Angels & Vagabonds - Part 4
Jack woke to the smell of coffee. And something cooking. He blinked his eyes open, thought about that, then swore, struggled out of his sleeping bag and headed for the command tent they'd set up last night. Pulling on his pants as he went, he didn't stop to grab his boots, but he did grab the nearest Marine after he stepped into the tent and found a propane stove going and breakfast on the make.
“You stupid or just a sadistic son-of-a-bitch? We've got a man out there who didn't get much of a dinner yesterday, and who may not eat today unless we get off our tails and get him out, and you're cooking?”
The Marine, one of the wet-behind-the-ears new recruits to SG-3, blanched, stammered an apology and scrambled to shut down everything. Jack watched him, knew he should have given orders about this last night, and gave them now instead.
MRE's only. They'd have to hike in their own water, so they'd go on rations as well. The kid snapped off a salute, and Jack went to get his shirt and boots, found Daniel already awake and sitting in the doorway of the temple, knees pulled up in front of him and arms wrapped around his knees. Judging from the half-smile he wore, Daniel had heard everything. “Hey, Jack. Don't stop the coffee on my account. I can at least enjoy the aroma.”
Jack frowned at that, thought it over, then yelled Carter's name.
She came out of her own tent, moving fast, already dressed, and he wondered if she'd gone to bed like that. Or maybe hadn't slept. Her hair wasn't mussed or flat on any side. She looked wide awake, but had smudges under her eyes. She also had her boots on and that reminded Jack that he was standing barefoot in cool, itchy sand. He glanced up, noticed Daniel's feet were bare as well. Somehow it just made sense that of course Daniel would be barefoot, too.
Turning to Carter, he jabbed a finger in Daniel's direction. “How is it he can smell stuff?”
Blinking, she frowned at him, then her face went all kinds of good idea glow-bright. God, she lit up like Christmas. She also turned and hot-footed it to the edge of the field around the temple, right at the base of the stone stairs. “Daniel, you're not having trouble breathing, are you?”
Jack rolled his eyes. Oh, he'd really wanted to hear that question. Another fun new way to picture Daniel dying in there. But when Daniel shook his head, Carter bent, grabbed a handful of sand and glanced back at him as she straightened. “Sir, you might want to duck.”
He stepped back, and Carter threw the dirt at the temple. Pebbles rocketed back at them. Carter ducked, Jack put up an arm and got rocks peppered into his elbow and shoulder. With a yelp, he cursed, then turned to Carter. “What the--!”
“Sir, take a look.” She gestured to the temple, so Jack looked, and he saw motes of dust drifting, rising slowly toward the temple, passing right through that twenty-foot deep barrier.
Irritated, not sure what that meant--Daniel couldn't exactly turn into fairy dust to get out--he glanced at Carter. “Yeah, so?”
Daniel interrupted. “Sam--it's size discriminant.”
She grinned at him, and Jack knew they'd forgotten him. “Has to be. You can hear us, you can broadcast and receive radio transmissions, so sound waves are passing through the field. And you can see light from the outside?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So, light waves also can penetrate the field. And you haven't asphyxiated--I'm assuming oxygen is reaching you as well. That means the molecules in the atmosphere can breach this, which accounts for your being able to smell aromas. I'd bet--”
“Carter?” Jack tried not to have her jumping with the word, but he really wanted the short version of where she was headed.
She turned to him, energy pouring out of her skin and glittering in eyes no longer dulled by fatigue. “Sir, Asgard beaming technology should be able to reach Daniel.”
Well, that was clear enough.
“Morrison!” Jack yelled, calling a name a random. He gave the lieutenant orders to get back to the Stargate, radio Hammond to get a message to the Asgard. But this was far from a sure bet. The Asgard were still picking up the pieces of their civilization--literally; the Replicators had munched so many of their ships, they might not be answering their phone. Still, any idea was worth a try. Snapping off a salute, Morrison gave a 'yes sir' and went to do what Marines did so well--jump to an order. Jack turned back to Carter. “What else?” he asked.
