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Blue light shot through him, catapulted him into a new world, and dissipated outward. For an instant he was a mote of awareness with no name, no identity, no purpose, until light and being released him into a new life.

He found his balance and opened his eyes, but the light hadn't dissipated. It floated in a gleaming circle in front of him: meters and meters of rippling light, trapped but not tamed. He gaped, and whispered, "Oh, boy."

There were people around him. They expected him to do something.

He didn't know what.

Two of the people were walking up a ramp toward the circle of dangerous blue light as if it were a morning stroll. One of them looked back, directly at him. "Coming, Danny? We don't have all day!"

My name is Danny. I hope. That could answer some important questions right away, but not all of them.

A large, solid figure beside him said, "I will follow you."

"Uh, okay." It was the best opening cue Sam had had in a long time. He walked up the ramp and stared at the beckoning circle. Light. Blue light. His tattered memory belatedly recognized a concept: blue-shifted light. How? Was he moving? Was it? Was he supposed to step into it?

The two people ahead of him had done it. They were wearing backpacks and so was he. They'd gone into the light, but they expected to do something on the other side. He was here for a reason. He was always wherever he was for a reason. All right...

The light beckoned and swallowed him up and spat him out on stone steps leading down to a patchily grown-over clearing that was deserted except for the two people and some nondescript vegetation. Sam Beckett landed hard, bumped down three hard stages, and lay dazed.

Eventually he noticed a concerned presence hovering over him. "Daniel?" said a female voice. He squinted up at a blurry figure until careful fingers pushed something onto his face that hooked over his ears. "It's a good thing you didn't break these."

He gaped up through the glasses at a remarkably pretty face and pixie-cut blond hair. "Thanks." What else was there to say?

"Jackson?" The new voice belonged to a man in his forties, lines of humor and responsibility vying to define his face. Both of them were wearing olive-drab fatigues and holding very businesslike sub-machine guns, not pointed at him. Sam blinked. What was he, in this reality? "You okay?" asked the man.

"I... hit my head." It was true. And a good excuse, too. And his name was Daniel Jackson.

Resigned alarm on both faces and impassive attention from a third, black face behind them, the man who'd been next to him when he first Leaped. "How hard?" asked the man who called him Jackson. Something about the tone suggested that Jackson's head had been tumbled and hit before. "Let me see your eyes." He peered closely, unselfconsciously, into Beckett's current face, and appeared to see what he was searching for. "Well, you look okay."

"I think I'm fine." He sat up, carefully, and got to his feet without any embarrassing accidents.

"Did you hit anything else on the way down?"

"I only have a headache." He looked around, feeling his newest body -- Jackson, apparently -- as a solid, dependable presence, basically healthy. "See? I'm fine." Don't let them ask me where I am or what year it is.

"Okay," said the woman, with a last, worried look, and turned to a mushroom-shaped thing somewhat larger than a footstool, mouthing nonsense syllables as she traced out a series of the symbols on it to herself, as though memorizing them. The sky showed either dawn or sunset in what felt like dry, semi-tropical weather.

Shallow ridges of land around them were dimly visible in brown and green, even if Beckett didn't recognize any of the scrubby plants, and the sky slowly brightened as the sun rose. There was no sign of the cavernous dark room, no scaffolding or equipment, no ramp, no circle of blue light. Where was he?

"The site is about two miles east," said the man who was apparently the leader of the group. Sergeant, officer, grand high pooh-bah? Nobody wore insignia, but the tone was unmistakably military. "Daniel, you wanted the daylight to work in, so if you're finished with the medicine-ball routine, let's get this show on the road."

"Oh. Yes, of course." Beckett looked around for a road, and saw only rough, unmarked ground and patchy green.

"Great. Carter, if you're ready, take point."

"Sir," said the woman. She faced the sun and picked a trail through the landscape, still holding her weapon at the ready. The rest of them followed, the massive black man silent at the rear. He was dressed like the others, but his weapon, if the thing he was carrying like a weapon was one, looked like a pike or quarterstaff and not a gun. In the U.S. Army? Where were they?

The route was intermittently flat with shallow rises and dips and stretches of bare ground that crumbled dustily underfoot. Once he tripped over a rock and recovered with a jump that jounced his headache, but nobody commented.

Nothing threatened them on the walk. Nothing even tried. Between checking for rocks, Beckett discreetly surveyed his own equipment-laden outfit in the rapidly strengthening light. Even a close-up view revealed no rank markers, but he wasn't brandishing a gun. No one had called him "sir" and no one had, in the most obvious sense, ordered him around. He was roughly equal in status to these people.

But what was he doing here? Where was Al? He glanced at his watch, and saw that Jackson wore a large-faced model with the date in plain view.

It was 1997.

Sam Beckett swallowed the shock of it; the latest date he remembered was 1995. He supposed he must be alive, somehow, in the present time of the Quantum Leap Project if his personal ball of string unrolled this far. But what was he here to set right in the future? Was it the future? Would he know?

No matter. He really shouldn't be worried yet. It was turning into a nice day, and he was apparently hiking with a camping-weight backpack, through unspoiled countryside -- he welcomed a streak of ground-cover vegetation that gave solid footing, easing his legs after the softer dirt -- with people who seemed to think he was on their side. He hoped. He didn't know what he was doing, but maybe he'd find out soon. Only the weapons bothered him. Were they likely to be shot at, or were these people a bunch of nuts masquerading as army officers? Where were they?

After a quarter-hour of silent walking, Sam tried clearing his throat. The man called "sir," close behind him, said, "Jackson? Is your head bothering you?"

"Are we expecting to be attacked?" blurted Beckett, and added "Sir," on impulse.

That got him a disbelieving look, one he recognized: military to inept-but-trying civilian. That would be good. He hoped. At least he knew how to act like a civilian. The man said, "Not that I know of. I just don't like to take chances. We're not in Kansas any more."

"Amen," drifted back in Carter's voice. "Even if it looks like it."

"Kansas?" said Beckett, startled. The dark, low-growing plants didn't look Midwestern in the least.

"I do not understand," said the black man from rearguard position, "why Kansas is of such concern to you, Colonel O'Neill." Which answered another important question. Maybe two.

"Well, it's sure not Colorado," said O'Neill. "It's okay, Teal'c. It's from a movie." The casual tone of the exchange reassured Beckett, even though he wondered how someone could miss a reference to Oz. Maybe it was an ongoing joke; they were relaxed enough to joke, even if they were carrying guns.

Beckett just hoped they wouldn't expect him to add anything. Come on, Al, show up. What am I doing here? What are these people doing? Al, where are you? Despite his silent plea, no holographic image appeared.

However, the answer to one question appeared past the next bumpy ridge where a shallow depression in the ground framed a weather-worn, half-buried building with stone steps leading down into a dark rectangle of a doorway. The lintel and frame were heavily inscribed with something that might have been pre-Classic Greek alternating, ridiculously, with early-dynasty Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"There's your playpen for the next three days, Daniel," said O'Neill, in what might have been a put-down or just a hint of deadpan humor. "Teal'c and I are going to do some mapping as we patrol. Carter, you're with Daniel until we're sure how safe the place really is."

