FIC: "Sam I Am" 1/2 (Stargate SG-1/Quantum Leap Xover Jack/Daniel pre-slash PG-13)
Title: Sam I Am
Author: Dorothy Marley (dmarley)
Fandom: Stargate SG-1/Quantum Leap Crossover
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson pre-slash
Rating: PG-13 for sexual situations
Content Notice: ( skip) None for this story.
Length: 20,486 words
Date Completed:Completed May 3, 2000; Published in Ya Think? May 31, 2001
Disclaimer: The brave members of SG-1 belong to Glassner/Wright and Gekko, and Sam Beckett belongs to Donald Bellisario and Universal. They are being used without permission and without profit. No infringement on the rights of their owners is intended.
Notes: Lest there be any misconceptions about the alien words and phrases being in any way accurate or canonical, I'd like to note that they were supplied by the freeware "Name Generator," written by Tim North. I have made several revisions from the zine version of this story, but it was composed so long ago that it now departs significantly (and, despite my attempts at revision, irreperably) from canon. Consider it an AU, if you will.
Summary: Dr. Sam Beckett's mission is to help Jack O'Neill. But the solution to Jack's troubles is a little more complicated that he bargained for.
"Sam I Am"
by Dorothy Marley
-----
Al grinned at Sam and waved a hand. "Say good-bye, Sam," he said, and Sam felt the Leap take him.
The sensation was a familiar one by now, the sudden cessation of sight, smell, hearing, and touch, the abrupt disorientation as he was whisked out of time and sent to another time, another place. Then, almost before the panic had had time to formulate, the Leap was over. Sam took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the brief swell of nausea, not willing quite yet to confront whatever awaited him. He breathed again, and opened his eyes.
He was outdoors, standing in the middle of a misty field. It was early dawn, the sun barely beginning to peek over the horizon, and everything was quiet and still. The air felt crisp and cold, surprisingly thin, but bracing. Sam took another breath, enjoying the clean air, and glad, just this once, not to have Leaped right into the center of the action.
"Captain Carter?"
Sam jumped, and whipped around reflexively in the direction of the voice. It had been so quiet, so peaceful, that he'd assumed that he was alone. The soft voice in his ear had nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he whirled to find a tall, lean man in green fatigues staring at him expectantly. A heavy weight in Sam's hands nearly made him lose his balance, and he looked down to find himself holding what looked like a small cannon in his arms.
"Captain?" the other man prompted gently, pulling Sam's attention away from the deadly weapon in his hands. He let his eyes grope frantically over the uniform, searching for something, anything to suggest what he should do. No help there. The other man's jacket was completely bare of insignia, nothing to identify his rank, his unit, or even what branch of the military he served in. Even the tag over his pocket that should have spelled out his name was disappointingly blank. Sam had wished many times that people on his Leaps wore name tags. Too bad he hadn't also wished for the names to be on them.
"Yes, sir?" he tried, taking a stab at which of them was the ranking person, and got a long-suffering look of patience for his efforts.
"You were saying," the stranger said, "about the sunrise." He was cradling a gun that was the twin to Sam's own, and Sam watched nervously as he casually propped his wrist over it, letting his hand dangle next to the barrel. Sam wasn't sure where he was yet, or what he was supposed to be doing, but the firepower that they were toting around was a hint that this was no casual stroll.
"I was?" With an effort, Sam recalled himself to the conversation. He turned and squinted to where the sun was climbing from the distant hills, trying to figure out what to say next. "Oh, yes. The sunrise." He cleared his throat. "Um, it's a very...nice sunrise. Sir."
"Uh-huh." The other man regarded him for another long moment, his eyes dark and inscrutable. "Anything else?"
Sam swallowed. "No, sir."
He scratched his head thoughtfully, squinting past Sam. "Okay. Well, if we're finished sightseeing, Captain, what say we get on with the mission? Just a suggestion."
"Uh, yes, sir."
While his companion strode on ahead, Sam took the opportunity to assess himself. He was wearing a uniform identical to the other man's, a basic heavy green jacket and pants, large black boots on his feet, and a weighty pack slung on his back. The only incongruities were the badges affixed the shoulders of the jacket, and the oversized wristwatch-like device strapped to his arm. The right badge, after some surreptitious study, revealed the initials SG at the top, an abbreviation Sam's spotty memories couldn't place even with his years associating with the various elite and even classified branches of the military. There was a large numeral one displayed prominently at the center, but nothing to tell him what he was number one of.
The object on his arm looked very sophisticated, obviously modern technology. More than modern, Sam realized with a twinge, and wondered with a fleeting stab of panic if he'd managed somehow to end up in his own future. It wasn't supposed to be possible, theoretically, but he'd learned long ago that "impossible" wasn't a word that held much weight while quantum leaping. *All the same,* he told himself firmly. *There's no need to panic. One high-tech...whatever-it-is does not change anything.*
"Come on, Carter, step it up."
Sam came out of his musings to find that while he'd been lost in thought, the other man had outpaced him by a good hundred yards. He was standing on top of a small rise, hands on hips while he looked at Sam. "Something the matter, Carter?"
"No, sir." Sam said quickly, and picked up his pace. "Sorry, sir."
"Well, come on, then. You know how Daniel and Teal'c worry if we're not home to roost."
"Yes, sir." Sam shifted his gun and set off after him again. He guessed the other man's age to be approaching fifty, probably a few years short of it, but over the next hour it was Sam who toiled in his wake, watching as his lean figure paced relentlessly over the rough plain. Sam had kept a careful eye on the surrounding terrain, trying to pick out landmarks, seeing if he could identify any of the local plants and trees. But as they walked on, he failed to see anything at all that was familiar. About then, he realized that there was something else subtly wrong. It took him another ten minutes or so to pin it down, but when he did it made him stop in his tracks, his blood suddenly freezing in his veins.
The sun hadn't risen.
The other man turned at Sam's gasp of shock, and swiftly followed his gaze to the horizon. "What is it?" he asked, and Sam could only gape, waving a feeble hand to the thin sliver of brilliant light, still fixed exactly where it had been an hour before.
"The sun," he said at last. "It's standing still." Even as the words left his mouth, Sam could hardly believe them. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. A dream, or some unknown property of the Leap. What if he had ended up in the future? What if all this time travel had caught him up at last, and he was somehow trapped in a strange timeless limbo, where time seemed to pass, but didn't?
"Yeah. So?" The other man's voice broke through his panic, and Sam forced himself to calm down. If he was trapped, at least he wasn't trapped alone, and maybe this stranger had some idea about what was going on.
"So, it's been sunrise for the last hour," Sam said.
He was saying the wrong thing. He couldn't imagine how pointing out that the sun was sitting perfectly still in the sky could be an error, but his companion was looking at him now as though he'd completely lost his mind. "It's been sunrise since we got here, Captain," he said. "You tell me after two days you're just now noticing?"
Got here? Got *where*? Where the hell was he? Sam didn't dare ask, but some of his confusion must have leaked through.
"Carter, are you sure you're okay?" He stepped back towards Sam, searching Sam's face with worried eyes. "You seem a little out of it."
"I'm fine, sir," Sam said quickly. Rule number one of Leaping: Play along. No matter what happens, no matter how bizarre or strange, humor them and play along. "I guess I just forgot."
"Forgot." He wasn't convinced. "Two hours ago I couldn't get a word in edgewise with the diurnal-thingy and the rotational-whatsis, and now you forgot?"
"I guess I was thinking about something else, sir. I'm sorry." Sam pointed in general direction that they'd been taking. "Let's go on, sir. We don't want to be late."
As they walked on, though, Sam's mind was reeling with innumerable questions, and most of the answers were even more ludicrous than the questions. No matter how much he'd like to convince himself otherwise, as much as his brain shrieked that it was impossible, his eyes were telling him that the sun was not moving. If his companion was to be believed, it hadn't moved for two days, and this was, somehow, supposed to be normal.
A speaker crackled to sudden life somewhere in the vicinity of Sam's left ear, and he quickly suppressed a loud noise of surprise. He glanced down, and located the two-way radio clipped to his jacket just before a voice spoke out of it.
"Jack? Jack, you there?"
Before Sam could even decide whether he ought to answer, on the off-chance that he was the Jack referred to, his companion gave a long-suffering sigh and depressed the button on his own radio. "O'Neill here. Go ahead, Daniel. Over."
At last, a name! With an inward sigh of relief, Sam filed "O'Neill" away, along with "Jack," and listened as the voice from the radio went on.
"I was just checking to see when you thought you'd be getting back." There was a pause. "Over."
O'Neill looked back at Sam, shaking his head. "What did I tell you? Mother hen." He pressed his button again. "We're less than half a klick from the camp. Our ETA is twenty minutes. Over."
"Okay. See you then."
"Yeah. Over and out." O'Neill took his hand from the radio, and turned to Sam. "Does he do it just to annoy me?" he asked. "He can remember how to say 'I'm sneezing' in six different languages that no one's spoken for a thousand years, but two years with the Air Force and basic radio protocol still goes in one ear and out the other."
"Well," Sam ventured, still gratefully filing away the sudden flood of useful information, "maybe with all those languages in there he doesn't have room."
O'Neill appeared to consider this seriously for a moment. "You got a point," he said. He straightened his cap and squared his shoulders. "Come on, Captain. Let's roost."
He'd said twenty minutes, but it was only about ten minutes later that they pushed their way to the top of another hill and Sam saw what had to be the base camp spread out before them. It consisted of four tents arranged in a rough quadrangle around a fire pit, and a fifth, larger tent set off to one side. A man was crouched by the fire, stirring something in a metal pot that hung over the flames, and another figure was moving back and forth in the large tent, making adjustments to the equipment stacked inside.
"Honey! I'm home!" O'Neill called, and the soldier at the fire straightened up, reaching for a tall staff that was propped next to him. He was big and broad-shouldered, and the solemn frown on his face remained in place even after he caught sight of them.
"Colonel O'Neill. Captain Carter," he said formally. "You have returned."
O'Neill trotted down the last hill to the camp, Sam following more cautiously in his wake. "Yep," O'Neill said. "And I'm starving. What's for lunch?"
"I do not know."
"Well, that's encouraging, Teal'c."
As they neared, Sam got a closer look at the new face, and suppressed a blink of surprise at the gold-filled tattoo that adorned his forehead. It was out of character for a military man, in Sam's experience anyway, and he studied him covertly as he and O'Neill approached. O'Neill hadn't used any rank to address him, which could mean a lot of things, none of them helpful to Sam at that particular moment. His uniform was just like the colonel's, and equally uninformative, so Sam merely stowed the name away and joined them at the fire.
It was beginning to occur to Sam that they were probably on some kind of covert mission, a secret operation for--what had O'Neill said?--Yes, the Air Force. That would explain the lack of identifying insignia, and also the fearsome weapon slung over Sam's shoulder. But the colonel's attitude was oddly relaxed for that, even cavalier, and if they were on some mission behind enemy lines, no-one seemed too worried that anyone was about to sneak up on them. Sam's head began to ache, and he only listened with half an ear as Teal'c informed the colonel, "Dr. Jackson says it is labeled 'Chicken Surprise.'"
"Goody," O'Neill said solemnly.