She was frowning, thinking fast.
“Uh, Sam?” Daniel looked worried, and Jack wondered why. Then he found out as Daniel asked, “Sam, you're not thinking about, uh, shooting any kind of energy beam into this field are you?”
“Daniel, if small particles can get through--and we just proved that something as large as dust can--we should be able to use a laser or the particle beam accelerator to break through the stone to reveal the controls or destroy the power source.”
“Uh, Sam, this field reacted with the stuff in Teal'c's staff weapon. It might not like other power sources.”
Jack glanced at the pieces of staff weapon on the ground, then at Daniel, thought about maybe that whole temple going up and turning Daniel into that fairy dust. “Carter, before anyone does anything, I want to know what we've got here. Something switched this on--so what is it and where? Daniel, didn't you say something about a translation to finish? And before you do, I want a full list of everything you've got. Now, move it, people.”
#
It wasn't good.
He'd stalled Jack as long as he could, reminded Jack he was standing around without his boots. He'd said that he was going to get breakfast, had taken a couple of sips of water and made do with that and one bite of a power bar. He'd set up one corner of the room as a latrine--he had covered it with his bandana and that masked some of the smell, but it was going to get ripe in here unless they got him out today. Out of excuses, he had gone through everything in his vest and had given Jack a list of what he had.
It was what he didn't have that was the problem. And Jack knew it, too.
He didn't have enough water for more than a few days. A quart and a half, and he ought to be drinking at least one canteen a day, but he'd try to cut back to a quarter or less. So, maybe six days tops of almost enough to get by, and he'd be dehydrated long before then. All that meant that the lack of food didn't much matter.
As soon as Sam had heard, she tried some experiments to get water through the field. Problem was, a large spray shot back at them, and a spray fine enough to breach the field dissipated long before it reached him. He was dead unless they got this field shut down.
Jack had ordered Sam to do some scans to pinpoint a power source, but from her muttered curses, Daniel could guess that all she could read was whatever energy this field emitted, and, yes, it formed a nice dome around the temple, so no way could they drop anything down to him.
After that, Jack had ordered an attempt at tunneling, but the sand filled the holes faster than they could be dug. When they tried digging up the ground next to the border of the energy field, the field just bled down into the hole. Daniel had guessed that would happen because of what he knew about this place from the hieratic writing.
He went back to translating the walls because that helped him block the growing edges of thirst. By the end of the day, he no longer had hunger pangs, but he did have a headache that wasn't lifting.
He'd also finished a fairly accurate translation, but when Jack asked, he said he wasn't done. He wanted to recheck his notes. So he did. By the time the sunlight was fading from the sky, he had no trouble telling them he was tired and needed some sleep.
He slept badly, waking often, always cold and hungry, and miserable. The corner of the stone room gave him some shelter and so he put his vest down for some comfort, lay on it and curled tight into a ball, his head pillowed on one arm. He woke twice, heart-pounding, panic in his chest, and he didn't know why until he remembered. Trapped in a temple. Still not out.
The second time that happened, he got up and walked over to the doorway, stood there with his arms tucked tight, shivering, but he could at least see the shadows of tents. He also saw Jack sitting at the base of the temple stairs, right where that energy field began.
He noticed because of the shimmer.
Jack was slowing pushing his knife into the field, then pulling it back, and pushing it in again.
“Are you insane?” he asked.
Jack glanced up, knife paused for a moment, it started to shake and he pulled it out, dug it into the ground with a sharp jab. “Take you this long to figure that? You gonna finish that translation today?”
He winced, realized it really was tomorrow--the sun was lightening the sky. One day closer to when he ran out of water. And Jack must know he had deciphered the salient points, but he wasn't going to admit it. So he sat down in the doorway, thought about taking off his boots--he'd spend most of the day yesterday barefoot, and he probably would do that today, but it wasn't warm enough yet. He took off his boots anyway, wiggled his toes in the chill morning air. That gave him a few minutes to think up an answer.