"Yes sir," said Carter. "If you see the Witch of the West, give her my regards."

O'Neill just said, "Hope we don't meet her," and he and the dark man made their way up the next shallow slope of ground and disappeared over it.

Sam Beckett looked back at his so-called playpen. It could be Greek -- it was shaped more like an ancient underground temple than any part of a pyramid. Okay. What did he remember about Greece...

# # #

Daniel woke up in a plain bare room. He must have been captured again, and this time he didn't even remember going through the Gate. Was he on P7Z992? It wasn't supposed to have any living inhabitants, but there was always the possibility of a Goa'uld raid or re-habitation. Or hidden occupants. He sat up on the bed -- at least he didn't seem to be hurt or bleeding, even if the bed was far too much like a hospital fixture.

This was definitely not the variant-of-pre-Classic-Mycenaean temple he was supposed to be deciphering for a relaxing three days on an uninhabited planet. How long had he been out? Where was the rest of the team? This place looked relatively high-tech, but there weren't many clues about what it was for. Prison? Infirmary? Guest suite?

The only thing that looked like a door had no inside handle. There was no one else present.

That answered that question. He sat up and bounced to his feet. He wasn't chained up, but he was wearing a plain white body suit of some kind with no pockets and he had none of his gear or possessions. Except his... he touched his face. He wasn't wearing his glasses, but his vision was clear: he could focus easily on the plain white walls, the shiny clean floor. He paced barefoot, his body feeling stiff and unfamiliar, to the door-shaped outline on the wall and tried it, looking for pressure points or counterweighting -- no luck. He catalogued the spacious, mostly-empty room and quartered it a couple of times, searching for hidden controls or other features. Even on a second look the bed could be a hospital tilt-and-bend model without the rails, but there weren't any visible monitors or equipment.

Daniel sniffed, and realized he was missing the cloudy-sinus feel of his usual allergy reactions. The air smelled filtered because it must be. That meant a lab, hospital, spaceship... not good. He sat back down on the bed and looked down at his hands, held then out and followed them with his eyes. They didn't feel right. He could see every wrinkle and callus as if they were his own hands, but were they? Where were his glasses? Where were his eyes? Was that his real nose?

Where was he?

The door slid open and let in a man wearing a bright red-and-purple outfit, down to fluorescent-red shoes. Daniel bounced up again, but the door slid closed again without delay. He could see the stitching on the red shoes' leather seams and the dark hair combed just so -- this man was shorter than he was -- as if the man had groomed carefully for this first-contact session.

"Calm down. You're safe," said the man, and looked at him carefully. "How do you feel? What's your name?"

Nobody in the U.S. would wear that suit outside a rock concert, but the man was speaking American English. Even so, there was no guarantee he wasn't a Goa'uld. Daniel tried to stand still before he answered. "Am I a prisoner? What have you done to me?"

"Not exactly," said the man. "We need your help."

"Who are you? Who do you work for?"

Daniel half expected to be slapped down, perhaps physically, but the brightly-dressed man shrugged and said, "I'm Admiral Albert Calavicci, United States Navy. How about you?"

"You don't look like an admiral."

"I can sound like one. I can look like one if I want to."

There was something about the stance that suggested he could. And a Goa'uld wouldn't have bothered claiming the U.S. rank, even if it knew what it was. Admiral Calavicci was frowning at him. He reached into the cochineal interior of his suit jacket, brought out a cylindrical object. "And you?"

Daniel's instant leap sideways startled not only himself but Calavicci, judging by the quick step backward. Calavicci raised both hands, one spread open and empty, the other holding the thing loosely, not like a weapon. "Woah! What-- Okay, easy, it's just a cigar. See?" He held it up vertically, eyebrows canted high.

It was a cigar. Daniel let out his breath and asked, "Where are my friends? Where am I?"

"It's just you," said Calavicci, not without sympathy. "Your friends are still wherever they were before you came here. Do you recall the date?"

"It's 1997, November sometime," said Daniel, and saw Calavicci pause. The eyebrows went high again, and in the instant of silence that followed he remembered that he shouldn't answer any question, however benign, in an interrogation. It set a precedent or something. Oh, well, the date wasn't a secret, unlike just about anything else he might have said. Was this an interrogation?

Calavicci's expression had sharpened. "And your name?" He gestured with the cigar, and Daniel realized that he could smell it: moist, sharp leaves, the half-forgotten scent of cured tobacco. It must be a real cigar.

"Uh-uh," said Daniel, not reassured. There were still too many anomalies. "Not until I know what's going on and if my friends are safe."

"Sir, we need you to tell us where they are. Or we can't help them." It wasn't voiced like a threat, even if it added up to one, but there was no reason for the Navy to hold him incommunicado -- to have him at all. Something was definitely off-kilter.

"Where am I, then?" If this could be an exchange of information...

The admiral raised his eyebrows and cocked his head at the plain white ceiling. "Ziggy?"

"Admiral." The new voice was mellifluous, feminine, and invisible.

"Any progress?"

"None at all, Admiral." Daniel still couldn't see where it came from. He looked back at the admiral in time to see him come to a decision.

"You're in a classified project facility. I can't let you wander around without compromising security, as well as your own safety. That's why the door's locked. You're not under any other duress. We need to know where you came from and who you are."

Daniel raised his eyebrows in turn. Okay, he bought the act, provisionally, but if he did... "Admiral, you put me in a difficult position. My work and its location are both classified also."

Calavicci peered at him sideways, considering. "Uh-oh, you mean that, don't you?"

"It's the truth."

"Oh... boy." He brightened. "How about your name?"

"Rank and serial number?" said Daniel. "I'm a civilian. Sorry. Now, if you'd care to explain why you need information about me, we might understand each other a little better." Even supposing this really was a Navy facility, he didn't much like the thought of being a pawn in interdepartmental games, and he couldn't think of any other reason for a setup like this. He'd have to play for information.

"Good try," said Calavicci. "Not yet. Your name can't be classified."

"I suppose not. You're aware, I imagine, that many cultures believe the name to be an intrinsic part of the soul or the basic identity, not to be divulged casually?"

Calavicci rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I've heard that one. I've heard it about taking a picture of you, too, but that wouldn't do me any good."

It wouldn't? "Why not?" Daniel asked.

"Never mind. Take it as a gesture of good faith that I don't. I'll even send in dinner."

"How about a newspaper?"

"Nope, sorry."

"Books or journals?"

"Uhh, maybe. Journals? What kind?"

"I'd appreciate some reading matter, that's all." Daniel reminded himself again that this wasn't a game. Really, it wasn't.

