! There’s a hallway out there, and it’s not covered in this stuff.”
Teal'c, Sam and Vala joined him in a vigorous attack on the coral, but Daniel pulled back, a frown on his face.
“None of this makes sense.”
“Jackson, for now sense doesn’t matter. We’ll get out of here, find whoever’s at home and work out a way to get back to Earth.”
“But, we shouldn’t have been able to ’gate here in the first place. The DHD on P9H 506 didn’t misdial. The Stargate wasn’t hit by any kind of electrical surge that could bounce us here instead of the SGC. We dialed one address and arrived at another. Stargates just don’t do that.”
“What’s your point?” Cam grabbed a loose chunk and pulled with all his might. It popped free and fell to the walkway with a thump.
Daniel started pacing, his voice filled with concern. “The DHD was tampered with. Someone, somehow, programmed it to dial this address instead of the one entered.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Vala asked.
“They’d need a pretty good understanding of the DHD,” added Sam.
“Yes, they would.” Daniel stopped and stared at them.
“Colonel Mitchell!” Teal'c made a sudden grab for the hole they’d created. “The coral is re-growing.”
“What? No!”
Sure enough, the coral was slowly reforming, inching in over the considerable gap they’d made. Cam stared at it, and caught a flicker of light from beyond the resealing doorway. “Uh, oh….”
“I think the Ancients did it,” Daniel continued. “Either to protect Earth by diverting to here anyone who dialed Earth’s address….”
“Ah, we’ve got company coming.” Cam could see multiple lights moving toward them.
“…or they purposely directed the wormhole here when Earth’s – or any other for that matter – address was dialed, to protect the location of this world.”
“Jackson! Put a sock in it,” Cam hissed.
The lights were close, accompanied by a mutter of voices. Then one voice rang out, shocking them all.
“Daniel?”
