Stargate SG1 - Roswell (7 page)

O'Neill made himself at home in the pilot's chair while Carter stood watching over his shoulder. Curious to see exactly how this all worked, Vala positioned herself behind the starboard passenger seat, balanced her elbows on the backrest and cupped her chin in her hands.

“Now remember, Jack,” Carter said, “just like the last time.”

The padded seat swiveled around and O'Neill shot her a speculative look. “Last time? There's only been a first time.”

“Plus two trips to ancient Egypt, one via Chulak, which, as far as we've been able to ascertain, successfully restored the original timeline.”

“More or less,” Lee muttered behind them. Vala turned in time to see Lee rocking his hand back and forth.

O'Neill peered up at Carter, looking confused. “Two trips? The footage from the video camera says we only made one.”

Catching the ghost of a smile on Carter's face, Vala shrugged. “Makes perfect sense to me.”

Lee turned to her, an unmistakable glint of respect in his eyes. “Exactly! I've never understood why anyone finds this difficult to follow. After all, the only reason why we still have
this
jumper is because the second Egypt trip
was
successful.”

The scientist's momentary burst of enthusiasm was quashed by O'Neill's sour look.

Carter seemed to be trying not to smile. She cleared her throat, pointing to the controls. “Okay, Jack, the neural interface between you and the Ancient computer is subtle, but with a little practice, you'll be able to sense whether the ship is functioning within accepted parameters.”

When the General placed his hands on the control panel, a cyan
glow and a low hum signaled more than the ship coming to life. O'Neill's features softened and a small smile tugged at the
corner of his mouth. “Nice.”

This, Vala knew for certain, was where O'Neill belonged, not in some stuffy old office. The jumper lifted several feet—Vala had gotten the local measurement thing down quite nicely, she thought—off the floor of the hangar and rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, gently rocking to and fro and pivoting back and forth as it turned. The only sense of motion came
from the visual cues through the windscreen, which meant the inertial dampeners were functioning quite nicely. She understood the General's wistful smile. While it wasn't the largest of ships, the jumper really was a nice ride. Pity it required a pesky little gene to operate, otherwise it would be worth a small fortune on the open market. If she could just figure out how to acquire the gene therapy she'd been hearing so much about...

Such a train of thought had become second nature to her. Like
running. But she had found a home with these people and she
wasn't about to spoil it by returning to her larcenous ways, no matter how tempting.

“Now the HUD.” Carter looked up at the windscreen, and
nodded in satisfaction when a detailed heads-up display appeared.

“I've added map databases to the computer,” Lee explained. “And installed into the collision avoidance system the current data from the Space Control Center. Currently they're tracking over
eight thousand objects including payloads, rocket bodies and
debris, but of course there's more space than debris so it'll be easy enough to avoid.”

“Excellent!” O'Neill's smile broadened as multiple options appeared on the HUD.

Turning to look over Lee's shoulder to his laptop, Carter said, “Try the cloak.”

From her vantage, Vala couldn't see the leading edge of the jumper, but by the reactions of the assorted military types and men in white coats standing around outside, the ship's cloak also was fully operational.

The jumper settled back on the ground, and O'Neill looked around the cabin expectantly.

“What is it, General?” asked Dr. Lee.

“I'm thinking of cake.”

Given some of the technology that she'd encountered throughout the galaxy, Vala thought it worth a shot.

“Jack, how about you focus on the time machine?” Carter moved to the rear and peered at the datapad balanced on top of the device. “Just be very careful not to think about actually going anywhere yet.”

The word, “spoilsport” followed Carter but either she failed to notice or it was like water off a penguin's back. Then the glow from the pedestal and oval face of the time machine caught her attention.

“It's working,” Lee announced with considerable enthusiasm. Examining his own datapad, he added, “Power consumption is...well, it's almost insignificant.”

Carter nodded in satisfaction. “Relative to a Stargate generated wormhole, the wormhole created by the time machine is so brief that you probably won't even notice the transition.” She disconnected the datapad and closed the panel on the machine.

“Now remember,” Lee warned, shutting the remainder of the panels around the jumper, “in order to minimize your impact in that time, you shouldn't stay any longer than necessary.”

“I don't know what all the fuss is about interference.” Vala swiveled the chair around so that she could perch on the arm. “I've always understood from the various...how shall I say...
dealers...
in such technology, that time traveling is perfectly safe. If you do happen to change something, a new timeline goes wandering off in another direction while the timeline you came from continues merrily on its own way.”

“Which
explains why the SG-1 from our timeline didn't actually
go back to ancient Egypt and why we still have this jumper,” Lee added brightly.

Despite O'Neill's pained look, Carter said, “Multiverses are an understood aspect of quantum physics, however, splitting the timelines of a single universe can fragment it to the point that time begins looping.”