"Hmmmm. I'll see what I can do." The admiral marched out the door, which was closed and locked again before Daniel could reach it, and Daniel spent the next few minutes prowling around the plain white room with its plain white not-visibly-monitored bed, one table and two plain white chairs.

It might really not be a game. Now what?

# # #

The little building's fitted-stone walls had once been covered inside and out with the peculiar mixture of languages Beckett had already seen on the doorframe. The writing on the outside was weathered away to random marks and survived only on the incised panels around the door, but the painted characters and pictures inside the semi-underground room remained clear, except beneath a broken opening high in one corner of the back wall where rain and dust had eroded them. Most of the wall surface was still legible, when he found a flashlight in his equipment and used it to augment the diffuse early-morning light. He hadn't done any translating in a while, and this mass of interlined symbols -- maybe that was it, the lines of Greek could have been inserted after the hieroglyphs, around them -- wasn't the easiest thing to start with, but it might be an interesting challenge.

He wondered once more when Al would appear to explain the ins and outs of this Leap, as he loosened straps and found the combination of moves that let him pull his pack off, along with his heavy-pocketed vest. Their mass thumped onto the solid floor, and he remembered belatedly to test the remaining, very dusty, paving blocks. Fortunately they were all sound. The building might be exactly what it seemed -- but what was that? He scanned the walls, looking for a starting point or some other form of punctuation. For the moment, he'd take the chance to work with... he grinned to himself... to play with his seldom-used ancient languages. If that panel at the top of the east wall meant what it might possibly mean, the Greek could be about three millenia old. The building might once have housed furnishings or other objects, but there was no sign of them now.

Well, he could see what the person he'd Leaped into here was supposed to be doing. He was working on an Egyptian archaeological site that had at some time been overrun by exceedingly talkative Greeks -- thieves? scavengers? -- with bad spelling and a creative attitude toward astronomy. This really might be fun... Al would show up soon, surely.

What was he here to do, he, Sam Beckett who'd Leaped into an archaeologist who went around with a military escort? U.S. military, in Egypt? Was it Egypt? That was more disturbing, but maybe, he thought hopefully, he'd Leaped in to translate this stuff? He could do it, after all, in a lurching fashion that was half inspiration and half synthesis.

Wouldn't this Jackson, who'd obviously been brought here on purpose, be an experienced translator? Why would Sam Beckett be preferable? It would be nice to know what's going on. Al? Maybe someone here needed a translation that was "inspired," eccentric to academic standards? The wall inscriptions here, after all, were eccentric to the point of looking like a linguistic equivalent of the Fiji Mermaid, the head of one language sewn onto the tail of a different one. Should he just say it must be a hoax?

Not yet. He'd go through some of the writing first; it was what he, or rather Jackson, was expected to do. It was possible that the people with the large weapons would be very upset to learn the writing here wasn't authentic, and he'd like to avoid anyone being upset with him if he could. Sam sighed and went back to scanning the symbols in front of him. It was all he could think of to do, until he had more information. Al?? he thought toward New Mexico, whichever direction that might be, as he brought his flashlight up close to a faded but readable ideogram that might be the beginning of the story.

Carter had said something about watching from the high ground and being in shouting distance; she left him alone for most of the morning. He'd made significant progress in his first-approximation, guess-and-golly rendering of the translation by the time she appeared again. He also estimated that if this mish-mash wasn't a hoax, it wasn't something there were experts in, either. Surely. The early Greek was mixed with millenia-older and half-a-continent-distant hieroglyphs but not randomly; it was more of a sideways revision with irregular simplifications in the morphology, as if the two language groups had co-existed for generations. It wasn't a clumsy hoax, at any rate. Hoax or not, it would take a lot more than three days to unravel what it was about.

"You really ought to take a break," said Carter's voice from above the doorway.

Beckett stood up from the gluey fan of dirt beneath the break in the wall, attention still fixed on some clear characters between two trickle-obliterated patches. "I should? What time is it?" His knees and thighs hurt. He must have been kneeling up and down all morning; his trousers were as dirty as the floor.

"Local noon. You're supposed to eat." She stepped down into the room, ducking in the doorway and visibly careful not to disturb anything. "Haven't you made any progress? I thought you were burning to write this one up."

Beckett hadn't bothered to put his provisional, and constantly re-refined, translation down on paper yet. It came to him suddenly that a translator without an eidetic memory would keep running notes while working. He'd never needed to. "I'll transcribe it in sections," he said, and followed her up the stairwell into full sunlight. He blinked, startled himself by sneezing, and took off the glasses to wipe them clean of dust. Had it been five hours? Six? He came back to himself from multi-lingual introspection. Ziggy and Al should have found him by now, but there had been no subliminal hiss of opening door, and no wise-cracking Calavicci. Could something have gone wrong? He felt a little hollow, and not just from hunger.

"You did say it was something special, something about pre-Homeric Greek and creoles," said the woman.

She meant his current persona's task. "Uh, yes. It's pretty complicated." She led the way to a nearby plot of coarse, odd-looking grass, and Beckett stalked to it, glad to stretch his legs. "This should be a month-long job, you know."

Carter grinned, unexpectedly fetching. "You made that point already. Several times."

"I did?"

"Surely you remember the knock-down, drag-out argument with General Hammond?"

"I what?"

"Okay, that's an exaggeration. But you've made it perfectly plain that three days' study is a mockery of scholarship. Deal with it."

"Yes'm," said Beckett, glum on Jackson's behalf as well as his own. "But I was right. This deserves weeks. More, if there's anything besides the writing."

"Maybe. The Air Force doesn't want scholarship, it wants answers."

"Yeah." Air Force, not Army. Beckett doubted it would make a difference. He'd dealt with military appropriations committees and auditors more than once and knew the mindset. He was still wondering why anyone, let alone an arm of the U.S. defense services, wanted answers from 600 BCE, or maybe 3000 BCE, but asking that would almost certainly reveal his charade. "Is it time for lunch?" Part of the hollow feeling was hunger.

"Yes. The colonel says, eat it, that's an order. I think Janet put a flea in his ear."

"Eat what?"

She produced two unappetizing packets in army drab. "The usual. If you can eat yak and sheep's eyes and call it 'tastes like chicken,' you can eat this. The colonel also says, eat this and we'll have coffee tonight."

The reward aspect was plain. Beckett sat down on the grass next to her, legs outstretched, and returned the grin. "In that case, I have no choice."

"None at all," she agreed, and tore her own packet open, inadvertently demonstrating the proper technique. Beckett gratefully followed her lead, and less gratefully ate the packaged nutrition, which could be called food only by courtesy. After they'd swallowed a few tasteless bites, she asked, "How's the head? You looked a little dazed for a minute this morning."

"I'm fine." He almost didn't have a headache any more. It probably was fine. "Ummm, did you see anything interesting while you were out here this morning?"

"It looks as deserted as the first survey said it was." She swallowed another bite. "But, it's almost time for the show."

"Show?"