"Hey, that was quick."
Sam turned as a second man came out of the tent, busily polishing a pair of spectacles on his handkerchief. He smiled at them both and replaced the glasses on his nose, pushing his light brown hair out of his eyes. "Did you find anything, Jack?"
"Nada," O'Neill said. "Quiet as the proverbial tomb."
"I guess that's to be expected." He turned to Sam. "Did you get the samples you wanted, Sam?"
For a minute, Sam was so startled that he couldn't even speak, half-wondering for a shocked second if he'd somehow Leaped into himself again. But no, his name was Carter. Sam Carter, apparently. "Uh, sure," he finally said, hoping that it was the right answer. "Yeah, uh..." He sent his eyes swiftly over the other man's jacket, but was hardly surprised to find his uniform as blank as all the others. He had to be the "Dr. Jackson" Teal'c had referred to, but Sam decided not to risk it. "I've got them in my pack," Sam said, concluding that it might be best to avoid using any names until he figured out what was going on.
"Good." Jackson flashed a smile, and something began to nudge at the back of Sam's mind, something familiar. Before he could explore the thought, though, Jackson was going on. "Maybe the guys in the lab back home can figure out how anything grows on this planet with two straight weeks of darkness every month."
Sam almost missed the crucial phrase. He was smiling automatically, still trying to place Jackson's face, when "this planet" finally edged into his consciousness and knocked gently for his attention. He paused, and felt his lips move without any intervening signal from his brain. "This p--planet?" he repeated helplessly.
"Yeah. I mean, we've never encountered anything like this before. In the Land of Light, the planet's rotation was exactly in synch with its orbit around the system's sun, but this one is just a little off that. Instead of permanent sunlight and night on different sides of the planet, we have days and nights that last approximately two weeks."
Jackson might as well have been speaking Swahili, for all Sam heard. His mind had fixed on the phrase, "this planet," and wasn't about to let it go. *This is impossible,* he thought, but even as he did so, his scientist's mind was also edging in, quietly assessing the facts that he'd already unwittingly gathered, and letting them fall into place. He felt his stomach lurch. Oh, boy.
It all made sense now. After all, was there any better explanation for the fact that it had been dawn for nearly two hours? For the fact that he'd yet to recognize a single tree, plant or insect? The air, too, felt thin, like the air on top of a mountain, despite the fact that they were obviously on a low-level plain here, surrounded by distant mountains. Nothing here was like it was on Earth, therefore, logically, he wasn't necessarily on Earth. Sam gulped, and felt his knees get a little watery.
"I think I need to sit down."
Instantly, Jackson's face showed concern. "You feel all right? Dr. Fraiser warned us that the lower levels of oxygen in the atmosphere might catch up with us."
Sam leapt gratefully on the excuse. "Yeah. Maybe I'd better go lie down for a minute."
"Okay." Jackson reached up and started undoing the straps of Sam's pack. "I'll take those samples and get started on the analysis." He took the pack and put a hand on his chest. "Remember, deep, slow breaths."
"Uh, yeah. Thanks."
Leaving the others grouped around the fire, Sam wandered towards the other tents to face his next dilemma: Which tent was his? Normally, this was the sort of thing that he'd rely on Al to help with, but he was beginning to come to terms with the fact that he might have to do this one solo. He could hardly expect for Al to appear on an alien planet. Could he? Sam pushed that speculation aside and studied the four tents. *One in four chance,* he told himself. He chose one at random, and either he'd picked the correct one or the men sitting outside weren't paying attention, because no one protested as he slipped inside.
If he'd hoped for clues about his current persona, they weren't forthcoming at the first glance around. Everything was neat and bare and tidy, blanket folded at the foot of the cot, duffel tucked underneath, and only a small notebook on the folding camp stool to mar the bare space. Sam picked up the notebook and opened it.
It was a scientific journal of some sort, filled with notes and calculations and observations, all penned in a neat, compact hand. "Capt. S. Carter" was written in the front, so at least that quelled Sam's fears about choosing the wrong tent.
Quickly, he leafed to the back of the book and found what seemed to be the last entry. It was dated September 25, 1998, which was a relief. Not into his own future yet, thank God. All the same, the date also gave Sam something of a start. His memory wasn't what it used to be, but he was fairly certain that he'd never before traveled quite this close to what he remembered as the theoretical end of his life. Whatever was going to happen, then, was going to happen soon. But what else was new?
Returning to the journal, Sam scanned the last pages eagerly, and breathed a sigh of relief as he read over the careful, meticulous notes of this mission.
"Arrived on P2R-156 at 0900. Scouted a half-mile radius around the Stargate and set up camp at approx. 1500. Sun maintained relative position, was unable to detect variations with naked eye."
Stargate? What the heck was a Stargate? Sam flipped back through the journal, and caught the word again and again. Finally, he returned to the front and frowned at the first entry, dated three months before. There it was again.
"Arrived on P6X-309 at 1200. Made contact with local populace immediately, as the Stargate was set up in the town square. They spoke a variation on ancient Greek, and Daniel was able to establish communication easily. No sign of Goa'uld presence, and none of them recognized Teal'c as Jaffa. This supports our theory that the Stargate system was not built by the Goa'uld, but rather that the Goa'uld scavenged the technology and used it for their own gain."
Slowly, Sam shut the journal. Stargate. The word niggled at something in his tattered memories. The Stargate Project. Only it wasn't always the Stargate Project....
Hieroglyphs. Sam suddenly sat bolt upright, flashing on a sudden, clear memory. A man, showing him a rubbing of hieroglyphs, asking him if he was interested in...in.... Damn! Where was Al when he needed him? That was all Sam could remember, except for a vague certainty that he'd turned them down. He was already embroiled in Project Quantum Leap, so he'd turned them down, in spite of his old fascination with Egyptology. And Sam suddenly remembered where he'd seen Dr. Daniel Jackson before.
Good lord, how could he have forgotten? He'd only met him once or twice, briefly, but Jackson had been one of the most brilliant linguists Sam had ever known. He spoke more than two dozen languages, but his specialty was--
"Of course!" Sam clapped his hand over his mouth, hoping the involuntary outburst wasn't loud enough to have reached the group around the fire. Jackson had always been obsessed with ancient Egyptian, and while he was considered to be one of the finest young minds in the field, his career had always been hampered by his insistence that the...pyramids...hadn't...been...built....
"Oh, boy."
"Sam?"
Sam jumped, and put the notebook down as Jackson poked his head into the tent. "Yeah, still here," he said.
"You feel up to helping me with some of these tests before we start packing up? I can do some of the dating and chemical stuff, but you're the astrophysicist."
That was news to Sam, but it was, at least, good news. At last, something he could actually do. "Sure, I can do that. I'll be there in a second. Daniel," he added belatedly, taking a stab.
Jackson didn't seem to find anything odd in the address, just nodded. "Okay. Jack wants to be packed up and through the Stargate in four hours."
"All right. I'll keep that in mind." Thank God. If what Sam speculated was true, that meant that they were going back home. But even as the relief flooded him, he felt a small twinge of disappointment.
Once he'd grasped the idea, Sam realized that he'd actually started to get excited. He was on another planet. A whole other world, possibly hundreds of thousands of light-years from Earth, and Sam Beckett was walking around on it. Sam found himself itching to run the tests that he was sure Sam Carter had set up, measuring the orbit and rotation and distance from the sun that would calculate this planet's cycle down to the nanosecond. This was an opportunity that no scientist ever thought they'd have in a lifetime, and Sam meant to make the most of it. He slipped Carter's journal into his jacket, and followed Jackson out of the tent.
The setup in the main tent was surprisingly sophisticated, right down to the portable mainframe computer. This was the kind of equipment Sam had had to beg for when he was starting up Quantum Leap, but he supposed that the Air Force would spare no effort in its offworld exploration teams. The Stargate Project was little more than a name and a handful of hieroglyphs to Sam, but now he felt certain that he knew all too well what the Stargate was, and what it did. Somehow, someone had unearthed a means to travel to other worlds, and this team was dedicated to exploring and studying them. He could even feel a little jealous of Captain Carter. But, since he was here, he'd just have to do the best he could to fill Carter's shoes. Sam set eagerly to the tests that Carter had outlined in the computer, and the next three hours flew by.
-----
"Okay, kids."
O'Neill's voice pulled Sam away from his study of Carter's calculations, and he saw Daniel start and swivel around, as if he, too, had been lost in thought. O'Neill tapped his wrist significantly, and jerked his head in the direction of the still-rising sun. "Time to get packed, folks."
Daniel opened his mouth. "Jack--"
"Ah-ah." O'Neill held up a warning finger. "I've already given you an extra day, Daniel. Hammond says we go back today, and as I recall, the word 'order' was somewhere in there."
Daniel sighed. "All right. I guess we'll just have to apply for a return mission."
"Good. Now, if you two wouldn't mind, let's get this place loaded up."
To Sam's relief, the team was also equipped with an all-terrain cart, which was quickly filled with the contents of the lab tent, and then the sparser personal gear tossed on top. O'Neill raised an eyebrow as Sam threw his less-than-expertly-packed tent onto the heap, but made no comment. In less than an hour, they were trundling out of the little dale.
Sam wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. He'd been bouncing the word "Stargate" around his head for the last few hours, but until the moment he saw it, he really had no idea what it was or looked like. Even at first glance, he took the massive circle for some kind of native structure, part of a megalithic circle. Then he remembered that this planet was supposedly uninhabited, and gave the darkly carved ring a second hard look.
This had to be it. Even from a distance, Sam could pick out the symbols stamped into the inner ring, gleaming coldly in the weak morning sunlight. He was too far away to identify any of them, but he felt certain that he would recognize them as part of the same set of odd symbols that he had been shown years ago. But whatever he'd pictured in his mind, it wasn't anything like this. The thing was huge, probably two stories high at the least, resting on a long sloping mound at the center of the clearing. There was no other adornment, no structure or temple to indicate its significance, but it didn't need it. Sam was awed just looking at it, and felt a vague sense of disappointment that the other members of the team didn't even pause. How incredible, that they could have done this so many times that they weren't even amazed any longer.
But how did the thing work? Sam couldn't see any other kind of equipment, no propulsion system, no ship, nothing but a circular double-ringed dial buried in the grass at the side of the gate. The gate, too, was buried in the earth, so obviously it didn't move. But somehow, it had brought Colonel O'Neill and the rest of his team here, and Sam could only guess that it would also send them home.
Once they reached the gate, Daniel moved at once to the dial embedded in the slope. While Sam looked on, trying not to gape, Daniel confidently punched a seemingly random sequence of symbols on the dial, and the huge inner wheel of the Stargate began to turn. One by one, the glowing chevrons locked into place, and a few moments later Sam was staring in wonder at the shimmering surface of the Stargate.
"Okay, kids. Let's go home."
Sam glanced over, and watched as Teal'c guided the rover through the center of the Stargate. The machine's long probe disappeared into the circle, and a moment later man and vehicle were gone, vanished into the surface of the pool. Daniel walked through next, and Sam knew that now it was his turn. He pretended to be adjusting his pack, giving him some time to study the phenomenon he was about to walk through.
