Jack's patience was even shorter than his attention span. Turning to Carter, he loaded his voice with the minimum of restraint necessary when addressing a three star. “General?”
“Herbert.” Carter grasped the older man's arm in warning. “We agreed you'd leave the recriminations at home, and the explanations to me.”
Preempting any further distractions, Jack simultaneously fixed Vala with a stern look. “Not another word.”
She shrugged and, one eye on the abandoned pastry, began rocking on the back legs of the chair. Herbert sighed and contented himself with his tea, while Carter continued her interrupted explanation. “The destabilized wormhole would have collapsed, killing SG-1, but Herbert managed to divert it.”
Processing that information, Jack said, “Thank you. To where?”
“More accurately, when.” The rocking stopped.
“Ah!” Jack informed Vala with a cautionary finger. “Not a word.”
“This—” Carter tapped Herbert's gold doohickey— “well, the simplest description is that it's a remote control DHD. It's what Cassandra will use to send SG-1 back to the correct time when she meets them after they jump too far forward in time from 1969.”
While Jack now recognized the device, there was absolutely no way he was going to try and fathom the tenses in that statement. “I thought Cassie just opened the 'gate with it?”
“It's more involved than that. As you know, after you came back from the first Abydos mission, the Pentagon had me researching the Stargate for other applications including time travel. The problem with that line of research—and one of the reasons I abandoned it—is that the Ancients never meant for the Stargates to be used for time travel. Consequently the DHDs were only programmed to compensate for stellar drift in three dimensions, not four—the fourth being time.”
“Well, that's hardly a revelation.” The Danish had reappeared in Vala's hand. Mostly. Some of it was bunched up inside her left cheek. “Matter is moving through space at several thousand miles a second, so unless you get all the coordinates right, you could find yourself in the right time at the wrong place.”
Jack pinned her with a glare. “What did I just say?”
“It was a perfectly legitimate observation.” She swallowed and stared right back at him. “Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean you have to be such a grouch about it.”
“Hasn't General Landry ever given you a run down on the meaning of the word, 'sir'?”
A thoughtful frown put in a brief appearance before the chair rocking started up again. “He might have mentioned something about it, but only in passing.” She took another huge bite out of the pastry and chewed noisily, and then grinned at him. “I'm pretty choosy about who I let discipline me, you know.”
“Forgetting to take stellar drift into account during time travel is a most unpleasant experience, I can assure, you.” Herbert's words were at odds with his censorious tone. The look he gave Vala before he fixed his attention on Jack, spoke of more than a passing acquaintance. “As Vala pointed out, it can mean arriving millions of miles out in the void of space. Very nasty.”
“Getting the right time-space co-ordinates still doesn't guarantee a safe arrival,” Carter added, “because there are elements you can't always factor into your equations, like a tree or a building being in the way. Even if you eliminate that possibility by arriving well above the ground, there's still the danger of something transient like a flock of birds. And the result is...explosive.”
Despite himself, Jack actually followed what she was saying. “So how come nothing blew up when we arrived in 1969?”
“One reason we considered Stargates as time travel devices was because the unstable vortex disintegrates all matter ahead of an incoming traveler. While the time-shifted vortex creates the hole, the 'gate remains anchored to its own time. The downside, of course is it's a one-way trip. But with no matter in the way, there's no explosion. We arrived at 1969 into a void that existed directly beneath the engines of a Titan missile. In fact that void was not carved out when the Cheyenne Mountain complex was constructed, but by the 'gate vortex to when Herbert sent SG-1.”
Eyeing the gold hand device, Vala said, “That would explain why you can't use that and the Stargate to retrieve SG-1. They're inside the cavern created by that vortex.”
“Exactly.” Carter nodded and wrapped her fingers around her cup. “A second vortex would disintegrate them. Which means that before you can recover SG-1 —”
“As in, we?” Eyebrows lifting hopefully, Vala glanced at Jack.
“Couldn't have done it without you.” Carter smiled and sipped her coffee.
Vala leaned forward and slapped Jack's arm with excitement. “Oh goodie!”
Examining the flakes of sticky pastry and icing sugar now glued to his shirt, Jack wondered if there was something to all that bad karmic stuff that Daniel had been jabbering on about. “Can we skip to the how—” he glanced at Vala, who snatched up a second Danish— “we, recover SG-1?”
“I assume you've read Dr. Weir's reports from the Atlantis expedition?” Carter didn't wait for his affirmation before adding, “In which case you'll be aware that prior to their evacuation to Earth ten thousand years ago, an Ancient named Janus built a temporal device and, presumably to avoid the risk of encountering solid matter during time travel by operating in orbit, installed it in one of the Atlantis jumpers. The head of the Council, Moros, had the machine dismantled, but Janus brought his research to Earth and either he or another Ancient built a second device and jumper.