"I think I've got the period of rotation right this time," she assured him.

Beckett tried to look inquiring and not mystified.

"Up there." She pointed. He looked up and shaded his eyes with one hand. In the completely clear, royal-blue sky, a tiny but visibly rounded half-disk progressed from the western horizon toward the sun.

It thinned into a crescent as it rose and eventually faded from watchability near zenith, near the sun. Ain't that a kick in the butt, said Al's voice in his memory, while Sam sat frozen, watching to see if the tiny moon would reappear on the other side of the sun, crescent reversed.

It did.

"It looks like a retrograde moon," he said, hoping for some alternative. Some special-effects sort of aircraft, perhaps?

Carter looked pleased. "That's right. I think there are two, one a lot further out. We might see both of them tonight. The other one looks more like the moon, Earth's moon, but even that one's got to be a lot smaller and closer than Luna is from Earth. This one is practically orbital debris."

"Uhhh." Sam put his meal packet down in his lap, glad he was already sitting flat on his ass. If that wasn't Earth's moon... "Where are we?" he croaked. He was on another planet and until now he hadn't had a clue.

No wonder Al hadn't shown up. Ohhh boy.

"P7Z992," said Carter, as if he should have known, as if it meant something.

"I mean," he covered, "how far from home?"

She shrugged. "A million lightyears, give or take."

He didn't think he needed to ask how they'd got here. They'd walked into that circle of blue, moving-standing-still light and now they were... here. Somehow. People were jumping through interstellar distances as easily as he jumped through time, and it looked like they knew where they were going. If it was happening in 1997, where had it come from? There hadn't been a hint in published work before 1995 -- had there? Would he remember?

He should have heard something -- something. And he hadn't. He didn't even know where he'd been in time. Now he was really lost.

The hollow feeling expanded without regard to the meal he'd eaten. He said, unable to summon an outward reaction, "Thanks. I'd have missed that. I've... I've got to make some notes now."

"Sure." And she let him scramble a retreat into the broken, once-whole room, the site with Greek and Egyptian writing millenia old on a planet that wasn't Earth. Humans had been here before. When? Where was he?

He stumbled over his -- Jackson's -- backpack on the dusty floor just inside the doorway, and finally did what he should have done hours ago, going through it for information.

# # #

Daniel's next visitor was a handsome black woman skirting middle age with patience, cheer and a much more restrained fashion sense than Admiral Calavicci. "Hello, Mr. ... Hello. How are you today?"

Daniel had already been brought something resembling food, or at least resembling Air Force mess-hall fare. It was a strong argument in favor of this really being a U.S. military installation on Earth, for what good that did him. "Hello. Are you the good cop or the bad cop?"

"Oh, dear," she said, without real chagrin. "Busted already. I'm the good cop. See?" She flourished a stack of three books at him.

"You're not Ms. Ziggy, are you?"

"No, indeed. I'm Verbena Beeks."

Daniel raised his eyebrows. "No rank?"

She smiled. "Just doctor."

He'd used that line. It was hard to believe she wasn't using it against him. Daniel let the instant of shock play through him and pass off, and then tried: "Medical doctor?"

"Yes, but not quite."

It fell into place. "You're the base shrink."

She nodded, unoffended. "More or less. Are you a doctor?"

"You saw me react."

"Yes." She gave him a friendly-seeming look, and kept it up while he didn't answer. After a moment, she asked, "You haven't read any of these, have you?"

Hands carefully steady, Daniel reached for the books, two worn paperbacks and a dusty hardcover. A murder mystery, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and a biography of J.F.K. "Actually, no." He'd answered a question again. "I guess I'll read them all."

She grinned, almost conspiratorial. "In the order they're stacked in?"

"Yes."

Doctor Beeks nodded slowly. "You don't trust us, or me, or anything here, do you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm being held alone, against my will, with no way of confirming information you give me. I've been asked about people and things I can't talk about without violating security limits that I -- and you and everyone here, if you're telling the truth -- should keep to."

"Oh, dear," she said. The sympathy sounded genuine. "The admiral said it was duelling security clearances. It had to happen sooner or later. Please note that no one here has threatened you, and no one will."

"You're being the good cop," he said, feeling small for scoring off her but feeling also the need for some believable reality in this bland white environment.

"I'm not, really, you know. There aren't any cops. I'll point out to you that we can hardly confirm your security clearance without your name. We don't know any more about you than you do about us."

Daniel remembered old arguments he'd assembled to use with Jack. The military was intrinsically hierarchical. There was always a cop, an overseer, someone who had the power, usually both in theory and in practice, to deny your decisions and constrain your actions. It might be necessary, a few times out of a thousand, but it was mostly pure territoriality. It was always infuriating. This situation demonstrated the whole concept perfectly.

However... if this wasn't a U.S. military installation on Earth, the last thing he wanted to find himself discussing with a Goa'uld or any other alien was his opinion of the weaknesses of what was, for good or ill, Earth's main line of defense against them. Line of defense. He'd actually thought those words. He'd been listening to Jack too much. And wasn't there something hypocritical about accepting shelter and then criticizing the roof?

It wasn't that simple. And meanwhile, he had to act as though he thought these people were who they said they were.

"Sorry," he said. If they were who they said they were, and if they really didn't know who he was, why was he here? But -- there wasn't anything about him worth this much attention except the Stargate project. What else could they want? And why?

He didn't know. How could he know what was safe to tell them?

# # #

Sam Beckett was standing in, this Leap, for a comprehensive linguist who kept his diary in a miscellany of scripts and languages, including three different eras' Greek and occasional hieroglyphs. Sam could read a lot of it, but if his current persona could write this, there was no way he, Beckett, was here just to translate the rather more simple combination on the walls of this room.

He had to be here to do something. What?

The diary was disconcerting for other reasons. It said there were transplanted humans on many planets, and aliens who preyed on them... he thought. That part was heavily interspersed with incomprehensible (to Beckett) curls and waves that looked like Arabic and weren't, but even so, the Air Force escort made better sense now. The transport between planets was accomplished by something always noted by the hieroglyphs for "door to heaven," circled. It couldn't be a naming cartouche, could it? The only other possible reference to interstellar-distance travel was a note in English that referred to a "wormhole," in the midst of a jumble of physics theory that the writer obviously hadn't understood when "Sam" explained it to him.

That gave him a turn. Was this going to be one of the multiple Leaps that left causality chasing its tail, and one poor stranded time-travelling quantum physicist doing likewise?

Al wasn't going to show up, if Ziggy was limited to Earth, and Beckett thought she was. Was she? He had to assume that, anyway, so he'd have to figure this one out on his own. At least no one was yelling at him or shooting at him. Yet.