Finally, he had to opt for the truth. He didn't have time for anything else. “This entire world exists for this temple.”
“What? You're telling me someone built a world for a place not big enough to call a condo?”
“Not built--more like stripped. Laid bare. It's an interim place between this existence and where the gods live.”
“How do I know I'm not going to like this?”
Daniel shrugged. “It's pretty much standard in a number of cultures--if you want to talk to the gods, you have to send a messenger. Uh, only in this case, well, the people who built this temple wanted willing go-betweens.”
“Trap volunteers? Nice of 'em.”
“Well, if you don't want to send one of your own folks, you need to motivate anyone else. Make the choice easy--starve to death, die of dehydration, or give yourself to the temple.”
“Give? And that means what?”
“Uh, actually, I'm not sure. But I think it's pretty literal. This is probably as much a tomb as it is a temple. There's some evidence at the tombs at Saqqara that early Egyptian culture practiced some form of ritual sacrifice, but it fell out of favor. Hard to keep losing your priests when the pharaoh dies, kind of makes people not want those jobs. But I think this is more about--”
“Daniel, there's not going to be any giving.”
“Jack, there may not be a choice.”
“You still have water?”
“Yeah.”
“Food?”
He let out a breath, didn't want to say that he didn't want to eat because the power bars left him thirsty.
“Food?” Jack asked again, voice insistent, his body a dark silhouette in lengthening shadows.
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, all the comforts of home. So stop worrying, Carter will figure something out.”
“Yeah. Guess I'll go back and finish that translation then. Maybe find out more about that give part.” Only he didn't have any hope for better news there, either.
#
By the middle of the third day, Sam was ready to scream. At her CO, at the next Marine who tried to tip-toe around her, at Daniel for having ever gone into that room in the first place.
God, they were going to lose him.
She couldn't locate a power source, couldn't determine where any controls might be located. She needed readings from within that field and she couldn't get them.
The field seemed to be made up of ionized atoms--she could read a charge in the atmosphere around the temple--but she didn't know what was creating the effect. It formed a dome around the temple, extended approximately ten meters in all directions. The only other things she knew were from trial and error experiments, and so far the biggest error yesterday had almost been fatal.
Since sound was reaching Daniel she'd decided to try a sonic burst. It was a bit of a wild card, based on Nikola Tesla's theories about how every building carried a harmonic resonance that would react to vibrations of a matching frequency. Tesla had been a genius, but some of his ideas were more than weird science, and she wouldn't have tried it except she knew just how little time they had, and it might work.
She'd also had the equipment on hand. She had only needed to modify the GPR--which had been useless to get any readings, anyway. Instead of working as ground penetrating radar, she'd boosted and adjusted the frequency of the sound waves emitted. But when she'd aimed the first pulse at the temple, Daniel had let out a yell and had fallen to his knees, his hands over his ears. He'd been bleeding from his nose and ears before she'd gotten the equipment turned off, and she'd been shaking, and the colonel had been furious.
“Carter!”
She'd glanced over at him and had shaken her head. She could only guess at what had happened. “That room--it must be made of some material that amplifies and alters the sound. This isn't going to work.”
“I'd say that's a big duh. So what is?”
The colonel’s words bit hard, and she'd glared back at him, then she glanced up to the temple and had seen that Daniel had dragged himself from their view. He didn't want them to see him hurting. Mouth set, and with a knot in her chest, she went back to her laptop to search for new ideas.
She'd run equations to adjust the sonic frequency, but she didn't have data enough to reach any fresh conclusions, and she didn't dare experiment again with something that could kill Daniel. So she changed tracks to what she knew.
The field responded with kinetic feedback--what you pushed in, it pushed back. She'd sent a couple of Marines into it yesterday, then again today, had them walk at different speeds, different locations, different angles. She tried having them go slower and slower. Each time, the field allowed the man a few steps, then pushed him out with a speed and force proportional to whatever was exerted. So, Daniel was right, not like a Goa'uld personal shield.