He had no idea what he looking at, if it was some kind of quantum field, or spatial rift, or even if it was the glowing pool of mercury that it appeared to be. Whatever it was, it seemed that Earth was on the other side. All he had to do was step through it. Aware of O'Neill's eyes on him, Sam took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked forward into the unknown.
It wasn't terribly different from quantum leaping, at that. There was the same moment of dizzying disorientation, then the sensation of being swept away, pulled along by forces too terrifyingly powerful to resist. And always, at the end, the blessed relief that it was finally over. Sam stumbled to a halt on a hard metal surface, gasping from the intense cold even as it dissipated. His stomach gave a single lurch, then settled down, apparently satisfied that the trip was over. Sam wished he could be so sure.
"Welcome home, SG-1."
Sam blinked, and focused on the figure standing at the foot of the sloping metal ramp. He'd just begun to thankfully decipher the insignia on his crisp white shirt when O'Neill strode forward, nodding. "Good to be home, General."
But Sam was no longer paying attention. Instead, he was looking back over his shoulder, gazing at the smooth rippled pool that filled the Stargate. Even as he stared, though, still trying to fathom what it could possibly be, the field disintegrated, dropping away with a small hiss of discharged particles. Incredible.
"Sam?" Sam turned to find Daniel standing next to him. "Sam, you okay?"
"Yeah." Sam tried a smile, and waved at the Gate. "It just never really gets old, you know?"
Daniel smiled, and a for a moment he looked almost wistful. "Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean."
"Sam!"
With an effort, Sam kept the smile fixed on his face, although he was sure that he'd just lost a year of his life from fright. After all this time, he ought to be used to Al bellowing in his ear without warning, but it still nearly gave him a heart attack. Oblivious to Sam's distress, Al was going on, talking a mile a minute.
"Sam, thank god. Where the hell have you been? We've been looking for you for days! I thought we'd never find you."
Even as Al babbled on, Daniel was turning away from the Stargate. "Come on. Let's get our gear checked in."
"Okay," Sam told him. "I'll be there in a minute."
As soon as Daniel had walked away, Sam turned his back on the knot of people still gathered at the foot of the ramp, and put his hand over his mouth, pretending to be lost in thought. "Al!" he hissed. "You'll never believe where I was!"
"Yeah, well, wherever it was, Ziggy couldn't find you, and she's been frantic."
"Al, I was on another planet! That's why Ziggy couldn't home in on me. I was..." Sam raised a hand to gesture, and at the last moment remembered that he wasn't alone. "Out there," he whispered.
"Out there," Al repeated. "On another planet."
"Yes!" Sam nodded. "I don't know how it works, exactly, but this Stargate goes there, and it brought us back."
"Stargate?" Now Al was punching at the handlink, muttering as the lights flashed and died, then flickered to life again. "Ziggy kept finding something about the Stargate Project while she was researching, but--"
"Al, that's it. This--" Sam wiggled a finger at the Stargate. "--is it. The Stargate Project has to do with exploring other planets. And I've Leaped right into the middle of it."
"Well, whatever it is, Ziggy can't find much about it. The project must still be active now, because even the name is classified. Ziggy was lucky to get that much."
"What does Ziggy know?"
"Your name is Captain--"
"--Sam Carter, yeah I got that much. And I'm in the Air Force and I'm part of something called SG-1."
Al shook his head. "Not according to your records. You are in the Air Force, but you trained as an astrophysicist, and until two years ago you were working at the Pentagon. Your current assignment is analyzing deep space radar telemetry here at NORAD."
"It must be a cover-up, a fake project to disguise what they're really doing here. Speaking of which," Sam looked around, and found the other officers still talking at the foot of the ramp. "What am I doing here."
"Uh, well, we're working on that." Al consulted his link again. "Have you met anyone called Jack O'Neill yet?"
"Yeah, Colonel O'Neill. He's my--Carter's--commanding officer."
"That jibes with the records we have. We couldn't find you, so we decided to do as much of a workup as we could on Captain Carter. Anyway, Ziggy thinks that you're here for Colonel O'Neill."
"Why? What happens to him?"
"We're not sure. Like you, most of what he really does is classified. All we know is that four years from now, Jack O'Neill is found dead in his home." Al looked up at Sam, his expression grave. "He kills himself, Sam."
-----
Somehow, Sam got out of the room where the Stargate was, and started looking for a place where he could talk to Al in private. "Here," he said at last, and pushed his way into the door marked "Locker Room."
"Sam--!" Al started to protest, but Sam was already inside.
He'd hoped to find the locker room empty, but no such luck. O'Neill was standing in front of an open locker, taking off his fatigues while he talked to someone out of sight in the shower room. "--so they get to Detroit, and the state police have to clear off the interstate so the team can get to the arena before--" He broke off as he caught sight of Sam, then hastily yanked up his trousers again, holding them up with one hand. "Captain Carter," he said formally. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"Uh, no. No, I just wanted to get...something...from my locker."
"Sam..." Al stepped out of the row of lockers next to O'Neill, and gestured frantically towards the door. "Sam, this is the guy's locker room!"
"Well, no offense, Captain, but this is the guy's locker room," O'Neill said at almost the same time. "Well, for the next fifteen minutes, anyway."
"Huh?" Gradually, Sam became aware that Al was making frantic signals towards the rear wall, and glanced over to see, for the first time, Captain Sam Carter reflected in a mirror.
"Oh, god," Sam breathed. "I'm a woman."
About the time that it sank in, Sam realized with horror that he spoken out loud. He gulped, and turned back to the colonel. "I'm a woman," he said more firmly. "And it's still fifteen minutes before this is the women's locker room. I must have misread the time. Sorry. Excuse me." Sam fled, leaving O'Neill staring after him.
Outside, Sam leaned against the wall, breathing deep, and then opened his eyes to glare at Al. "Why didn't you tell me?" he hissed.
"I thought you knew!" Al protested. "Didn't you look in a mirror?"
"I didn't have a chance. And no one said anything to make me think that I was a woman, so I just assumed...." Sam groaned. "The colonel's going to think I'm crazy."
"That, or that you have the hots for him," Al leered, and Sam glared.
"Come on," he said coldly. "Let's find a nice closet somewhere."
Eventually, they found an empty janitorial closet not far from the locker room, and Sam ducked in and turned on the light. "Now," he said. "What were you saying about O'Neill?"
"Just what I told you. On August 14, 2002, he shoots himself."
"But why?" Sam shook his head. "What do we know about him?"
Al punched at the link. "He's a career Air Force officer, been with the military for nearly thirty years. He did a tour in Viet Nam, and he's been dropped in the middle of every other hot spot since, mostly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He was caught in '87, spent four months in an Iraqi prison before he got out. Served in the Gulf War. Awards and commendations out the yin-yang, and then he retired in...1995?" Al frowned at the link.
"That doesn't make sense. This is 1998 and he's still here. Are you sure Ziggy's got the date right?"
"Yeah, he retired...Oh." Al looked up, his face falling. "He took retirement when his kid died. Charlie O'Neill, eleven years old. Shot himself accidentally with O'Neill's gun."
"Oh, god. That's terrible."
"Yeah. His marriage fell apart after that, wife left him. He only stayed retired for a few months, though, then he was...re-activated...." Al was poking at the link now, clearly not agreeing with the data he was getting. "Then he retired again, then he re-activated again...I'm starting to get dizzy here, Sam. Oh, but he stayed with the Air Force from '97 on." Al paused again. "At least until '02."
"So what happened?"
"No one knows, Sam, that's what I'm trying to tell you. If it had anything to do with this Stargate Project, we can't know because it's classified. And if it's anything else, we haven't been able to find that out, either."
"Then I suggest you get back and start looking. Maybe now that you know what the Stargate is, you can get Ziggy to start digging. Also, there were two civilians, I think, on the mission. You might have missed them. One of them is named Teal'c, I don't know his other name, and the other is Dr. Daniel Jackson."
"Okay, got it. I'll get Ziggy started on it right away." Al started punching the code to open to the chamber door. "And Sam..."
"Yeah, Al?"
"Stay out of the guy's locker room." Al stepped through, and was gone.
"Thanks."
-----
The rest of the day was, thankfully, taken up by routine. First they had to check in their gear, and every other piece of equipment that had been brought back. Then there were the samples to be deposited at the lab, and the data delivered to be analyzed by the base computers. Then there was a thorough medical exam, complete with blood and urine samples. Sam went along with it, because the last thing he needed was to cause a fuss and blow his cover, but he couldn't help but wonder how his results were going to compare to Sam Carter's.
The final ordeal was the de-briefing, but thanks to Captain Carter's notes Sam was able to scrape by, mostly by sitting back and letting Daniel do all the talking. The two questions General Hammond asked him directly were easily fielded by consulting Carter's notes, and by Sam drawing on his own expertise, something that didn't happen too often during a Leap.
"That's all for now," Hammond said at last, and rose from the table. "I believe your next mission isn't scheduled for another three days. Until then, you'll be on down-time. Have a good weekend."
"Thank you, sir," O'Neill said sincerely. "I'm glad that you recognize the importance of pre-season hockey to us all." The general merely looked blank, and O'Neill raised his brows. "What, you're not giving us leave just to watch the Hawks crush those snotty upstarts?"
"Which ones would those be, Jack?" Daniel asked.
"Whoever they're playing."
"Enjoy your weekend," Hammond said again, with a small smile, and left. Around Sam, the rest of the team got up, too.
"I'm serious, though," O'Neill was going on. "Everyone's invited to come over and watch the game tonight. Beer, pizza, and the Hawks. A perfect evening."
"Hockey?" Daniel looked about as enthusiastic as if Jack had suggested an evening of calisthenics. "I don't know, Jack, I was going to stay here and--"
"Burn your eyes out staring into a computer screen?" Jack pointed over at Teal'c, who'd sat silent and attentive through the whole conversation. "What about Teal'c? We promised we'd show him what Earth culture was all about, and now you're all backing out on him."
Earth culture? Sam supposed it was a good sign that he could still be surprised, even after a day full of nothing else. Before he could stop himself, he found his eyes swiveling to the big man across the table, his mind rapidly ticking over the implications of that casual comment. Not from Earth. Dear god.
"I appreciate your offer, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said, blessedly unaware of Sam's sudden scrutiny. "But I, too, had planned to spend the evening on the base. Perhaps tomorrow. You are driving me to Dr. Jackson's for dinner. You could show me your culture before then."
"Okay." O'Neill appeared to think about it for a moment, then a half-smile quirked at his mouth. "Okay," he said again. "It's a deal."
Daniel looked dubious, but Teal'c merely inclined his head and said, "I look forward to it, O'Neill."
"Great." O'Neill clasped his hands, rocking back on his heels in satisfaction, and Sam forced himself to return to his own mission. He realized, suddenly, that there was one member of the team who hadn't answered the colonel's invitation, and that this was an opportunity not to be wasted. "About the game tonight, sir," he said. "I'd like to come." Every face in the room suddenly turned toward him. "I like hockey," he lied, and watched as O'Neill raised a brow.
"Okay," he said presently. "There's one. Anyone else want to change their mind?" Neither man moved, and he shrugged. "Your loss." He pushed his chair back and rose. "Get your gear, Carter, and meet me up top. Game starts in an hour, and I don't want to miss them dropping the puck."