Sam Beckett sighed and wiped his glasses again, and his nose -- the dust made it run -- and, hoping it would tell him something about something, went on reading the story on the walls. The "door to heaven" there was less described than illustrated by a series of circle-enclosed images. The figures passing through the circular door could have been birth symbols, but the context said otherwise. Not birth, not death, but escape from a place -- a world? -- and its cruel overlord -- a god? an alien? There was something about the old gods being left behind with the old constellations, and mourning that no new Zodiac replaced the old when the door to heaven closed, and then a row of symbols he'd never seen.

By the time the light from the doorway was too dim to read by, he'd written up his version of the first and most of the second wall's writing. Maybe it would help. Maybe it would eventually help Jackson.

Carter was waiting for him when he emerged from the now-dark room to confront a pale, nearly colorless sunset. "Right on time," she greeted him. "The colonel and Teal'c are setting up camp over there."

A day of merely standing in one place -- and kneeling and sitting and leaning and scribbling into a notebook in the varying light -- had left him tired. Beckett followed her up a short hill to a bare piece of higher ground, hoping he wasn't supposed to know a lot more than he did about camping tents and fires and open-air latrines, hoping he could figure out what he was supposed to do. He located one empty bedroll space in the two-man tent and left his pack there; maybe if he just filled in the spaces in the group and watched, he'd notice what they needed. Whatever it was.

He was brought up sharply when O'Neill, also surveying the campsite, stared around the circle of the rapidly darkening horizon and stabbed a finger at a vaguely luminous cloud on the opposite side of the sky from where the sun had just gone down. "Sam!"

Beckett's guilty start went unnoticed as both other members of the little group also turned to look at the colonel. The woman said "Sir?"

"Sam, what's that thing in the sky? Are we up against another black hole?"

Sam Beckett bit his tongue and waited. His name, here and now, wasn't Sam. He had to remember that. "You wouldn't be able to see a black hole, sir," said Captain Carter -- Sam? -- with calm patience. O'Neill's deadpan manner might be a joke or a trap. The unstressed reply, and everyone else's complete lack of interest in his own reaction, argued against it.

"I know that, Carter. Just tell me what it is, okay?"

"It would be..." said the man they called Teal'c, and followed with a term in some language Sam Beckett didn't know.

"Uh, Daniel?" said the Colonel.

"Sir?" said Beckett, feeling out of his depth.

"I don't know how you've restrained yourself this long. Go on. Tell us. What did Teal'c say?"

Beckett glanced at the black man, baffled. The man gazed back almost without expression as Beckett said, "I'm sorry. I don't know the word."

That got him puzzled stares from all three.

"Sir? I can guess," said Carter. "It means 'galaxy.' "

Sam Beckett looked at the sky, now dark enough to show a few, very few, scattered stars and a huge finger of stippled light reaching from the horizon toward the zenith. In the haze at the edges a few points could be picked out as individual suns. "Oh, boy." It was the Milky Way, gone thick and curdled and... far away. Very, very far away.

He wanted to sit down again. He knew where he was: he was here. Al and Ziggy weren't here. He had to fix something -- whatever it was -- anyway.

O'Neill called him over, and he obeyed instructions to hold this and bring that as they built sticks of wood into a fire and added dry branches. Beckett found himself wondering if terrestrial plants had been brought with the humans however-many millenia ago, or if parallel evolution had created woody plants here. He listened, he hoped unobtrusively, to a conversation in which Carter defined a galaxy in astronomical terms and the man named "Teal'c" agreed that it correctly described a throat-clearing sound ending in "aa."

He was on another planet. With humans, in his lifetime. He hoped. He had to assume he was outside Ziggy's range. He was on his own. There would be no Al to tell him what needed doing, no link with the Project. He felt adrift, anchorless, lost... He gave a short, dry laugh and couldn't hear it against the sound of the fire catching. He was lost in space.

What was there for him to do on this Leap that couldn't be done by anyone else? What were the consequences if it was or wasn't done? If Al wasn't going to appear with Ziggy at his fingertips, Sam needed information. He'd have to find out what was going on for himself, and do whatever had to be done.

He would know he'd done it when he Leaped out. Could he even Leap from here? From the distance Carter had given, they were far across and outside Earth's home galaxy. As the sky darkened and the edge-on mass of clotted stars floated higher, he wondered if this much distance would have any time-distortion effect from the expansion of the universe. If so, would it change Ziggy's parameters somehow? Or his? Could it change his ping-pong trajectory through the decades of his lifetime? Should it? Would this Leap even work? God -- Whatever -- are You this far out?

In the crackling light of the fire augmented by one Coleman lantern, he followed the other three in opening another of the tasteless ration packets, listening to their awed chatter -- they too were impressed, if not surprised, at the distance from Earth. He remembered that the female captain was "Sam," and therefore quite possibly the person who'd tried to explain wormholes to the diary-writer. That meant maybe she knew something about wormholes. And his persona didn't, judging by the garbled account of her explanation.

It was worth a try. When the chatter lapsed a little, he said, "Carter, can you explain to me about wormholes? Uh, again?"

"What, again?" she said. "I guess. Do you at least remember the part about the worm and the apple?"

There was a warning snort from the colonel. "That's really appetizing talk over dinner, Captain."

"Captain Carter's explanation of the Stargate is an excellent form of mental exercise," said Teal'c, politely but firmly.

Stargate, thought Beckett. Ahhh, "door to heaven." Close enough. "A wormhole through the apple joins two points more directly than going around the surface. It goes through a different dimension," he said. It was a classic concrete explanation of a higher-dimension interface.

"That's right," she said, pleased.

"But what makes it work with real wormholes?"

She shrugged. "The Stargate does. We surmise. I've been looking at it for three years now, and the best explanation I can give you without a whiteboard is that naqahda is an element, a wave, a particle, and probably the Man in the Moon."

"Naqahda is of the sun," said Teal'c from the other side of the fire, and from everyone's sudden turn to him, it was unexpected.

"What do you mean?" asked the colonel.

"An old meaning of the word is strength-of-the-sun. You discovered Ra at a naqahda source, did you not?" Firelight reflected off his gold forehead tattoo without changing his air of dignity.

"Ra," muttered the colonel, and threw a glance at Sam Beckett. "Sun god. Ohh-kay."

"It's well into the heavy elements," Carter said, still calmly. "It has some unusual, which is to say inexplicable, properties."

"Such as?" asked Beckett.

She sighed. "Pick anything. It should be so unstable that it breaks down in milliseconds. Make that microseconds. It should be so heavy that it sank through the Egyptian bedrock to the center of the earth about a minute after Ra or whoever put it there. My best guess is that the enormous energy -- and mass -- it represents is focused through the extra dimensions that define the wormhole. How that happens is anybody's guess. How it directs the wormhole is mainly guesswork, too. I've got two papers that nobody would publish even if I could submit them outside the SGC, that speculate about dimensional curvature as affected by transuranic, I mean translawrenic, masses."

"Focused? Is that like rotated?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "Not quite, but that's almost the idea."

"Dimensions?" Beckett was too interested, too anxious, to be careful. "Do you include time?"