Today, she had set up the laser that had come through the 'gate yesterday. Despite Daniel's worry, it had done nothing. The coherent light proved to be too solid to do more than penetrate the initial edges of the field before it, too, was pushed back. She'd spent hours adjusting it to get a fine enough beam. The end result had been that she could get a blue dot of light to reach and play along the stone walls of the temple.
The colonel had stared at it, then muttered, “Great--Power Point perfect.”
Daniel had just looked at it, then vanished from sight again. He had to know this was all taking too long.
She needed more time, more ideas, more equipment.
The particle beam accelerator they'd used to melt the barrier around a Stargate and get the colonel back from Edora was still being shipped out from Area 51. Estimates had been a day and a half to get the equipment packed, then another day to get it to Cheyenne Mountain, so it should arrive tomorrow. They'd need another half day for set-up, and she was a little worried that the beam might react with the energy field.
She'd spent most of today running computer simulations and what they showed was that, given that charged field, she could end not just blowing up the temple as Daniel had feared. She might blow everything between here and the Stargate. She'd have to be more than careful with her calculations about energy output, and so she'd rather keep the particle beam a last option. But, damnit, there had to be an off switch.
A power source meant a way to pull the plug. That led her to the idea of setting off an EM pulse, and the equipment for that should be here tomorrow, too, but Daniel needed answers now. She knew how little time he had.
In the corner of her tent, she'd set up two canteens on the first night, one full and one half full. Like Daniel's. She had other water--she couldn't afford the confusion and fatigue of dehydration, but she was taking small rations from these so she'd have some idea of how Daniel was doing. It wasn't good. Three days had passed--one canteen was empty and the other almost gone.
At this rate of consumption, he'd be out of water today or tomorrow. But if drank any less than that, he could end up with kidney failure. It was little enough, too, that dehydration had to be already affecting Daniel, slowly draining him. When he ran out of water, he wouldn't last long--and she needed weeks to study this technology.
Getting up from the command tent and her laptop, she strode to the edge of the energy field, had it tingling on her face and the back of her hands. She called out for Daniel. A moment later he stood in the doorway, notebook and pen in hand.
He looked tired. He'd stripped down to his tee and trousers, stood there barefoot and rumpled. Three days growth of beard roughed his jaw, and his features looked sharpened, his skin aged and lined because he wasn't able to hydrate his body.
Forcing a smile, she asked, “Any luck?” He blinked at her, and she realized his mental processes had slowed. “Daniel, are you drinking any water at all?”
His glance slid away, then came back. “Sure. Just trying to make it last.”
She bit her lower lip. She didn't know what to say. She wanted to tell him to go get some water now, they'd have him out of there tomorrow for certain, but that wasn't honest. “Still no sign of any controls?” she asked, then kicked herself. She'd asked him this too many times, and it was starting to sound like she didn't trust him, that she thought he'd missed something. It wasn't that at all.
She was the one failing here. Failing him. He still had blood stains on his t-shirt from what that sonic burst had done to him. “I'm sorry, Daniel. You--it's not your fault.”
He glanced at her, eyes narrowing. “Of course it's not. You think I'd do this intentionally? That I'd--” He turned, paced away from the doorway.
“Daniel?”
He came back, but he wouldn't look at her. He had his head bent over his notebook, waved an absent hand and his voice shortened to tense, clipped tones. “I've got to finish. You'll be the second one to know if I find anything.”
Then he was gone.
She stood there, and she didn't know what to say. How did she offer comfort to him when she had none inside? She'd said all the wrong things, had done all the wrong things. She was supposed to be a genius. So brilliant she aced tests, shot to the head of any class, won awards and commendations and all of that was failing her.
Science was supposed to offer solutions--it was supposed to make the world make sense. Yes, she knew about chaos theory, could deal with that, but the chaos inside her head right now left her confused and doubting everything. If she couldn't even find a way to reassure a friend, how was she going to find a way to fix this?