Lee's eyes lit up and he slid into the passenger chair behind the General. “That could be one explanation for what happened with that Ancient time machine on P4X-639 with... what was that guy's name? Malikai? Earth was locked in a time loop for three months.”

“Put me off my favorite cereal for year.” O'Neill tugged a pair of dark glasses from his pocket.

“Actually, about that,” Carter said. “The technology only works in time jumps longer than a couple of hundred years. Since SG-1 haven't gone back that far, you'll need to focus on, say, 1600AD before traveling forward again to the correct date.”

“It's Ancient,” O'Neill replied, frowning. “How's it gonna know AD from ATM?”

“The Ancient computer extrapolates from your concept of time, just as it takes what else it needs from your mind. Trust me on this, Jack, it's going to take you exactly when you need to be.”

Vala studied the General curiously for a moment. She'd been around the universe long enough to know a scam when she heard one, and, while this Carter may be an older version of the Sam Carter she had come to know and respect over the past few months, her scam detector was pinging overtime.

“I have two
tiny
little questions.” O'Neill's look of exasperation didn't deter Vala in the slightest. “If we don't notice a transition, how will we know if we've gone back to the right time? Oh, and you still haven't explained that whole rippy thing in the cosmic sponge.”

“That's quantum foam—”

“Knew it was bath related.”

Although Lee chuckled, Carter was clearly starting to lose patience. Flashing a repentant smile at General O'Neill, Vala added, “Sorry. Just trying to inject a little humor into the situation.”

O'Neill turned and studied Dr. Lee, who was looking very much at home in the passenger seat. “Where do you think you're going?”

“I just figured that since the entire mission is only going to last a few minutes...”

The General's stare turned frosty. Shoulders slumping in resignation, Lee reluctantly hoisted himself out of the chair.

“I'll bring you back a souvenir,” Vala offered after his departing back.

He responded with a disappointed smile and brief wave before tromping down the hatch.

“As you know, because of the Ori crisis,” Carter said, switching on the Asgard transport scanner, “several hundred key personnel on Earth have had locator beacons subcutaneously implanted in their arms. The moment you arrive in 1947, you should only detect SG-l's, and—” She paused, glanced at the rear of the jumper, presumably to make certain no one was within earshot, and, lowering her voice, redirected her next remark to O'Neill. “Thor says hello.”

“Thor!” O'Neill's face became positively animated. “How is the little guy?”

Carter hesitated, and then she shook her head. “Heimdall's research isn't going as well as they'd hoped.”

O'Neill winced. “The degraded cloning thing, huh?”

It was then that Vala suddenly understood that this mission really wasn't about saving SG-1 at all. Her finely turned scam-o-meter honed right in on Carter's unspoken worry. “That's what caused the tear in the space-time continuity.”

“Not so much a that, as a
who.”
Tapping the transport scanner, Carter turned to Vala and explained, “He's wearing a locator beacon. You can beam him aboard at the same time as SG-1.”

Incredulous, O'Neill yanked off his glasses. “Are you
kidding
me? You dumped SG-1 in the past so we'd have to go rescue some guy and bring him back here?”

“Not exactly a guy,” Carter explained, and then added with a whimsical smile, “His name is An and he is—well, at least he
was
—a sort of Asgard Einstein, although his area of expertise was genetics, not physics.”

Vala looked at Carter curiously.
“He?
Since when have the Asgard, you know, genderized?”

“They don't like being referred to as 'it', particularly because it draws attention to their...reproductive issues.” Carter pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket as she spoke. “Some time ago, the Asgard High Council sanctioned certain experiments using humans.”

“Knew it!” O'Neill snapped indignantly. “Didn't I mention that very—”

“Jack, it wasn't what you think. An wasn't kidnapping people and cloning them like Loki did to you. He was taking samples from those who had recently died. No one on Earth was aware of an Asgard presence until An vanished in a catastrophic accident and his assistant, Loki, started on his own line of research.”

The name Loki triggered a very odd expression on O'Neill's face. Teal'c's DVDs would have to wait, Vala decided. She had some reading to catch up on. Maybe Mitchell's obsessive memorizing of past SG-1 missions—and his spookily unnatural ability to recall them in detail—had a purpose, after all. Despite what Vala thought she knew about SG-1 and the Asgard, it seemed that there were some rather large holes in her knowledge base. And knowledge, as she had pointed out to Daniel on several occasions, was power.

And now that she was officially a part of the SGC, she wouldn't even have to steal the files.

“The Asgard High Council investigated the accident. Their ship's log confirmed Loki's version of events. Since an almost identical incident occurred forty years earlier involving a Goa'uld Ha'tak, and both events were associated with a localized weakening of the space-time continuum, Loki was held blameless.”

O'Neill seemed unimpressed but pre-empting any further disparaging comments on the subject, Carter added, “While Loki's research subsequent to his role as An's assistant was unethical, when it came to record keeping he was meticulous.”