"I've been working with extra spatial dimensions. Projecting through time didn't work well when I was doing preliminary analyses. The only circumstances that favor it aren't predictable, so I haven't tried it lately."

"If you're translocating matter, time has to stay out of the equation except as a constant."

"If you say..." She put down the last of her ration packet and peered at him in the shifting firelight. "Daniel, what have you been reading?"

"I borrowed a physics text and tried to get through it." His persona was not a physicist. And this woman was. It was dangerous, impossibly revealing, to go on. He couldn't stop himself; it was like being a student again with an irresistible sunrise over every mental hill. "You're saying that naqahda as we know it is the three-dimensional projection of an element that can't exist in n, ah, in only three dimensions."

"Yes." She was still staring at him. "That's what I tried to say in the second paper. I couldn't prove it rigorously."

"Well, I haven't even tried," said Sam Beckett, with absolute honesty. "What else have you tried to prove?"

"There's the eight-dimension theory and the eleven-dimension theory," she said, eyeing him as if he might have a fever.

"Danny, you might want to rest your head after that bump you had this morning," put in O'Neill. "I'm never sure if you're making sense or not."

Carter grimaced. "And there's the banana-wormhole theory, as an alternative to the apple model. You might like that one, sir."

"Carter, there is a very narrow window in which you can make fun of your commanding officer. You've had your window for the evening. Can we talk about the view or how terrible the food is?"

"Yes, sir," she said, but there was a hint of smile in her tone. "Didn't you say something about coffee tonight?"

"Maybe I did." The change of subject let Beckett sit back and shut up, staring up into the sky, hoping he'd found something out instead of giving too much away. There were working, directed wormholes. Through eleven dimensions, ten plus time. That sounded almost familiar. Did the ten have to be spatial dimensions? He wished he could remember more about his own work. What was it Al said about his memory during the Leaps? Swiss cheese. His brain was full of cheese, and he had to think between the holes.

A voice said -- he realized for the second time -- "Coffee, Daniel? Are you asleep?"

"Sorry," he said. "I was just thinking." He accepted the hot metal cup gingerly by the handle and let the steam rise into his nose. Why couldn't he smell anything properly?

The harsh black coffee became drinkable as it cooled, and he began making a silent list of his assets. No one was shooting at him. No one was demanding that he give answers he didn't know the questions for, or not yet. He had food and as much shelter as he needed. The people who were his only link with home and who surely were his link with the problem to be solved, were on easy speaking terms with him and each other. The air, however alien it was, felt cool and crisp on his face. It was a beautiful, clear night in a place where smog hadn't been invented.

Sam Beckett gazed up at the burning glory of the galaxy and eventually he remembered to breathe.

# # #

Admiral Calavicci was back. "All right, John Doe. I'm going to put some cards on the table."

"But not all of them," suggested Daniel.

"Not all of them. You know I can't do that."

Daniel looked at him, at the sharpness of the perfect crease down the bright-red trousers, the suntan-textured skin of his face, the springing eyebrows where a few white hairs appeared among the dark ones. He had some questions the U.S. Navy as he knew it couldn't answer. He said, "But I don't know. I don't know anything except that I'm being held incommunicado by someone claiming to be a member of the armed forces."

"'Claiming' -- that's harsh." Calavicci gestured expansively. "Try a little thought experiment. Say that I am who I claim I am. Doesn't the story hold together?"

"Only because there aren't enough pieces of it on the table to fall apart."

"I'm offering you more pieces. Interested?"

Daniel sat back on the bed, cross-legged, and folded his hands in the attitude of an Egyptian peddlar ready to open bargaining. "Yes."

If the admiral noticed the stance, he didn't say anything, nor did he copy it. "You're concerned for your friends. I'm concerned for my friend. Wherever they are -- and I honestly don't know that, while I don't know where you came from -- he's with them and he's in the same fix they are."

"What fix am I in?"

"Nothing compared to what Sam could be."

"Sam?" said Daniel, alarmed.

"He's disappeared. He's in trouble. You're the only clue."

"Oh. Sam." True, it wasn't an uncommon name. "Tell me about Sam. Is he a troublemaker? What does he do?"

"Troublemaker?" Something broke loose in Calavicci's manner. "He's somewhere else in time, and you're here instead and I can't find him!" One hand closed into a fist and opened again, and Calavicci was close to shouting. "The only way I can help him is knowing where and when you came from. Goddammit, he's alone, he has your name and face for the duration, and you won't even say who you are!"

"I thought he was with my friends." Somewhere else in time? Somewhere else in time?

"They think he's you."

Daniel was suddenly too cold to do anything but think. "Who am I? Now?" he asked through numb lips. He was wearing someone else's body -- which explained a few things, not to his satisfaction. Who or what was wearing his? Had he somehow become a Goa'uld? What was in his body? "What is 'Sam'? What are you?"

Calavicci sighed. "We've been through this. Admiral Albert Cala--"

"No, not that." Daniel tried for perfectly neutral, and wasn't sure he kept all the sarcasm out of his tone. It might not matter. This part was a game, and he was tired of playing. "I didn't say who, I said what. And what is the Sam in my body?"

"What... he's a boy scout," said Calavicci, sounding entirely human, and tired, and worried. "He solves problems, he gets no reward but more problems, and he's lost!"

"What am I?"

"I wish I knew!"

Into this heated stalemate, a new sound intruded: "Admiral," said the voice previously addressed as Ziggy, "the data you requested has been retrieved."

"That's it." The admiral was clearly talking to the unseen voice now. "I'm mad, I'm desperate, Sam's in trouble, and I'm taking a chance. Tell the stubborn son-of-a-bitch who he is."

The smoothly perfect contralto said: "Daniel Jackson, born 1965. Dual citizenship: U.S./Egyptian. Ph.D. in linguistics, UCLA, 1987. Ph.D. in anthropology, UC Berkeley, 1989. Ph.D. in archaeology, University of Chicago, 1990. Recruited as USAF civilian consultant in 1994 to a project" -- the voice became suddenly petulant -- "I can't access data on!"

"Uh," said Daniel. He unfolded his legs and stood up, the better to crane at the talking ceiling. He still couldn't spot a speaker or a microphone. Maybe this was a scam, but if so it was harder and harder to believe it was a Goa'uld trick. Subtle head games just weren't their style. If it was the Navy, however... was it? Too much wasn't explained, and could anything Earthly explain how his body didn't feel like his own? "How did you identify me?"

"We got your fingerprints off the dinner tray," said Calavicci, almost apologetically, watching him.

Daniel thought about his clear eyes, his clear, unstuffy nose. His fingerprints? "Did you? Are these my hands?"

A resigned snort, hands spread apart in brief surrender. "All right. You're, ah, borrowing the body of the person who should be here, the same way he's borrowing yours. How we know the rest of it is a trade secret." He smiled in shark-like retribution. "Sorry."