Arms folded, she stared up at the temple. And she'd never had so much sympathy with the colonel's desire to blow the hell out of something that was getting in the way to an objective.
Go to Part 5
“You stupid or just a sadistic son-of-a-bitch? We've got a man out there who didn't get much of a dinner yesterday, and who may not eat today unless we get off our tails and get him out, and you're cooking?”
The Marine, one of the wet-behind-the-ears new recruits to SG-3, blanched, stammered an apology and scrambled to shut down everything. Jack watched him, knew he should have given orders about this last night, and gave them now instead.
MRE's only. They'd have to hike in their own water, so they'd go on rations as well. The kid snapped off a salute, and Jack went to get his shirt and boots, found Daniel already awake and sitting in the doorway of the temple, knees pulled up in front of him and arms wrapped around his knees. Judging from the half-smile he wore, Daniel had heard everything. “Hey, Jack. Don't stop the coffee on my account. I can at least enjoy the aroma.”
Jack frowned at that, thought it over, then yelled Carter's name.
She came out of her own tent, moving fast, already dressed, and he wondered if she'd gone to bed like that. Or maybe hadn't slept. Her hair wasn't mussed or flat on any side. She looked wide awake, but had smudges under her eyes. She also had her boots on and that reminded Jack that he was standing barefoot in cool, itchy sand. He glanced up, noticed Daniel's feet were bare as well. Somehow it just made sense that of course Daniel would be barefoot, too.
Turning to Carter, he jabbed a finger in Daniel's direction. “How is it he can smell stuff?”
Blinking, she frowned at him, then her face went all kinds of good idea glow-bright. God, she lit up like Christmas. She also turned and hot-footed it to the edge of the field around the temple, right at the base of the stone stairs. “Daniel, you're not having trouble breathing, are you?”
Jack rolled his eyes. Oh, he'd really wanted to hear that question. Another fun new way to picture Daniel dying in there. But when Daniel shook his head, Carter bent, grabbed a handful of sand and glanced back at him as she straightened. “Sir, you might want to duck.”
He stepped back, and Carter threw the dirt at the temple. Pebbles rocketed back at them. Carter ducked, Jack put up an arm and got rocks peppered into his elbow and shoulder. With a yelp, he cursed, then turned to Carter. “What the--!”
“Sir, take a look.” She gestured to the temple, so Jack looked, and he saw motes of dust drifting, rising slowly toward the temple, passing right through that twenty-foot deep barrier.
Irritated, not sure what that meant--Daniel couldn't exactly turn into fairy dust to get out--he glanced at Carter. “Yeah, so?”
Daniel interrupted. “Sam--it's size discriminant.”
She grinned at him, and Jack knew they'd forgotten him. “Has to be. You can hear us, you can broadcast and receive radio transmissions, so sound waves are passing through the field. And you can see light from the outside?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So, light waves also can penetrate the field. And you haven't asphyxiated--I'm assuming oxygen is reaching you as well. That means the molecules in the atmosphere can breach this, which accounts for your being able to smell aromas. I'd bet--”
“Carter?” Jack tried not to have her jumping with the word, but he really wanted the short version of where she was headed.
She turned to him, energy pouring out of her skin and glittering in eyes no longer dulled by fatigue. “Sir, Asgard beaming technology should be able to reach Daniel.”
Well, that was clear enough.
“Morrison!” Jack yelled, calling a name a random. He gave the lieutenant orders to get back to the Stargate, radio Hammond to get a message to the Asgard. But this was far from a sure bet. The Asgard were still picking up the pieces of their civilization--literally; the Replicators had munched so many of their ships, they might not be answering their phone. Still, any idea was worth a try. Snapping off a salute, Morrison gave a 'yes sir' and went to do what Marines did so well--jump to an order. Jack turned back to Carter. “What else?” he asked.
She was frowning, thinking fast.