"Yes, sir."
-----
Sam hurried back to the locker room, and was relieved to find Al waiting there for him. "Find anything?" he asked, searching quickly through Carter's locker for something to wear.
"Yes and no," Al said. "There's nothing on anyone named Teal'c associated with the Stargate project."
Sam made a face. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised. I think he must be from another planet. Who knows how he ended up here, but you're not likely to find any records on him."
"Uh, yeah." Al shifted his eyes back to the link. "Not to sound skeptical, Sam, but there's nothing in any of the records about the Air Force exploring other worlds. Are you sure you--?"
"Al! I was on another planet, all right? You can trust me on that."
"All I'm saying is that sometimes the Leap can be a little disorienting."
"This wasn't disorientation. This was another planet. I stepped through a great big ring just like the one in the room where you found me, and a few seconds later I was back here. I'm telling you, the Stargate is real, and so is that other world and God knows how many other worlds."
Al still didn't look convinced, but he didn't press the issue. "Okay," he said, in a tone that stated clearly that he was going to humor Sam if it killed him. "I'll have Ziggy keep digging."
"You do that, Al. And you'll see that I'm right."
Al consulted the screen again. "We had a little better luck with Dr. Jackson," he continued, clearly determined to let the matter drop. "About the same time that O'Neill dies, he leaves the project--not that the project exists, mind you--and goes back to Egypt to work on a dig somewhere. Ziggy's still trying to trace him through his grants, but he hasn't been back to the States since."
"So the team splits up," Sam said thoughtfully. "Maybe a mission went wrong."
"I don't think so."
"Ziggy has a theory?"
"Ziggy has a possible theory." Al stuck his cigar in his mouth in order to punch at the link with both hands for a moment. "About six months before O'Neill dies, his ex-wife re-marries. No sign of them ever seriously trying to reconcile, so we can assume that this isn't a problem. But five months later, he finds out that she's pregnant. Ziggy thinks that there's a sixty-three percent probability that this brings up all the stuff about Charlie all over again for O'Neill."
"And that could lead him to kill himself?"
"Could be. Ziggy says that when his son died, O'Neill was a candidate for suicide, and rejoining the military probably saved his life. He got through it then, but he was also still married. The marriage was falling apart," Al added cynically, "but he wasn't by himself. Now, with his wife gone, and knowing that she's starting over again with a new family and another kid, Ziggy thinks it's bound to remind him that he's still all alone, that he lost the only family he had." Al tapped the link, clearing his throat. "Which brings us to Ziggy's first theory about why you're here."
"Oh, great. I can't wait to hear this."
"She says that there's a thirty percent chance that if O'Neill remarries, then he'll have something to hold onto, someone to pull him through."
"That makes sense. Get him and his ex-wife back together, let them both start over."
Al looked uncomfortable. "Well, uh, no. Not exactly. Remember, Sara's got a kid now with this other guy, and Ziggy says we can't mess with that."
"All right. Then who, exactly?"
"Well, Sam, Ziggy's got another theory about that. She thinks that O'Neill needs someone who knows him really well, someone who understands the work he does, and that he can talk to about what goes on."
"Uh-huh, and that would be...?"
"You, Sam."
The only thing that surprised Sam was how little he was surprised. Then again, why should he be? There were times when he felt that romance must be one of the primary motivators of the universe, to judge from the number of times that it was his mission during a Leap. "Me," he said flatly. "You mean Sam Carter."
"Yeah. That's what Ziggy says."
"Oh, great." Sam closed his eyes, praying briefly for patience. Or maybe praying that this was all just a crazy, bizarre dream. "That's just great, Al. How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know!" Al said defensively. "Look, I told Ziggy she was crazy."
"For once I agree with you. What do we know about her? Do we know that this is what she wants? She might have a boyfriend of her own, someone she might like to be with. We don't know if she's even interested in O'Neill that way."
Now Al was looking at him oddly, almost apologetically. "Are you sure that's what it's about, Sam?"
Sam frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well.... " Al shrugged with he probably thought was nonchalance. "O'Neill's a guy."
"Yes."
"And you're a...a...." Al flapped his hands illustratively.
Sam could see, now, where all this was headed, and he felt an all-too-familiar exasperation rise in him. Along with something else that he was less eager to place. "Okay," he finally admitted. "Maybe that's a tiny drawback."
"Tiny! Sam!"
"Look, as far as O'Neill is concerned, I'm a woman named Sam Carter," Sam said firmly, doing his best to ignore the tiny voice of doubt that had crept into his thoughts. "Right now, that's all that matters, right?"
"Sam--"
"Right?"
The expression on Al's face was truly unreadable, a mix of so many conflicting emotions that Sam couldn't even begin to sort them out. "I guess so," he finally muttered. He shook his head. "This is nuts. I don't know what the hell Ziggy thinks she's--"
"Al, I'd be lying if I said I was crazy about the idea myself, okay?" Sam took a deep breath, surprised at how much better the admission made him feel. All right. So he wasn't thrilled about the prospect of trying to romance Jack O'Neill. *But it's no different,* he told himself firmly. *You've done this hundreds of times, done your best to bring two people together so their lives would be better. Just because this is the first time you've tried to do it like...this...* Sam took another breath. *All your talk to Al about treating people the same no matter what.... Well, it's time to start practicing what you preach.*
He said none of this to Al, though. Instead, he turned and faced him squarely, daring him to protest. "I'm not completely comfortable with this, and I'd be lying if I said I was." He paused. "But I'd hate to think I was so afraid of my own sexuality that I'd let a man die."
That got him. Al still didn't look happy, but he nodded. "You're right, Sam," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Hey, you've come a long way from the guy who nearly went ballistic when I Leapt into someone who only might have been gay."
Al had the grace to look embarassed. "That was a long time ago, Sam," he said gruffly. "Besides...." He cleared his throat, staring down at the handlink. "I was wrong."
Not for the first time, Sam wished that Al really was there with him, that he could reach out and touch him, just to put a hand on his shoulder and let him know that everything was okay. But, as usual, he had to settle for words. "Thanks, Al."
"Ah, yeah." Al shrugged it off, but he looked pleased, and when he spoke again there was a new purpose in his voice. "So, I guess we've got a job to do."
"Yep. The seduction of Jack O'Neill." Now that the problem was in front of him again, Sam's initial doubts about the wisdom of matching Carter with O'Neill were starting to return. "Not to rain on the parade again, but aren't there regulations against this sort of thing?"
"Well, that's another little stumbling block," Al admitted. "If this works out, one of them will probably have to leave the project."
"Leave the...Al, that's terrible. This is Carter's life we're playing with. Her career."
"Or O'Neill's," Al said quickly. "He'll be hitting retirement age in another ten years or so, he might decide that he's got less to lose."
"Al," Sam said slowly. "I'm starting to think that this is a bad idea."
"Maybe. But it's the only idea we've got. Sam, you've got to try."
Sam paced slowly across the aisle, trying to think. "Ziggy's sure this is the only way?"
"Maybe not. But right now, it's the best chance O'Neill has."
Sam stopped pacing and squared his shoulders. "Okay," he said. "Then I guess I'd better get dressed for my date."
-----
Unfortunately--or fortunately, depending on how one looked at it--the wardrobe left behind in Sam Carter's locker didn't include much in the way of "date" clothes. A pair of jeans, a blue blouse, and running shoes would have to do. After dab of make-up, and a brush through his hair, Sam guessed he was as ready as he'd ever be.
O'Neill didn't even give him a second look. He was waiting at the top of the elevator, leaning against the railing that separated the elevators from the entrance to the underground parking lot. He'd changed somehow from his uniform fatigues into kakhi pants and a plain dark pullover, a black leather jacket slung across his shoulder.
"Still just us, sir?" Sam asked, and O'Neill shrugged.
"Sorry, Captain. Looks like you're stuck with the old man tonight."
Sam swallowed. *First chance, Sam,* he told himself. *Now or never.* "I don't mind, sir." *Oh, nice start, still using his rank.*
But O'Neill made no move to head for the parking lot. "Look, Carter, I appreciate you offering to come along. But you don't have to. I'll be just as happy watching the game by myself if you've got other plans."
"What, you think women can't like hockey?" Sam said, trying to tease and half-succeeding. "And you're not exactly a fossil, sir." Damn! Rank again. He tried once more. "But if you'd rather spend the evening alone, I'll understand. I know this isn't exactly what you had in mind."
"No, no," O'Neill protested quickly. A little too quickly, Sam's more cynical side might have remarked. But he was going on. "I just didn't want you to feel like it was required, or anything."
"Not at all, sir. I'm looking forward to it."
"Okay, then." O'Neill shrugged into his jacket and gestured. "Let's go."
The drive over to O'Neill's house was made mostly in silence. O'Neill didn't seem inclined to make small talk, and Sam was finding himself at a loss to fill in the gap. If his mission was, as Al insisted, to get these two together, then Sam knew that he needed to make some kind of overture, break the ice. It was hardly, after all, the first time that he'd tried to ensure that the course of true love ran a bit more smoothly. *Just do what you've always done before,* he told himself. *It can't hurt.*
"Actually, Colonel," he said presently, "I'm kind of glad that this happened."
"Huh?" O'Neill started, as if he'd forgotten that Sam was there, and shot him a quick look. "Oh," he recovered. "Really?"
"Well, yes. I mean, I've worked with you for a while now, but I don't feel like I know much about you." O'Neill shot him another look, this one filled with something that looked slightly like alarm, and Sam quickly took another tack. "Or you about me," he added hastily. "I just think it's nice that we can do something social once in a while."
"Yeah," O'Neill said, a little doubtfully. "Sure. I can see that."
Sam pushed on doggedly. "Sometimes all this military protocol can be a little stifling, don't you think? You and Teal'c and Daniel can call one another by your first names, and there aren't any rules about what you can say and how and when."
"I thought you were a fan of military protocols, Captain." O'Neill was silent for a moment. "But, for the record, when we're off-duty 'Jack' is fine by me."
"Well, that's kind of my point. We don't seem to be off-duty much. Together."
"True enough." O'Neill paused to make a turn, and drove in silence for a while. "Still, it's part of the job, even if you're the only one who has to say 'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir,' and 'with all due respect blow it out your ear, sir.'"
"That doesn't bother me, sir." O'Neill raised a brow, and Sam stopped. "Jack," he said firmly. "It's part of being in the military, and I accept that. But it is very formal, and--" Sam took a deep breath, sending a silent apology to the real Sam Carter, wherever she might be. "--and quite frankly, I think that it sometimes makes me sound like an ice queen."
"You?" O'Neill shook his head. "Never."
"You know what I mean, s--Jack. You said it yourself. I'm the only one on the team who's required to be that formal with you. I'm doomed to stick out."
"You look at Teal'c, and you think *you* stick out?"
Sam had to smile. "Point taken. But I think you take my point, too."
"Yeah, I guess I do." O'Neill glanced over. "Don't worry, Carter," he said sincerely. "To me, you'll never be an ice queen."
"Thanks. I think."
After that, the conversation lapsed again, and Sam let it. He'd done what he could to sow the seeds, and he was afraid to push it any more right then. Plenty of time to make a fool of himself later, after all.