There was still no good reason he should be here, maybe somewhere else in time, alone, without any believable explanation. And somehow he was living in another body. Daniel really didn't like that. The believable explanations were too ominous. Would Calavicci believe in a Stargate?

Ziggy's voice said, "There's more."

"Go on," said the admiral.

"Deceased, 1994."

"Deceased," said Calavicci, with a twitch of his red-suited shoulders. "I hope there's more than that, Ziggy." There was a softly dangerous tone to his voice.

"There is," said Ziggy, serene again.

Calavicci eyed Daniel. "You said the date was 1997. Well?"

"You said 'Sam' is lost in time. Does that mean I am? What's the date here?"

The dark gaze sharpened. "I'd rather not say. You've got the right idea. Maybe you can see that I really shouldn't tell you anything about where you are now."

Daniel worked through it in a moment. "I'm in the future. My future. Or, you want me to think I am."

"You don't trust me."

"You're not exactly trusting me," Daniel pointed out.

"I have to. Who are you, if you're not Jackson?"

"I thought I was. You said I wasn't."

"She says you are." Calavicci's head jerked toward the plain white ceiling.

"Okay, you know who I am, or was. Who am I now, and who's 'Sam'?"

"You're still who you think you are. You look like Sam, for the time being."

Daniel flashed on a vision of himself as a tomboy blonde and wished he hadn't. If Calavicci's Sam was in danger, Carter probably was too. If he bought any part of this story. Should he? "One or two things bother me a lot," he said, knowing that just asking an honest question was a concession.

"A few things bother me, too. For instance..." Calavicci froze and then jerked into motion and speech again. "Ziggy says you're dead. Are you? Is that why we can't locate Sam, because he's dead?" He was speaking normally, more or less, but the lines in his face stood out against gray pallor.

"You look like you think that's possible."

"Talk, dammit. Please."

Daniel said carefully, "So far as I know, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." He didn't add that it had happened more than once. He'd save that in case he needed something more to work with later.

"I hope so." Calavicci didn't sound convinced.

"I was... misplaced, during the project I can't talk about. It was a year and a half before I came back to it." A year and a half on Earth, but only one turn of the sun on Abydos. He still tripped over the difference. Abydos had been so much more real than Earth's calendar.

"That's right," said Ziggy suddenly. "Reinstated as alive, 1996. Residence, Colorado Springs. Employer, United States Air Force."

Calavicci cocked an eyebrow at him. "Care to explain?"

"It's still classified." It was still a hierarchical system meant to keep anyone from knowing anything outside his own box, and he'd agreed to live with it when he stayed with SGC and SG-1. Calavicci would have to subvert the pyramid of secrecy protocols on his own -- and he seemed to be doing a good job. Daniel tried to look earnest instead of approving.

Apparently he succeeded. Calavicci said, "What the hell does the Air Force want with an archaeologist? Or an anthropologist? Oh, yeah, you can't say. Never mind for now. Maybe I can figure who else to ask." He made as if to leave and then turned back before the door opened. A hint of curiosity colored his expression. "What's with all the doctorates, anyway? The only person I know..." He stopped abruptly, giving Daniel an odd look, but he wasn't gray any longer.

Daniel shrugged. "I was having fun."

"Jesus God. I believe you. That might be the only answer I'd believe."

"Huh?"

"I know someone else like that."

He walked out, leaving Daniel with more questions than he'd started with. Daniel settled himself back into the cross-legged posture and tried to think.

# # #

The campfire, banked in its meticulous circle of stones, had reduced itself to a pile of faintly visible embers. The lantern had been set to a low flicker. Tents were absurd in this barely-cool, peaceful night. Beckett stayed outside, watching the galaxy rise until it divided the night into not-quite-matching halves.

The large black man who said so little was also sitting out under the sky, weapon at hand, apparently comfortable on a flat spot of the hard ground. He was facing away from the fire and the tents, and after a long period of skygazing, he spoke without changing his position. At all. "Daniel Jackson, you should rest. I will wake you for the next watch period."

"I'd like to look at the sky for a while longer." Was this guy Jackson really young or careless, that everyone seemed to feel they had to tell him what to do?

The long, fuzzy ellipse of light overhead seemed to hover. Two moons came up, one fast, one slow.

After the fast moon had made one loop overhead and disappeared, Teal'c said, "You do not often look at the ch'kel'aa in this way, as Colonel O'Neill does."

It was a conversational opening, from the person here who spoke least. How well was he supposed to know Teal'c? "Not as much as I should have, maybe."

"I am concerned. You do not often forget the things that you know."

"I guess I really did hit my head," said Beckett, hoping the excuse wouldn't lead to more trouble. "It didn't bother me once I got back on my feet, so I didn't think there could be any problem. Maybe--"

Teal'c, still unmoving, interjected a flow of syllables that clearly should mean something. To Beckett they didn't. They weren't Greek or any other language he knew; the pattern of it had more of a Semitic feel, maybe. He tried for a noncommital nod of acknowledgement.

After a moment Teal'c said something more slowly, anxious and watchful. Then something else. Beckett mimed a headache, but he could feel the rug sliding out from under him.

There was a burst of leonine strength and speed from the other man, and the next thing Sam knew, he was flat on his back with Teal'c holding him down, not very gently. "You are not Daniel Jackson," said the rumbling voice. "Can you explain yourself?"

"I just can't remember the language..." he faltered.

"Perhaps. I will ask in your tongue: Where are you from? Who are your enemies and who are your friends?"

"I can't tell you." Sometimes flat truth made sense in situations like this.

"You could, if you were Daniel Jackson." Sometimes it didn't. The big man raised his voice to a roar, without apparent effort. "Colonel O'Neill!"

It was less than ten seconds before a head popped out of each of the two single-person tents set back from the fire. "Teal'c?" The colonel was beside them in ten more seconds, armed and staring down at the two of them. "Daniel?"

"This is not Daniel Jackson," said Teal'c with certainty. Under the colonel's hard gaze, he hauled Beckett to a seated position, off balance so he couldn't use his legs, wrists pinned behind his back.

"Who is it, then? Or--" his voice caught, "what?"

"He does not remember his wife's language, or that of the Goa'uld, or mine. Perhaps he is not Goa'uld, but he does not know who he is."

"He could be amnesiac," said Carter, coming up behind the colonel, carrying another of the square, ugly sub-machine guns. Everyone was gray figures in the thin moonlight until the colonel reached down to the lantern. It flared up, illuminating the area. Carter said, "It's possible he's lost some memories from hitting his head this morning, but if so, he needs to be back on Earth in the infirmary."

"Daniel," said the colonel, not putting down the weapon but squatting low enough to look directly into Beckett's lantern-lit face, "I'd hate to take you home early. It worries everybody. Can you tell me your..." he shrugged, "name, rank and serial number?"

Beckett wondered if he could bluff it out. "Daniel Jackson, civilian, and I have no idea."