“Uh, Sam?” Daniel looked worried, and Jack wondered why. Then he found out as Daniel asked, “Sam, you're not thinking about, uh, shooting any kind of energy beam into this field are you?”
“Daniel, if small particles can get through--and we just proved that something as large as dust can--we should be able to use a laser or the particle beam accelerator to break through the stone to reveal the controls or destroy the power source.”
“Uh, Sam, this field reacted with the stuff in Teal'c's staff weapon. It might not like other power sources.”
Jack glanced at the pieces of staff weapon on the ground, then at Daniel, thought about maybe that whole temple going up and turning Daniel into that fairy dust. “Carter, before anyone does anything, I want to know what we've got here. Something switched this on--so what is it and where? Daniel, didn't you say something about a translation to finish? And before you do, I want a full list of everything you've got. Now, move it, people.”
#
It wasn't good.
He'd stalled Jack as long as he could, reminded Jack he was standing around without his boots. He'd said that he was going to get breakfast, had taken a couple of sips of water and made do with that and one bite of a power bar. He'd set up one corner of the room as a latrine--he had covered it with his bandana and that masked some of the smell, but it was going to get ripe in here unless they got him out today. Out of excuses, he had gone through everything in his vest and had given Jack a list of what he had.
It was what he didn't have that was the problem. And Jack knew it, too.
He didn't have enough water for more than a few days. A quart and a half, and he ought to be drinking at least one canteen a day, but he'd try to cut back to a quarter or less. So, maybe six days tops of almost enough to get by, and he'd be dehydrated long before then. All that meant that the lack of food didn't much matter.
As soon as Sam had heard, she tried some experiments to get water through the field. Problem was, a large spray shot back at them, and a spray fine enough to breach the field dissipated long before it reached him. He was dead unless they got this field shut down.
Jack had ordered Sam to do some scans to pinpoint a power source, but from her muttered curses, Daniel could guess that all she could read was whatever energy this field emitted, and, yes, it formed a nice dome around the temple, so no way could they drop anything down to him.
After that, Jack had ordered an attempt at tunneling, but the sand filled the holes faster than they could be dug. When they tried digging up the ground next to the border of the energy field, the field just bled down into the hole. Daniel had guessed that would happen because of what he knew about this place from the hieratic writing.
He went back to translating the walls because that helped him block the growing edges of thirst. By the end of the day, he no longer had hunger pangs, but he did have a headache that wasn't lifting.
He'd also finished a fairly accurate translation, but when Jack asked, he said he wasn't done. He wanted to recheck his notes. So he did. By the time the sunlight was fading from the sky, he had no trouble telling them he was tired and needed some sleep.
He slept badly, waking often, always cold and hungry, and miserable. The corner of the stone room gave him some shelter and so he put his vest down for some comfort, lay on it and curled tight into a ball, his head pillowed on one arm. He woke twice, heart-pounding, panic in his chest, and he didn't know why until he remembered. Trapped in a temple. Still not out.
The second time that happened, he got up and walked over to the doorway, stood there with his arms tucked tight, shivering, but he could at least see the shadows of tents. He also saw Jack sitting at the base of the temple stairs, right where that energy field began.
He noticed because of the shimmer.
Jack was slowing pushing his knife into the field, then pulling it back, and pushing it in again.
“Are you insane?” he asked.
Jack glanced up, knife paused for a moment, it started to shake and he pulled it out, dug it into the ground with a sharp jab. “Take you this long to figure that? You gonna finish that translation today?”
He winced, realized it really was tomorrow--the sun was lightening the sky. One day closer to when he ran out of water. And Jack must know he had deciphered the salient points, but he wasn't going to admit it. So he sat down in the doorway, thought about taking off his boots--he'd spend most of the day yesterday barefoot, and he probably would do that today, but it wasn't warm enough yet. He took off his boots anyway, wiggled his toes in the chill morning air. That gave him a few minutes to think up an answer.
Finally, he had to opt for the truth. He didn't have time for anything else. “This entire world exists for this temple.”