Concluded in "Sam I Am" (2/2)
Author: Dorothy Marley (dmarley)
Fandom: Stargate SG-1/Quantum Leap Crossover
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson pre-slash
Rating: PG-13 for sexual situations
Content Notice: ( skip) None for this story.
Length: 20,486 words
Date Completed:Completed May 3, 2000; Published in Ya Think? May 31, 2001
Disclaimer: The brave members of SG-1 belong to Glassner/Wright and Gekko, and Sam Beckett belongs to Donald Bellisario and Universal. They are being used without permission and without profit. No infringement on the rights of their owners is intended.
Notes: Lest there be any misconceptions about the alien words and phrases being in any way accurate or canonical, I'd like to note that they were supplied by the freeware "Name Generator," written by Tim North. I have made several revisions from the zine version of this story, but it was composed so long ago that it now departs significantly (and, despite my attempts at revision, irreperably) from canon. Consider it an AU, if you will.
Summary: Dr. Sam Beckett's mission is to help Jack O'Neill. But the solution to Jack's troubles is a little more complicated that he bargained for.
"Sam I Am"
by Dorothy Marley
-----
Al grinned at Sam and waved a hand. "Say good-bye, Sam," he said, and Sam felt the Leap take him.
The sensation was a familiar one by now, the sudden cessation of sight, smell, hearing, and touch, the abrupt disorientation as he was whisked out of time and sent to another time, another place. Then, almost before the panic had had time to formulate, the Leap was over. Sam took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the brief swell of nausea, not willing quite yet to confront whatever awaited him. He breathed again, and opened his eyes.
He was outdoors, standing in the middle of a misty field. It was early dawn, the sun barely beginning to peek over the horizon, and everything was quiet and still. The air felt crisp and cold, surprisingly thin, but bracing. Sam took another breath, enjoying the clean air, and glad, just this once, not to have Leaped right into the center of the action.
"Captain Carter?"
Sam jumped, and whipped around reflexively in the direction of the voice. It had been so quiet, so peaceful, that he'd assumed that he was alone. The soft voice in his ear had nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he whirled to find a tall, lean man in green fatigues staring at him expectantly. A heavy weight in Sam's hands nearly made him lose his balance, and he looked down to find himself holding what looked like a small cannon in his arms.
"Captain?" the other man prompted gently, pulling Sam's attention away from the deadly weapon in his hands. He let his eyes grope frantically over the uniform, searching for something, anything to suggest what he should do. No help there. The other man's jacket was completely bare of insignia, nothing to identify his rank, his unit, or even what branch of the military he served in. Even the tag over his pocket that should have spelled out his name was disappointingly blank. Sam had wished many times that people on his Leaps wore name tags. Too bad he hadn't also wished for the names to be on them.
"Yes, sir?" he tried, taking a stab at which of them was the ranking person, and got a long-suffering look of patience for his efforts.
"You were saying," the stranger said, "about the sunrise." He was cradling a gun that was the twin to Sam's own, and Sam watched nervously as he casually propped his wrist over it, letting his hand dangle next to the barrel. Sam wasn't sure where he was yet, or what he was supposed to be doing, but the firepower that they were toting around was a hint that this was no casual stroll.
"I was?" With an effort, Sam recalled himself to the conversation. He turned and squinted to where the sun was climbing from the distant hills, trying to figure out what to say next. "Oh, yes. The sunrise." He cleared his throat. "Um, it's a very...nice sunrise. Sir."
"Uh-huh." The other man regarded him for another long moment, his eyes dark and inscrutable. "Anything else?"
Sam swallowed. "No, sir."
He scratched his head thoughtfully, squinting past Sam. "Okay. Well, if we're finished sightseeing, Captain, what say we get on with the mission? Just a suggestion."
"Uh, yes, sir."
While his companion strode on ahead, Sam took the opportunity to assess himself. He was wearing a uniform identical to the other man's, a basic heavy green jacket and pants, large black boots on his feet, and a weighty pack slung on his back. The only incongruities were the badges affixed the shoulders of the jacket, and the oversized wristwatch-like device strapped to his arm. The right badge, after some surreptitious study, revealed the initials SG at the top, an abbreviation Sam's spotty memories couldn't place even with his years associating with the various elite and even classified branches of the military. There was a large numeral one displayed prominently at the center, but nothing to tell him what he was number one of.
The object on his arm looked very sophisticated, obviously modern technology. More than modern, Sam realized with a twinge, and wondered with a fleeting stab of panic if he'd managed somehow to end up in his own future. It wasn't supposed to be possible, theoretically, but he'd learned long ago that "impossible" wasn't a word that held much weight while quantum leaping. *All the same,* he told himself firmly. *There's no need to panic. One high-tech...whatever-it-is does not change anything.*
"Come on, Carter, step it up."
Sam came out of his musings to find that while he'd been lost in thought, the other man had outpaced him by a good hundred yards. He was standing on top of a small rise, hands on hips while he looked at Sam. "Something the matter, Carter?"
"No, sir." Sam said quickly, and picked up his pace. "Sorry, sir."
"Well, come on, then. You know how Daniel and Teal'c worry if we're not home to roost."
"Yes, sir." Sam shifted his gun and set off after him again. He guessed the other man's age to be approaching fifty, probably a few years short of it, but over the next hour it was Sam who toiled in his wake, watching as his lean figure paced relentlessly over the rough plain. Sam had kept a careful eye on the surrounding terrain, trying to pick out landmarks, seeing if he could identify any of the local plants and trees. But as they walked on, he failed to see anything at all that was familiar. About then, he realized that there was something else subtly wrong. It took him another ten minutes or so to pin it down, but when he did it made him stop in his tracks, his blood suddenly freezing in his veins.
The sun hadn't risen.
The other man turned at Sam's gasp of shock, and swiftly followed his gaze to the horizon. "What is it?" he asked, and Sam could only gape, waving a feeble hand to the thin sliver of brilliant light, still fixed exactly where it had been an hour before.
"The sun," he said at last. "It's standing still." Even as the words left his mouth, Sam could hardly believe them. This couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. A dream, or some unknown property of the Leap. What if he had ended up in the future? What if all this time travel had caught him up at last, and he was somehow trapped in a strange timeless limbo, where time seemed to pass, but didn't?
"Yeah. So?" The other man's voice broke through his panic, and Sam forced himself to calm down. If he was trapped, at least he wasn't trapped alone, and maybe this stranger had some idea about what was going on.
"So, it's been sunrise for the last hour," Sam said.
He was saying the wrong thing. He couldn't imagine how pointing out that the sun was sitting perfectly still in the sky could be an error, but his companion was looking at him now as though he'd completely lost his mind. "It's been sunrise since we got here, Captain," he said. "You tell me after two days you're just now noticing?"
Got here? Got *where*? Where the hell was he? Sam didn't dare ask, but some of his confusion must have leaked through.
"Carter, are you sure you're okay?" He stepped back towards Sam, searching Sam's face with worried eyes. "You seem a little out of it."
"I'm fine, sir," Sam said quickly. Rule number one of Leaping: Play along. No matter what happens, no matter how bizarre or strange, humor them and play along. "I guess I just forgot."
"Forgot." He wasn't convinced. "Two hours ago I couldn't get a word in edgewise with the diurnal-thingy and the rotational-whatsis, and now you forgot?"
"I guess I was thinking about something else, sir. I'm sorry." Sam pointed in general direction that they'd been taking. "Let's go on, sir. We don't want to be late."
As they walked on, though, Sam's mind was reeling with innumerable questions, and most of the answers were even more ludicrous than the questions. No matter how much he'd like to convince himself otherwise, as much as his brain shrieked that it was impossible, his eyes were telling him that the sun was not moving. If his companion was to be believed, it hadn't moved for two days, and this was, somehow, supposed to be normal.
A speaker crackled to sudden life somewhere in the vicinity of Sam's left ear, and he quickly suppressed a loud noise of surprise. He glanced down, and located the two-way radio clipped to his jacket just before a voice spoke out of it.
"Jack? Jack, you there?"
Before Sam could even decide whether he ought to answer, on the off-chance that he was the Jack referred to, his companion gave a long-suffering sigh and depressed the button on his own radio. "O'Neill here. Go ahead, Daniel. Over."
At last, a name! With an inward sigh of relief, Sam filed "O'Neill" away, along with "Jack," and listened as the voice from the radio went on.
"I was just checking to see when you thought you'd be getting back." There was a pause. "Over."
O'Neill looked back at Sam, shaking his head. "What did I tell you? Mother hen." He pressed his button again. "We're less than half a klick from the camp. Our ETA is twenty minutes. Over."
"Okay. See you then."
"Yeah. Over and out." O'Neill took his hand from the radio, and turned to Sam. "Does he do it just to annoy me?" he asked. "He can remember how to say 'I'm sneezing' in six different languages that no one's spoken for a thousand years, but two years with the Air Force and basic radio protocol still goes in one ear and out the other."
"Well," Sam ventured, still gratefully filing away the sudden flood of useful information, "maybe with all those languages in there he doesn't have room."
O'Neill appeared to consider this seriously for a moment. "You got a point," he said. He straightened his cap and squared his shoulders. "Come on, Captain. Let's roost."
He'd said twenty minutes, but it was only about ten minutes later that they pushed their way to the top of another hill and Sam saw what had to be the base camp spread out before them. It consisted of four tents arranged in a rough quadrangle around a fire pit, and a fifth, larger tent set off to one side. A man was crouched by the fire, stirring something in a metal pot that hung over the flames, and another figure was moving back and forth in the large tent, making adjustments to the equipment stacked inside.
"Honey! I'm home!" O'Neill called, and the soldier at the fire straightened up, reaching for a tall staff that was propped next to him. He was big and broad-shouldered, and the solemn frown on his face remained in place even after he caught sight of them.
"Colonel O'Neill. Captain Carter," he said formally. "You have returned."
O'Neill trotted down the last hill to the camp, Sam following more cautiously in his wake. "Yep," O'Neill said. "And I'm starving. What's for lunch?"
"I do not know."
"Well, that's encouraging, Teal'c."
As they neared, Sam got a closer look at the new face, and suppressed a blink of surprise at the gold-filled tattoo that adorned his forehead. It was out of character for a military man, in Sam's experience anyway, and he studied him covertly as he and O'Neill approached. O'Neill hadn't used any rank to address him, which could mean a lot of things, none of them helpful to Sam at that particular moment. His uniform was just like the colonel's, and equally uninformative, so Sam merely stowed the name away and joined them at the fire.
It was beginning to occur to Sam that they were probably on some kind of covert mission, a secret operation for--what had O'Neill said?--Yes, the Air Force. That would explain the lack of identifying insignia, and also the fearsome weapon slung over Sam's shoulder. But the colonel's attitude was oddly relaxed for that, even cavalier, and if they were on some mission behind enemy lines, no-one seemed too worried that anyone was about to sneak up on them. Sam's head began to ache, and he only listened with half an ear as Teal'c informed the colonel, "Dr. Jackson says it is labeled 'Chicken Surprise.'"
"Goody," O'Neill said solemnly.
"Hey, that was quick."