“While some of these refugee Ancients remained on Earth, others left for planets elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and the temporal enhanced jumper ended up on the planet that Harry Maybourne—”
“Now, you see. You always do that.” Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I was having such a nice day until you reminded me of Maybourne. What happens to Harry in the future, anyway? No, don't tell me. King Arkhan probably lives a full and happy life, has forty doting wives, a dozen fat children and gets himself buried in a flashy tomb erected in the Grateful Dead burial ground.”
Even though he knew she wasn't going to answer his question, the expression that crossed Carter's face wasn't the least bit reassuring, either! “That temporally enhanced jumper is currently at Area 51.”
“Can I say something?” Vala asked, around another mouthful of food.
“No.”
“Let her speak, Jack,” Carter said, effectively pulling rank on him.
Vala treated Carter to a beaming smile and then glanced around the table at the others. “Sounds to me that even using a jumper, this whole time travel thing doesn't seem terribly safe.”
“Oh, really?” Jack said. “What a shame you won't be joining us.”
She pulled a face at him and directed her next question to Carter. “I mean...what happens if”you bump into a passing meteorite, or junk cluttering up the space around planets that've had the odd battle or two?”
“That's a very good question, my dear,” Herbert replied, with an indulgent smile. “Apparently the jumper's shields protect the occupants from the resultant explosion. Given any detritus would be vaporized, it's unlikely anybody on the ground would in any way be affected by the impact.”
“Sooo...just out of curiosity,” Vala speculated, poking through the remaining Danish. “What if we decided not to rescue SG-1?” When a stony silence met her suggestion, she looked up and added hastily, “Not that we wouldn't or anything, you know, but, if.”
Carter didn't seem surprised by her query. “For one thing I wouldn't be here now, and for another, when Cheyenne Mountain was excavated they would have discovered our bodies. And since I'm here, and they didn't—”
“Isn't that what Daniel described as post hoc reasoning?” Abandoning the gelatinous mass on the plate, Vala reached for the water carafe.
A familiar smile crossed Carter's face. She picked up Herbert's hand device and turned it in her fingers. “Welcome to t
he wonderful world of time travel.”
“There's one teensy-weensy thing I don't understand.”
Jack couldn't help himself. “Only one?”
Loftily ignoring his sarcasm, Vala kept her attention on Carter. “Why couldn't your...our...little friend Herbert, here, redirect the wormhole back to the here and now?”
“Because the wormhole was already destabilized, the matter stream was unstable and we could have lost SG-1 entirely,” Carter explained. “It was safer to direct it to where a tear in space-time already existed, which acted like an area of least resistance to allow the matter stream to reform unharmed.”
“Which begs the obvious question, doesn't it?” Vala said.
For a fleeting moment, Jack envied Vala for only being vague on one point. Truth was, he'd been out of his depth since the meeting began and his patience was now at the threadbare stage. He glared at Vala, shaking his pounding head. “No.”
She fixed her gaze on Herbert. “What caused the tear in the first instance?”
It was Carter, rather than Herbert, who answered Vala. The General dropped the device on to the table and picked up her coffee mug. “That's where you come in.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Any twinge of avarice Vala had initially experienced upon first seeing the jumpers in Atlantis had quickly dissipated with the knowledge that access to the vessels' flight systems was restricted to those who bore the Ancient gene. And since the vast majority of those people were still on Atlantis, that left General O'Neill in charge of this mission; a fact that, despite his pretended grumpiness, didn't appear to upset him in the slightest.
If anything he seemed quite enthusiastic to be leaving what—in Vala's opinion—was the most stultifying place on the planet. Not that she'd been given much of an opportunity to explore other places on Earth besides the equally stultifying city they called Washington DC, a monster-ridden forest around General Landry's cabin, Sol's diner, and a nearby warehouse. Still, she sensed in O'Neill the same need in her to leave the ugly gray walls of the SGC behind—the irresistible urge to go outside and play.
Unfortunately, 'outside' had lasted all of two minutes in a noisy, dangerous contraption with large rotating airfoils called a helicopter, a trip that Vala was certain could equally have been accomplished in a car. Then they'd climbed into a somewhat more comfortable winged vehicle called a C-21, where there'd been lots of boring chitchat that these people justified by calling it briefing—and there was a misnomer if ever she'd heard one—about O'Neill sticking to flight paths to avoid the alarming amount of litter orbiting Earth; a fact that Vala found intriguing since they apparently hadn't had that many space battles.
Watching General Carter install the Asgard transport device into the jumper had been an exercise in sheer frustration. If anyone had asked her—but of course no one had—Vala was absolutely certain she could have gotten things up and running hours ago. She'd encountered the odd piece of Asgard technology in her dealings with her prior business associates and on principle made a point of learning what she could about any new equipment that came her way. One never knew when these things would come in handy, after all. Still, observing Carter and Lee at work had given her some insight into the more recent Ancient developments, so the day hadn't been entirely wasted.