“What? You're telling me someone built a world for a place not big enough to call a condo?”
“Not built--more like stripped. Laid bare. It's an interim place between this existence and where the gods live.”
“How do I know I'm not going to like this?”
Daniel shrugged. “It's pretty much standard in a number of cultures--if you want to talk to the gods, you have to send a messenger. Uh, only in this case, well, the people who built this temple wanted willing go-betweens.”
“Trap volunteers? Nice of 'em.”
“Well, if you don't want to send one of your own folks, you need to motivate anyone else. Make the choice easy--starve to death, die of dehydration, or give yourself to the temple.”
“Give? And that means what?”
“Uh, actually, I'm not sure. But I think it's pretty literal. This is probably as much a tomb as it is a temple. There's some evidence at the tombs at Saqqara that early Egyptian culture practiced some form of ritual sacrifice, but it fell out of favor. Hard to keep losing your priests when the pharaoh dies, kind of makes people not want those jobs. But I think this is more about--”
“Daniel, there's not going to be any giving.”
“Jack, there may not be a choice.”
“You still have water?”
“Yeah.”
“Food?”
He let out a breath, didn't want to say that he didn't want to eat because the power bars left him thirsty.
“Food?” Jack asked again, voice insistent, his body a dark silhouette in lengthening shadows.
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, all the comforts of home. So stop worrying, Carter will figure something out.”
“Yeah. Guess I'll go back and finish that translation then. Maybe find out more about that give part.” Only he didn't have any hope for better news there, either.
#
By the middle of the third day, Sam was ready to scream. At her CO, at the next Marine who tried to tip-toe around her, at Daniel for having ever gone into that room in the first place.
God, they were going to lose him.
She couldn't locate a power source, couldn't determine where any controls might be located. She needed readings from within that field and she couldn't get them.
The field seemed to be made up of ionized atoms--she could read a charge in the atmosphere around the temple--but she didn't know what was creating the effect. It formed a dome around the temple, extended approximately ten meters in all directions. The only other things she knew were from trial and error experiments, and so far the biggest error yesterday had almost been fatal.
Since sound was reaching Daniel she'd decided to try a sonic burst. It was a bit of a wild card, based on Nikola Tesla's theories about how every building carried a harmonic resonance that would react to vibrations of a matching frequency. Tesla had been a genius, but some of his ideas were more than weird science, and she wouldn't have tried it except she knew just how little time they had, and it might work.
She'd also had the equipment on hand. She had only needed to modify the GPR--which had been useless to get any readings, anyway. Instead of working as ground penetrating radar, she'd boosted and adjusted the frequency of the sound waves emitted. But when she'd aimed the first pulse at the temple, Daniel had let out a yell and had fallen to his knees, his hands over his ears. He'd been bleeding from his nose and ears before she'd gotten the equipment turned off, and she'd been shaking, and the colonel had been furious.
“Carter!”
She'd glanced over at him and had shaken her head. She could only guess at what had happened. “That room--it must be made of some material that amplifies and alters the sound. This isn't going to work.”
“I'd say that's a big duh. So what is?”
The colonel’s words bit hard, and she'd glared back at him, then she glanced up to the temple and had seen that Daniel had dragged himself from their view. He didn't want them to see him hurting. Mouth set, and with a knot in her chest, she went back to her laptop to search for new ideas.
She'd run equations to adjust the sonic frequency, but she didn't have data enough to reach any fresh conclusions, and she didn't dare experiment again with something that could kill Daniel. So she changed tracks to what she knew.
The field responded with kinetic feedback--what you pushed in, it pushed back. She'd sent a couple of Marines into it yesterday, then again today, had them walk at different speeds, different locations, different angles. She tried having them go slower and slower. Each time, the field allowed the man a few steps, then pushed him out with a speed and force proportional to whatever was exerted. So, Daniel was right, not like a Goa'uld personal shield.