Sam turned as a second man came out of the tent, busily polishing a pair of spectacles on his handkerchief. He smiled at them both and replaced the glasses on his nose, pushing his light brown hair out of his eyes. "Did you find anything, Jack?"
"Nada," O'Neill said. "Quiet as the proverbial tomb."
"I guess that's to be expected." He turned to Sam. "Did you get the samples you wanted, Sam?"
For a minute, Sam was so startled that he couldn't even speak, half-wondering for a shocked second if he'd somehow Leaped into himself again. But no, his name was Carter. Sam Carter, apparently. "Uh, sure," he finally said, hoping that it was the right answer. "Yeah, uh..." He sent his eyes swiftly over the other man's jacket, but was hardly surprised to find his uniform as blank as all the others. He had to be the "Dr. Jackson" Teal'c had referred to, but Sam decided not to risk it. "I've got them in my pack," Sam said, concluding that it might be best to avoid using any names until he figured out what was going on.
"Good." Jackson flashed a smile, and something began to nudge at the back of Sam's mind, something familiar. Before he could explore the thought, though, Jackson was going on. "Maybe the guys in the lab back home can figure out how anything grows on this planet with two straight weeks of darkness every month."
Sam almost missed the crucial phrase. He was smiling automatically, still trying to place Jackson's face, when "this planet" finally edged into his consciousness and knocked gently for his attention. He paused, and felt his lips move without any intervening signal from his brain. "This p--planet?" he repeated helplessly.
"Yeah. I mean, we've never encountered anything like this before. In the Land of Light, the planet's rotation was exactly in synch with its orbit around the system's sun, but this one is just a little off that. Instead of permanent sunlight and night on different sides of the planet, we have days and nights that last approximately two weeks."
Jackson might as well have been speaking Swahili, for all Sam heard. His mind had fixed on the phrase, "this planet," and wasn't about to let it go. *This is impossible,* he thought, but even as he did so, his scientist's mind was also edging in, quietly assessing the facts that he'd already unwittingly gathered, and letting them fall into place. He felt his stomach lurch. Oh, boy.
It all made sense now. After all, was there any better explanation for the fact that it had been dawn for nearly two hours? For the fact that he'd yet to recognize a single tree, plant or insect? The air, too, felt thin, like the air on top of a mountain, despite the fact that they were obviously on a low-level plain here, surrounded by distant mountains. Nothing here was like it was on Earth, therefore, logically, he wasn't necessarily on Earth. Sam gulped, and felt his knees get a little watery.
"I think I need to sit down."
Instantly, Jackson's face showed concern. "You feel all right? Dr. Fraiser warned us that the lower levels of oxygen in the atmosphere might catch up with us."
Sam leapt gratefully on the excuse. "Yeah. Maybe I'd better go lie down for a minute."
"Okay." Jackson reached up and started undoing the straps of Sam's pack. "I'll take those samples and get started on the analysis." He took the pack and put a hand on his chest. "Remember, deep, slow breaths."
"Uh, yeah. Thanks."
Leaving the others grouped around the fire, Sam wandered towards the other tents to face his next dilemma: Which tent was his? Normally, this was the sort of thing that he'd rely on Al to help with, but he was beginning to come to terms with the fact that he might have to do this one solo. He could hardly expect for Al to appear on an alien planet. Could he? Sam pushed that speculation aside and studied the four tents. *One in four chance,* he told himself. He chose one at random, and either he'd picked the correct one or the men sitting outside weren't paying attention, because no one protested as he slipped inside.
If he'd hoped for clues about his current persona, they weren't forthcoming at the first glance around. Everything was neat and bare and tidy, blanket folded at the foot of the cot, duffel tucked underneath, and only a small notebook on the folding camp stool to mar the bare space. Sam picked up the notebook and opened it.
It was a scientific journal of some sort, filled with notes and calculations and observations, all penned in a neat, compact hand. "Capt. S. Carter" was written in the front, so at least that quelled Sam's fears about choosing the wrong tent.
Quickly, he leafed to the back of the book and found what seemed to be the last entry. It was dated September 25, 1998, which was a relief. Not into his own future yet, thank God. All the same, the date also gave Sam something of a start. His memory wasn't what it used to be, but he was fairly certain that he'd never before traveled quite this close to what he remembered as the theoretical end of his life. Whatever was going to happen, then, was going to happen soon. But what else was new?
Returning to the journal, Sam scanned the last pages eagerly, and breathed a sigh of relief as he read over the careful, meticulous notes of this mission.
"Arrived on P2R-156 at 0900. Scouted a half-mile radius around the Stargate and set up camp at approx. 1500. Sun maintained relative position, was unable to detect variations with naked eye."
Stargate? What the heck was a Stargate? Sam flipped back through the journal, and caught the word again and again. Finally, he returned to the front and frowned at the first entry, dated three months before. There it was again.
"Arrived on P6X-309 at 1200. Made contact with local populace immediately, as the Stargate was set up in the town square. They spoke a variation on ancient Greek, and Daniel was able to establish communication easily. No sign of Goa'uld presence, and none of them recognized Teal'c as Jaffa. This supports our theory that the Stargate system was not built by the Goa'uld, but rather that the Goa'uld scavenged the technology and used it for their own gain."
Slowly, Sam shut the journal. Stargate. The word niggled at something in his tattered memories. The Stargate Project. Only it wasn't always the Stargate Project....
Hieroglyphs. Sam suddenly sat bolt upright, flashing on a sudden, clear memory. A man, showing him a rubbing of hieroglyphs, asking him if he was interested in...in.... Damn! Where was Al when he needed him? That was all Sam could remember, except for a vague certainty that he'd turned them down. He was already embroiled in Project Quantum Leap, so he'd turned them down, in spite of his old fascination with Egyptology. And Sam suddenly remembered where he'd seen Dr. Daniel Jackson before.
Good lord, how could he have forgotten? He'd only met him once or twice, briefly, but Jackson had been one of the most brilliant linguists Sam had ever known. He spoke more than two dozen languages, but his specialty was--
"Of course!" Sam clapped his hand over his mouth, hoping the involuntary outburst wasn't loud enough to have reached the group around the fire. Jackson had always been obsessed with ancient Egyptian, and while he was considered to be one of the finest young minds in the field, his career had always been hampered by his insistence that the...pyramids...hadn't...been...built....
"Oh, boy."
"Sam?"
Sam jumped, and put the notebook down as Jackson poked his head into the tent. "Yeah, still here," he said.
"You feel up to helping me with some of these tests before we start packing up? I can do some of the dating and chemical stuff, but you're the astrophysicist."
That was news to Sam, but it was, at least, good news. At last, something he could actually do. "Sure, I can do that. I'll be there in a second. Daniel," he added belatedly, taking a stab.
Jackson didn't seem to find anything odd in the address, just nodded. "Okay. Jack wants to be packed up and through the Stargate in four hours."
"All right. I'll keep that in mind." Thank God. If what Sam speculated was true, that meant that they were going back home. But even as the relief flooded him, he felt a small twinge of disappointment.
Once he'd grasped the idea, Sam realized that he'd actually started to get excited. He was on another planet. A whole other world, possibly hundreds of thousands of light-years from Earth, and Sam Beckett was walking around on it. Sam found himself itching to run the tests that he was sure Sam Carter had set up, measuring the orbit and rotation and distance from the sun that would calculate this planet's cycle down to the nanosecond. This was an opportunity that no scientist ever thought they'd have in a lifetime, and Sam meant to make the most of it. He slipped Carter's journal into his jacket, and followed Jackson out of the tent.
The setup in the main tent was surprisingly sophisticated, right down to the portable mainframe computer. This was the kind of equipment Sam had had to beg for when he was starting up Quantum Leap, but he supposed that the Air Force would spare no effort in its offworld exploration teams. The Stargate Project was little more than a name and a handful of hieroglyphs to Sam, but now he felt certain that he knew all too well what the Stargate was, and what it did. Somehow, someone had unearthed a means to travel to other worlds, and this team was dedicated to exploring and studying them. He could even feel a little jealous of Captain Carter. But, since he was here, he'd just have to do the best he could to fill Carter's shoes. Sam set eagerly to the tests that Carter had outlined in the computer, and the next three hours flew by.
-----
"Okay, kids."
O'Neill's voice pulled Sam away from his study of Carter's calculations, and he saw Daniel start and swivel around, as if he, too, had been lost in thought. O'Neill tapped his wrist significantly, and jerked his head in the direction of the still-rising sun. "Time to get packed, folks."
Daniel opened his mouth. "Jack--"
"Ah-ah." O'Neill held up a warning finger. "I've already given you an extra day, Daniel. Hammond says we go back today, and as I recall, the word 'order' was somewhere in there."
Daniel sighed. "All right. I guess we'll just have to apply for a return mission."
"Good. Now, if you two wouldn't mind, let's get this place loaded up."
To Sam's relief, the team was also equipped with an all-terrain cart, which was quickly filled with the contents of the lab tent, and then the sparser personal gear tossed on top. O'Neill raised an eyebrow as Sam threw his less-than-expertly-packed tent onto the heap, but made no comment. In less than an hour, they were trundling out of the little dale.
Sam wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. He'd been bouncing the word "Stargate" around his head for the last few hours, but until the moment he saw it, he really had no idea what it was or looked like. Even at first glance, he took the massive circle for some kind of native structure, part of a megalithic circle. Then he remembered that this planet was supposedly uninhabited, and gave the darkly carved ring a second hard look.
This had to be it. Even from a distance, Sam could pick out the symbols stamped into the inner ring, gleaming coldly in the weak morning sunlight. He was too far away to identify any of them, but he felt certain that he would recognize them as part of the same set of odd symbols that he had been shown years ago. But whatever he'd pictured in his mind, it wasn't anything like this. The thing was huge, probably two stories high at the least, resting on a long sloping mound at the center of the clearing. There was no other adornment, no structure or temple to indicate its significance, but it didn't need it. Sam was awed just looking at it, and felt a vague sense of disappointment that the other members of the team didn't even pause. How incredible, that they could have done this so many times that they weren't even amazed any longer.
But how did the thing work? Sam couldn't see any other kind of equipment, no propulsion system, no ship, nothing but a circular double-ringed dial buried in the grass at the side of the gate. The gate, too, was buried in the earth, so obviously it didn't move. But somehow, it had brought Colonel O'Neill and the rest of his team here, and Sam could only guess that it would also send them home.
Once they reached the gate, Daniel moved at once to the dial embedded in the slope. While Sam looked on, trying not to gape, Daniel confidently punched a seemingly random sequence of symbols on the dial, and the huge inner wheel of the Stargate began to turn. One by one, the glowing chevrons locked into place, and a few moments later Sam was staring in wonder at the shimmering surface of the Stargate.
"Okay, kids. Let's go home."
Sam glanced over, and watched as Teal'c guided the rover through the center of the Stargate. The machine's long probe disappeared into the circle, and a moment later man and vehicle were gone, vanished into the surface of the pool. Daniel walked through next, and Sam knew that now it was his turn. He pretended to be adjusting his pack, giving him some time to study the phenomenon he was about to walk through.