“Y'know,” Dr. Lee said, glancing around to make certain Carter was still outside talking to O'Neill, “I still don't see why we have to stick with 'puddle jumper' just because that's what the Atlantis expedition calls them. Since when have we referred to the event horizon as a puddle? Gateship just seems more appropriate.” He returned to examining the readout on the datapad in his hand.
“What about timeship?” Vala ran her fingers along the flat, glassy crystals of the DHD mounted behind the jumper's control panel. As design ideas went, it offered a decidedly improved tactical advantage over the big, lumbering and not very portable standard model DHD. “After all, we will be flying around in a time machine.”
“How 'bout Tempus Fugit?”
She turned to face the balding scientist. “There's absolutely no cause to be rude.”
Smiling, Lee glanced up from the panel he was working on. “It's Latin for 'time flies'.” He waved the datapad around in one hand and the stylus in the other as he explained. “I just thought, you know, since it's a common expression and because Latin is related to Ancient...” Seeing the look on her face he took a deep breath, exhaled forcefully and returned to checking the array of crystals in the overhead compartment. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Obscure cultural references notwithstanding, I still haven't entirely grasped this need to wave one's arms around when explaining something. Daniel does it a great deal and I find it quite distracting.” Even if, in Daniel's case, it was also somewhat endearing.
“We...ell,” Lee countered, repositioning something he referred to as an alligator clip on one of the Ancient crystals. “You do the same thing with your...urn...body.”
“Ah, yes, but that serves a very practical purpose.” Ignoring the flush of color that came to his cheeks, Vala gently tapped two of the furthermost crystals with her index finger. “Just as I think you'll find that moving these over here—” She indicated two slots at the rear— “will finish the job nicely.”
Gaze darting between the panel and his datapad, Lee repositioned the crystals, shook his head in wonder and then offered her a grateful smile. “Y'know, that really is a gift.”
Although she didn't know a huge amount about the more recent Ancient devices, the placement of the crystals was pretty obvious. “Comes with having had Qetesh inside my head all those years.”
That insipid little man who'd worked for Athena hadn't helped, either. In attempting to extract some utterly worthless knowledge about a non-existent treasure map, he'd bequeathed Vala with the entire set of Goa'uld memoirs, something she could happily have done without.
So much for her primitive human mind.
Lee's smile turned apologetic and he looked away, somewhat embarrassed. “If you ever get bored back at the SGC,” he suggested hesitantly, “I could always do with a hand in the lab.”
It wasn't often Vala was caught off guard, and while she knew Lee found her seductively attractive—most men did, naturally—she was a little surprised to realize that he honestly appreciated her less visible attributes, too.
She suspected it might be one of the reasons why the people on this planet had become important to her. And that was an odd notion in itself, because experience had taught her that demonstrating even the slightest bit of consideration to anyone other than herself invariably ended badly. Still, fitting into military life at the SGC was not proving to be the easiest of tasks, the odd night out in the restaurants of Colorado Springs notwithstanding. Despite her relatively recent status as a fully fledged member of the SGC—and Daniel's assurances that she really didn't have to prove herself anymore—helping Lee might further her status as well as alleviating her boredom.
Footsteps on the hatch announced the arrival of Carter. “How are we doing?”
Disconnecting his datapad, Lee closed the access panels. “Every system now has a discreet power source, but in the event of, say, a failure of the drive pods, General O'Neill should be able to instantly divert power from the time machine or Asgard transport to compensate.” He turned to Carter and added, “I'm glad the Asgard finally taught us—well, you—to install their equipment without their constant supervision.”
Not for the first time that day, Vala got the distinct impression that General Carter's cryptic smile was hiding something more than thirty odd years of additional history.
O'Neill stepped inside, paused for a quick look around, and, easing past the temporal device mounted in the jumper's tiny cargo bay, came forward to the cockpit and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Okay kids, are we ready to take the DeLorean for a test drive?”
Lee muttered something under his breath about the logical inconsistencies and scientific inaccuracies in what V
ala assumed, was a movie of some kind. She wasn't entirely sure what he was on about, however, and it made her wonder if she should reconsider Teal'c's offer to loan her his extensive DVD library which, he had assured her, were considerably more educational than Sol's collection of X-Files tapes.
While the other members of SG-1 had agreed to a moratorium on cultural references, she hated feeling left out, or that someone was making a joke she wasn't in on. And that whole 'sharing leaves' ritual with the hysterical onion-faced wife of Ver Egen's Administrator had been a pointed reminder of why one should familiarize oneself with the local customs. Something she was certainly going to include in any book she wrote on Handy Hints For Getting Around The Universe.
Not that she was likely to. Apparently there was already a book on the subject, although how any Earthling imagined they knew enough about getting around the galaxy to write a guide for hitchhikers, was a bit of a mystery. Probably stole the entire idea from an alien.
Stargate SG1 - Roswell Page 4