Today, she had set up the laser that had come through the 'gate yesterday. Despite Daniel's worry, it had done nothing. The coherent light proved to be too solid to do more than penetrate the initial edges of the field before it, too, was pushed back. She'd spent hours adjusting it to get a fine enough beam. The end result had been that she could get a blue dot of light to reach and play along the stone walls of the temple.
The colonel had stared at it, then muttered, “Great--Power Point perfect.”
Daniel had just looked at it, then vanished from sight again. He had to know this was all taking too long.
She needed more time, more ideas, more equipment.
The particle beam accelerator they'd used to melt the barrier around a Stargate and get the colonel back from Edora was still being shipped out from Area 51. Estimates had been a day and a half to get the equipment packed, then another day to get it to Cheyenne Mountain, so it should arrive tomorrow. They'd need another half day for set-up, and she was a little worried that the beam might react with the energy field.
She'd spent most of today running computer simulations and what they showed was that, given that charged field, she could end not just blowing up the temple as Daniel had feared. She might blow everything between here and the Stargate. She'd have to be more than careful with her calculations about energy output, and so she'd rather keep the particle beam a last option. But, damnit, there had to be an off switch.
A power source meant a way to pull the plug. That led her to the idea of setting off an EM pulse, and the equipment for that should be here tomorrow, too, but Daniel needed answers now. She knew how little time he had.
In the corner of her tent, she'd set up two canteens on the first night, one full and one half full. Like Daniel's. She had other water--she couldn't afford the confusion and fatigue of dehydration, but she was taking small rations from these so she'd have some idea of how Daniel was doing. It wasn't good. Three days had passed--one canteen was empty and the other almost gone.
At this rate of consumption, he'd be out of water today or tomorrow. But if drank any less than that, he could end up with kidney failure. It was little enough, too, that dehydration had to be already affecting Daniel, slowly draining him. When he ran out of water, he wouldn't last long--and she needed weeks to study this technology.
Getting up from the command tent and her laptop, she strode to the edge of the energy field, had it tingling on her face and the back of her hands. She called out for Daniel. A moment later he stood in the doorway, notebook and pen in hand.
He looked tired. He'd stripped down to his tee and trousers, stood there barefoot and rumpled. Three days growth of beard roughed his jaw, and his features looked sharpened, his skin aged and lined because he wasn't able to hydrate his body.
Forcing a smile, she asked, “Any luck?” He blinked at her, and she realized his mental processes had slowed. “Daniel, are you drinking any water at all?”
His glance slid away, then came back. “Sure. Just trying to make it last.”
She bit her lower lip. She didn't know what to say. She wanted to tell him to go get some water now, they'd have him out of there tomorrow for certain, but that wasn't honest. “Still no sign of any controls?” she asked, then kicked herself. She'd asked him this too many times, and it was starting to sound like she didn't trust him, that she thought he'd missed something. It wasn't that at all.
She was the one failing here. Failing him. He still had blood stains on his t-shirt from what that sonic burst had done to him. “I'm sorry, Daniel. You--it's not your fault.”
He glanced at her, eyes narrowing. “Of course it's not. You think I'd do this intentionally? That I'd--” He turned, paced away from the doorway.
“Daniel?”
He came back, but he wouldn't look at her. He had his head bent over his notebook, waved an absent hand and his voice shortened to tense, clipped tones. “I've got to finish. You'll be the second one to know if I find anything.”
Then he was gone.
She stood there, and she didn't know what to say. How did she offer comfort to him when she had none inside? She'd said all the wrong things, had done all the wrong things. She was supposed to be a genius. So brilliant she aced tests, shot to the head of any class, won awards and commendations and all of that was failing her.
Science was supposed to offer solutions--it was supposed to make the world make sense. Yes, she knew about chaos theory, could deal with that, but the chaos inside her head right now left her confused and doubting everything. If she couldn't even find a way to reassure a friend, how was she going to find a way to fix this?
Arms folded, she stared up at the temple. And she'd never had so much sympathy with the colonel's desire to blow the hell out of something that was getting in the way to an objective.
Go to Part 5