He had no idea what he looking at, if it was some kind of quantum field, or spatial rift, or even if it was the glowing pool of mercury that it appeared to be. Whatever it was, it seemed that Earth was on the other side. All he had to do was step through it. Aware of O'Neill's eyes on him, Sam took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked forward into the unknown.
It wasn't terribly different from quantum leaping, at that. There was the same moment of dizzying disorientation, then the sensation of being swept away, pulled along by forces too terrifyingly powerful to resist. And always, at the end, the blessed relief that it was finally over. Sam stumbled to a halt on a hard metal surface, gasping from the intense cold even as it dissipated. His stomach gave a single lurch, then settled down, apparently satisfied that the trip was over. Sam wished he could be so sure.
"Welcome home, SG-1."
Sam blinked, and focused on the figure standing at the foot of the sloping metal ramp. He'd just begun to thankfully decipher the insignia on his crisp white shirt when O'Neill strode forward, nodding. "Good to be home, General."
But Sam was no longer paying attention. Instead, he was looking back over his shoulder, gazing at the smooth rippled pool that filled the Stargate. Even as he stared, though, still trying to fathom what it could possibly be, the field disintegrated, dropping away with a small hiss of discharged particles. Incredible.
"Sam?" Sam turned to find Daniel standing next to him. "Sam, you okay?"
"Yeah." Sam tried a smile, and waved at the Gate. "It just never really gets old, you know?"
Daniel smiled, and a for a moment he looked almost wistful. "Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean."
"Sam!"
With an effort, Sam kept the smile fixed on his face, although he was sure that he'd just lost a year of his life from fright. After all this time, he ought to be used to Al bellowing in his ear without warning, but it still nearly gave him a heart attack. Oblivious to Sam's distress, Al was going on, talking a mile a minute.
"Sam, thank god. Where the hell have you been? We've been looking for you for days! I thought we'd never find you."
Even as Al babbled on, Daniel was turning away from the Stargate. "Come on. Let's get our gear checked in."
"Okay," Sam told him. "I'll be there in a minute."
As soon as Daniel had walked away, Sam turned his back on the knot of people still gathered at the foot of the ramp, and put his hand over his mouth, pretending to be lost in thought. "Al!" he hissed. "You'll never believe where I was!"
"Yeah, well, wherever it was, Ziggy couldn't find you, and she's been frantic."
"Al, I was on another planet! That's why Ziggy couldn't home in on me. I was..." Sam raised a hand to gesture, and at the last moment remembered that he wasn't alone. "Out there," he whispered.
"Out there," Al repeated. "On another planet."
"Yes!" Sam nodded. "I don't know how it works, exactly, but this Stargate goes there, and it brought us back."
"Stargate?" Now Al was punching at the handlink, muttering as the lights flashed and died, then flickered to life again. "Ziggy kept finding something about the Stargate Project while she was researching, but--"
"Al, that's it. This--" Sam wiggled a finger at the Stargate. "--is it. The Stargate Project has to do with exploring other planets. And I've Leaped right into the middle of it."
"Well, whatever it is, Ziggy can't find much about it. The project must still be active now, because even the name is classified. Ziggy was lucky to get that much."
"What does Ziggy know?"
"Your name is Captain--"
"--Sam Carter, yeah I got that much. And I'm in the Air Force and I'm part of something called SG-1."
Al shook his head. "Not according to your records. You are in the Air Force, but you trained as an astrophysicist, and until two years ago you were working at the Pentagon. Your current assignment is analyzing deep space radar telemetry here at NORAD."
"It must be a cover-up, a fake project to disguise what they're really doing here. Speaking of which," Sam looked around, and found the other officers still talking at the foot of the ramp. "What am I doing here."
"Uh, well, we're working on that." Al consulted his link again. "Have you met anyone called Jack O'Neill yet?"
"Yeah, Colonel O'Neill. He's my--Carter's--commanding officer."
"That jibes with the records we have. We couldn't find you, so we decided to do as much of a workup as we could on Captain Carter. Anyway, Ziggy thinks that you're here for Colonel O'Neill."
"Why? What happens to him?"
"We're not sure. Like you, most of what he really does is classified. All we know is that four years from now, Jack O'Neill is found dead in his home." Al looked up at Sam, his expression grave. "He kills himself, Sam."
-----
Somehow, Sam got out of the room where the Stargate was, and started looking for a place where he could talk to Al in private. "Here," he said at last, and pushed his way into the door marked "Locker Room."
"Sam--!" Al started to protest, but Sam was already inside.
He'd hoped to find the locker room empty, but no such luck. O'Neill was standing in front of an open locker, taking off his fatigues while he talked to someone out of sight in the shower room. "--so they get to Detroit, and the state police have to clear off the interstate so the team can get to the arena before--" He broke off as he caught sight of Sam, then hastily yanked up his trousers again, holding them up with one hand. "Captain Carter," he said formally. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"Uh, no. No, I just wanted to get...something...from my locker."
"Sam..." Al stepped out of the row of lockers next to O'Neill, and gestured frantically towards the door. "Sam, this is the guy's locker room!"
"Well, no offense, Captain, but this is the guy's locker room," O'Neill said at almost the same time. "Well, for the next fifteen minutes, anyway."
"Huh?" Gradually, Sam became aware that Al was making frantic signals towards the rear wall, and glanced over to see, for the first time, Captain Sam Carter reflected in a mirror.
"Oh, god," Sam breathed. "I'm a woman."
About the time that it sank in, Sam realized with horror that he spoken out loud. He gulped, and turned back to the colonel. "I'm a woman," he said more firmly. "And it's still fifteen minutes before this is the women's locker room. I must have misread the time. Sorry. Excuse me." Sam fled, leaving O'Neill staring after him.
Outside, Sam leaned against the wall, breathing deep, and then opened his eyes to glare at Al. "Why didn't you tell me?" he hissed.
"I thought you knew!" Al protested. "Didn't you look in a mirror?"
"I didn't have a chance. And no one said anything to make me think that I was a woman, so I just assumed...." Sam groaned. "The colonel's going to think I'm crazy."
"That, or that you have the hots for him," Al leered, and Sam glared.
"Come on," he said coldly. "Let's find a nice closet somewhere."
Eventually, they found an empty janitorial closet not far from the locker room, and Sam ducked in and turned on the light. "Now," he said. "What were you saying about O'Neill?"
"Just what I told you. On August 14, 2002, he shoots himself."
"But why?" Sam shook his head. "What do we know about him?"
Al punched at the link. "He's a career Air Force officer, been with the military for nearly thirty years. He did a tour in Viet Nam, and he's been dropped in the middle of every other hot spot since, mostly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He was caught in '87, spent four months in an Iraqi prison before he got out. Served in the Gulf War. Awards and commendations out the yin-yang, and then he retired in...1995?" Al frowned at the link.
"That doesn't make sense. This is 1998 and he's still here. Are you sure Ziggy's got the date right?"
"Yeah, he retired...Oh." Al looked up, his face falling. "He took retirement when his kid died. Charlie O'Neill, eleven years old. Shot himself accidentally with O'Neill's gun."
"Oh, god. That's terrible."
"Yeah. His marriage fell apart after that, wife left him. He only stayed retired for a few months, though, then he was...re-activated...." Al was poking at the link now, clearly not agreeing with the data he was getting. "Then he retired again, then he re-activated again...I'm starting to get dizzy here, Sam. Oh, but he stayed with the Air Force from '97 on." Al paused again. "At least until '02."
"So what happened?"
"No one knows, Sam, that's what I'm trying to tell you. If it had anything to do with this Stargate Project, we can't know because it's classified. And if it's anything else, we haven't been able to find that out, either."
"Then I suggest you get back and start looking. Maybe now that you know what the Stargate is, you can get Ziggy to start digging. Also, there were two civilians, I think, on the mission. You might have missed them. One of them is named Teal'c, I don't know his other name, and the other is Dr. Daniel Jackson."
"Okay, got it. I'll get Ziggy started on it right away." Al started punching the code to open to the chamber door. "And Sam..."
"Yeah, Al?"
"Stay out of the guy's locker room." Al stepped through, and was gone.
"Thanks."
-----
The rest of the day was, thankfully, taken up by routine. First they had to check in their gear, and every other piece of equipment that had been brought back. Then there were the samples to be deposited at the lab, and the data delivered to be analyzed by the base computers. Then there was a thorough medical exam, complete with blood and urine samples. Sam went along with it, because the last thing he needed was to cause a fuss and blow his cover, but he couldn't help but wonder how his results were going to compare to Sam Carter's.
The final ordeal was the de-briefing, but thanks to Captain Carter's notes Sam was able to scrape by, mostly by sitting back and letting Daniel do all the talking. The two questions General Hammond asked him directly were easily fielded by consulting Carter's notes, and by Sam drawing on his own expertise, something that didn't happen too often during a Leap.
"That's all for now," Hammond said at last, and rose from the table. "I believe your next mission isn't scheduled for another three days. Until then, you'll be on down-time. Have a good weekend."
"Thank you, sir," O'Neill said sincerely. "I'm glad that you recognize the importance of pre-season hockey to us all." The general merely looked blank, and O'Neill raised his brows. "What, you're not giving us leave just to watch the Hawks crush those snotty upstarts?"
"Which ones would those be, Jack?" Daniel asked.
"Whoever they're playing."
"Enjoy your weekend," Hammond said again, with a small smile, and left. Around Sam, the rest of the team got up, too.
"I'm serious, though," O'Neill was going on. "Everyone's invited to come over and watch the game tonight. Beer, pizza, and the Hawks. A perfect evening."
"Hockey?" Daniel looked about as enthusiastic as if Jack had suggested an evening of calisthenics. "I don't know, Jack, I was going to stay here and--"
"Burn your eyes out staring into a computer screen?" Jack pointed over at Teal'c, who'd sat silent and attentive through the whole conversation. "What about Teal'c? We promised we'd show him what Earth culture was all about, and now you're all backing out on him."
Earth culture? Sam supposed it was a good sign that he could still be surprised, even after a day full of nothing else. Before he could stop himself, he found his eyes swiveling to the big man across the table, his mind rapidly ticking over the implications of that casual comment. Not from Earth. Dear god.
"I appreciate your offer, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said, blessedly unaware of Sam's sudden scrutiny. "But I, too, had planned to spend the evening on the base. Perhaps tomorrow. You are driving me to Dr. Jackson's for dinner. You could show me your culture before then."
"Okay." O'Neill appeared to think about it for a moment, then a half-smile quirked at his mouth. "Okay," he said again. "It's a deal."
Daniel looked dubious, but Teal'c merely inclined his head and said, "I look forward to it, O'Neill."
"Great." O'Neill clasped his hands, rocking back on his heels in satisfaction, and Sam forced himself to return to his own mission. He realized, suddenly, that there was one member of the team who hadn't answered the colonel's invitation, and that this was an opportunity not to be wasted. "About the game tonight, sir," he said. "I'd like to come." Every face in the room suddenly turned toward him. "I like hockey," he lied, and watched as O'Neill raised a brow.
"Okay," he said presently. "There's one. Anyone else want to change their mind?" Neither man moved, and he shrugged. "Your loss." He pushed his chair back and rose. "Get your gear, Carter, and meet me up top. Game starts in an hour, and I don't want to miss them dropping the puck."
"Yes, sir."
-----
Sam hurried back to the locker room, and was relieved to find Al waiting there for him. "Find anything?" he asked, searching quickly through Carter's locker for something to wear.
"Yes and no," Al said. "There's nothing on anyone named Teal'c associated with the Stargate project."
Sam made a face. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised. I think he must be from another planet. Who knows how he ended up here, but you're not likely to find any records on him."
"Uh, yeah." Al shifted his eyes back to the link. "Not to sound skeptical, Sam, but there's nothing in any of the records about the Air Force exploring other worlds. Are you sure you--?"
"Al! I was on another planet, all right? You can trust me on that."
"All I'm saying is that sometimes the Leap can be a little disorienting."
"This wasn't disorientation. This was another planet. I stepped through a great big ring just like the one in the room where you found me, and a few seconds later I was back here. I'm telling you, the Stargate is real, and so is that other world and God knows how many other worlds."
Al still didn't look convinced, but he didn't press the issue. "Okay," he said, in a tone that stated clearly that he was going to humor Sam if it killed him. "I'll have Ziggy keep digging."
"You do that, Al. And you'll see that I'm right."
Al consulted the screen again. "We had a little better luck with Dr. Jackson," he continued, clearly determined to let the matter drop. "About the same time that O'Neill dies, he leaves the project--not that the project exists, mind you--and goes back to Egypt to work on a dig somewhere. Ziggy's still trying to trace him through his grants, but he hasn't been back to the States since."
"So the team splits up," Sam said thoughtfully. "Maybe a mission went wrong."
"I don't think so."
"Ziggy has a theory?"
"Ziggy has a possible theory." Al stuck his cigar in his mouth in order to punch at the link with both hands for a moment. "About six months before O'Neill dies, his ex-wife re-marries. No sign of them ever seriously trying to reconcile, so we can assume that this isn't a problem. But five months later, he finds out that she's pregnant. Ziggy thinks that there's a sixty-three percent probability that this brings up all the stuff about Charlie all over again for O'Neill."
"And that could lead him to kill himself?"
"Could be. Ziggy says that when his son died, O'Neill was a candidate for suicide, and rejoining the military probably saved his life. He got through it then, but he was also still married. The marriage was falling apart," Al added cynically, "but he wasn't by himself. Now, with his wife gone, and knowing that she's starting over again with a new family and another kid, Ziggy thinks it's bound to remind him that he's still all alone, that he lost the only family he had." Al tapped the link, clearing his throat. "Which brings us to Ziggy's first theory about why you're here."
"Oh, great. I can't wait to hear this."
"She says that there's a thirty percent chance that if O'Neill remarries, then he'll have something to hold onto, someone to pull him through."
"That makes sense. Get him and his ex-wife back together, let them both start over."
Al looked uncomfortable. "Well, uh, no. Not exactly. Remember, Sara's got a kid now with this other guy, and Ziggy says we can't mess with that."
"All right. Then who, exactly?"
"Well, Sam, Ziggy's got another theory about that. She thinks that O'Neill needs someone who knows him really well, someone who understands the work he does, and that he can talk to about what goes on."
"Uh-huh, and that would be...?"
"You, Sam."
The only thing that surprised Sam was how little he was surprised. Then again, why should he be? There were times when he felt that romance must be one of the primary motivators of the universe, to judge from the number of times that it was his mission during a Leap. "Me," he said flatly. "You mean Sam Carter."
"Yeah. That's what Ziggy says."
"Oh, great." Sam closed his eyes, praying briefly for patience. Or maybe praying that this was all just a crazy, bizarre dream. "That's just great, Al. How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know!" Al said defensively. "Look, I told Ziggy she was crazy."
"For once I agree with you. What do we know about her? Do we know that this is what she wants? She might have a boyfriend of her own, someone she might like to be with. We don't know if she's even interested in O'Neill that way."
Now Al was looking at him oddly, almost apologetically. "Are you sure that's what it's about, Sam?"
Sam frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well.... " Al shrugged with he probably thought was nonchalance. "O'Neill's a guy."
"Yes."
"And you're a...a...." Al flapped his hands illustratively.
Sam could see, now, where all this was headed, and he felt an all-too-familiar exasperation rise in him. Along with something else that he was less eager to place. "Okay," he finally admitted. "Maybe that's a tiny drawback."
"Tiny! Sam!"
"Look, as far as O'Neill is concerned, I'm a woman named Sam Carter," Sam said firmly, doing his best to ignore the tiny voice of doubt that had crept into his thoughts. "Right now, that's all that matters, right?"
"Sam--"
"Right?"
The expression on Al's face was truly unreadable, a mix of so many conflicting emotions that Sam couldn't even begin to sort them out. "I guess so," he finally muttered. He shook his head. "This is nuts. I don't know what the hell Ziggy thinks she's--"
"Al, I'd be lying if I said I was crazy about the idea myself, okay?" Sam took a deep breath, surprised at how much better the admission made him feel. All right. So he wasn't thrilled about the prospect of trying to romance Jack O'Neill. *But it's no different,* he told himself firmly. *You've done this hundreds of times, done your best to bring two people together so their lives would be better. Just because this is the first time you've tried to do it like...this...* Sam took another breath. *All your talk to Al about treating people the same no matter what.... Well, it's time to start practicing what you preach.*
He said none of this to Al, though. Instead, he turned and faced him squarely, daring him to protest. "I'm not completely comfortable with this, and I'd be lying if I said I was." He paused. "But I'd hate to think I was so afraid of my own sexuality that I'd let a man die."
That got him. Al still didn't look happy, but he nodded. "You're right, Sam," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Hey, you've come a long way from the guy who nearly went ballistic when I Leapt into someone who only might have been gay."
Al had the grace to look embarassed. "That was a long time ago, Sam," he said gruffly. "Besides...." He cleared his throat, staring down at the handlink. "I was wrong."
Not for the first time, Sam wished that Al really was there with him, that he could reach out and touch him, just to put a hand on his shoulder and let him know that everything was okay. But, as usual, he had to settle for words. "Thanks, Al."
"Ah, yeah." Al shrugged it off, but he looked pleased, and when he spoke again there was a new purpose in his voice. "So, I guess we've got a job to do."
"Yep. The seduction of Jack O'Neill." Now that the problem was in front of him again, Sam's initial doubts about the wisdom of matching Carter with O'Neill were starting to return. "Not to rain on the parade again, but aren't there regulations against this sort of thing?"
"Well, that's another little stumbling block," Al admitted. "If this works out, one of them will probably have to leave the project."
"Leave the...Al, that's terrible. This is Carter's life we're playing with. Her career."
"Or O'Neill's," Al said quickly. "He'll be hitting retirement age in another ten years or so, he might decide that he's got less to lose."
"Al," Sam said slowly. "I'm starting to think that this is a bad idea."
"Maybe. But it's the only idea we've got. Sam, you've got to try."
Sam paced slowly across the aisle, trying to think. "Ziggy's sure this is the only way?"
"Maybe not. But right now, it's the best chance O'Neill has."
Sam stopped pacing and squared his shoulders. "Okay," he said. "Then I guess I'd better get dressed for my date."
-----
Unfortunately--or fortunately, depending on how one looked at it--the wardrobe left behind in Sam Carter's locker didn't include much in the way of "date" clothes. A pair of jeans, a blue blouse, and running shoes would have to do. After dab of make-up, and a brush through his hair, Sam guessed he was as ready as he'd ever be.
O'Neill didn't even give him a second look. He was waiting at the top of the elevator, leaning against the railing that separated the elevators from the entrance to the underground parking lot. He'd changed somehow from his uniform fatigues into kakhi pants and a plain dark pullover, a black leather jacket slung across his shoulder.
"Still just us, sir?" Sam asked, and O'Neill shrugged.
"Sorry, Captain. Looks like you're stuck with the old man tonight."
Sam swallowed. *First chance, Sam,* he told himself. *Now or never.* "I don't mind, sir." *Oh, nice start, still using his rank.*
But O'Neill made no move to head for the parking lot. "Look, Carter, I appreciate you offering to come along. But you don't have to. I'll be just as happy watching the game by myself if you've got other plans."
"What, you think women can't like hockey?" Sam said, trying to tease and half-succeeding. "And you're not exactly a fossil, sir." Damn! Rank again. He tried once more. "But if you'd rather spend the evening alone, I'll understand. I know this isn't exactly what you had in mind."
"No, no," O'Neill protested quickly. A little too quickly, Sam's more cynical side might have remarked. But he was going on. "I just didn't want you to feel like it was required, or anything."
"Not at all, sir. I'm looking forward to it."
"Okay, then." O'Neill shrugged into his jacket and gestured. "Let's go."
The drive over to O'Neill's house was made mostly in silence. O'Neill didn't seem inclined to make small talk, and Sam was finding himself at a loss to fill in the gap. If his mission was, as Al insisted, to get these two together, then Sam knew that he needed to make some kind of overture, break the ice. It was hardly, after all, the first time that he'd tried to ensure that the course of true love ran a bit more smoothly. *Just do what you've always done before,* he told himself. *It can't hurt.*
"Actually, Colonel," he said presently, "I'm kind of glad that this happened."
"Huh?" O'Neill started, as if he'd forgotten that Sam was there, and shot him a quick look. "Oh," he recovered. "Really?"
"Well, yes. I mean, I've worked with you for a while now, but I don't feel like I know much about you." O'Neill shot him another look, this one filled with something that looked slightly like alarm, and Sam quickly took another tack. "Or you about me," he added hastily. "I just think it's nice that we can do something social once in a while."
"Yeah," O'Neill said, a little doubtfully. "Sure. I can see that."
Sam pushed on doggedly. "Sometimes all this military protocol can be a little stifling, don't you think? You and Teal'c and Daniel can call one another by your first names, and there aren't any rules about what you can say and how and when."
"I thought you were a fan of military protocols, Captain." O'Neill was silent for a moment. "But, for the record, when we're off-duty 'Jack' is fine by me."
"Well, that's kind of my point. We don't seem to be off-duty much. Together."
"True enough." O'Neill paused to make a turn, and drove in silence for a while. "Still, it's part of the job, even if you're the only one who has to say 'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir,' and 'with all due respect blow it out your ear, sir.'"
"That doesn't bother me, sir." O'Neill raised a brow, and Sam stopped. "Jack," he said firmly. "It's part of being in the military, and I accept that. But it is very formal, and--" Sam took a deep breath, sending a silent apology to the real Sam Carter, wherever she might be. "--and quite frankly, I think that it sometimes makes me sound like an ice queen."
"You?" O'Neill shook his head. "Never."
"You know what I mean, s--Jack. You said it yourself. I'm the only one on the team who's required to be that formal with you. I'm doomed to stick out."
"You look at Teal'c, and you think *you* stick out?"
Sam had to smile. "Point taken. But I think you take my point, too."
"Yeah, I guess I do." O'Neill glanced over. "Don't worry, Carter," he said sincerely. "To me, you'll never be an ice queen."
"Thanks. I think."
After that, the conversation lapsed again, and Sam let it. He'd done what he could to sow the seeds, and he was afraid to push it any more right then. Plenty of time to make a fool of himself later, after all.
Concluded in "Sam I Am" (2/2)