A breath of laughter, quickly chopped off. "Got that right, I guess. Okay, what about your wife? Name, how you met, where she is, anything?"

"Not at all." Jackson's current diary, the parts he could read, didn't mention a wife.

A lower tone. "What she is?"

"No." And that was the second time he'd applied "what" to a person.

"My name?"

"You're Colonel O'Neill."

"Is that all you know?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Who is Teal'c? Where did you meet him?" Beckett had no answer, and after a moment Teal'c's hard hold on his wrists underwent a subtle change in quality.

"Who commands SGC? What is SGC?"

"Stargate..." guessed Beckett.

"That's all? Oh, hell, Sam, you ask him something." He stepped back and waved the captain into the circle of light that made everything outside it dark.

Beckett had twitched involuntarily at the name. Captain Carter said, "Teal'c, did you say he doesn't understand the language used by most of the Goa'uld?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"I believe it. He did not respond to... inflammatory usage."

"Mmmmm." She frowned. "Daniel, where are your parents?"

Beckett had no answer, and merely shook his head wearily. This wasn't working.

"All right. What's, umm, a Hamilton-Jacobi equation?"

That, he could answer. "It's a kind of partial differential equation summed over n-plus-one variables. The Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation takes the case of--"

"Oh, no." She was shaking her head, eyes wide. "Sir, it's not Daniel. Daniel's no mathematician for anything higher than transformational grammar. He's never figured out what's partial about a PDE." She glared at Beckett. "But you know. Where's Daniel? What have you done with him?" The eyes widened again. "Who are you?"

"Easy, Carter," said O'Neill. "It's entertaining to hear there's something Daniel doesn't know, and from an expert, but how can you be sure he hasn't just learned it lately?"

"It's... he doesn't have that kind of mind. He can go a lot of places and he can intuit like crazy with concepts, but not with high-level mathematics." She tightened her grip on her gun. "This person was asking about the Stargate physics earlier. What does he want?"

The colonel turned to Beckett, watching him with dangerous alertness, and asked, "Can you convince me you're Daniel Jackson?"

Beckett didn't think so. He took a deep breath, trying to think fast. They were armed and wary, but they were still looking at their friend's face, still trying to reason and talk; and they had experimental technology of their own. His time-travel blundering might not be impossible for them to understand. Revealing himself, his name, his predicament, was dangerous for all of them, but was it more dangerous than not doing so? He took another breath and tried to relax. He still needed to know more about them, about the situation that had brought him here. He still had a problem to solve. Whatever it might be.

The colonel's eyes on his face knew already that he was someone else. Those eyes, full of split-second judgement, reminded him of Al when, rarely, he talked about Vietnam. He, Beckett, had better be someone the colonel would talk to. Now. Beckett took another deep breath to keep his stomach from dropping out and said, "No, sir. I'm not Jackson. I'm here... temporarily, as a result of a misjudgement with particle accelerator."

From the snort Carter gave she didn't believe him; the other two knew they shouldn't. Beckett addressed himself to Carter. "I said earlier that you can't translocate matter through temporal dimensions. That's true, as far as I know. But you can send energy patterns, information... consciousness." She frowned, but she couldn't refute it. Would she believe it?

"My consciousness, or spirit or soul if you like, has swapped places with Jackson's during one phase of a temporal quantum leap. He's as safe as I am, and he'll come back to himself when I jump to the next phase."

"Where is he now?"

"At the Quantum Leap Project, in my body, displaced in time from now." In the future or past? He couldn't be sure. "It's tracked by a computer on Earth, and I don't think anyone anticipated I'd Leap into someone on another planet." He stopped for a careful breath. "In fact, I didn't. The first thing I remember for this Leap is being indoors facing that circle you call the Stargate and looking at the blue shift before I went through it. You -- we -- came here from some location on Earth, didn't we?"

"Yes, I mean, the ev-- um." said Carter.

O'Neill said, tone incredulous, "And you stepped into it just like that?"

Beckett shrugged as well as he could in Teal'c's iron grasp. "I was following you."

"That's not good enough," said the colonel. "In case you haven't noticed, you've kidnapped one of my men. Why?"

Beckett heard the threat in the words and swallowed, feeling cold. He'd never been afraid of Al, but he could very easily be afraid of this Colonel O'Neill. "I don't know." It wasn't a good answer, he knew. "I never know what puts me into a particular place and time. The whole series of Leaps is the result of premature testing of an experiment. Ending a Leap seems to be contingent on making some change in events, doing something the person I've replaced wouldn't or couldn't do."

"What kind of something?"

"It's usually humanitarian. Saving lives, for instance."

"Well now." Even as an outlined figure on the other side of the lantern, the colonel wasn't looking very friendly. "Daniel has saved our lives a few times. What makes you any better at it?" The tension level increased. The alien planet's landscape might look peaceful, but there was no doubt this was a one-mistake-allowed situation. To these people, he was the one mistake. It was not a comfortable feeling.

"I don't know," he said, perfectly honest. He hoped he was here for a reason. He had to be. Whatever it was.

"Well, then. Carter, Teal'c, any thoughts?"

"He is unknown," said Teal'c from behind him, nothing conciliatory in his tone or the hard grip on Sam's wrists.

"Who are you?" asked Carter, again.

She was a physicist. In 1997. She might remember his name. It felt strange to say this to anyone but Al, and he suppressed a shiver. Was this the right thing to do? He didn't know, but he had to keep on trying. "I'm Samuel Beckett," he said. "I can tell you whatever you need to know about my career."

Her mouth opened. "Beckett. Nobel prize in physics..."

"Yes'm."

"I hope you can prove it."

The colonel said, "Carter, what?"

"I think I can clear this up, sir." She shook her head, the tousled blond hair glowing dimly in the lamplight, and started shooting questions at him.

# # #

"Time travel," said Daniel, doing his best to sound disbelieving. "I'd like to help, if you're telling the truth, but that's a hard one to swallow." He'd had a night's sleep to reflect on what Calavicci had said, followed by another mess-hall-quality meal, this one masquerading as breakfast. It hadn't taken nearly that long to decide that if the admiral were telling the truth, the Sam who must be on P7Z992 -- along with Carter -- was in deep trouble. And so, therefore, was he.

He still couldn't help thinking about the two projects. The Stargate wasn't a believable thing, for the most part. He'd taken it as a joke, and then a jaunt, and then... it had stopped being funny, when it was real. Calavicci wasn't laughing when he talked about time-travel, even if it was wild enough that he was probably safe in telling it to Daniel. Nobody would believe Daniel about it anyway, just as the Stargate would be National Enquirer fodder to most people.

The worst of it was that if Calavicci's story was true, telling him about the SGC wouldn't help him anyway. What would the admiral believe? What did he, Daniel, believe? He repeated, "But, time travel?"

Calavicci snorted. "You should talk. Okay, listen to this: Interstellar travel in a single step. Rumors of alien invasion. Hand-held energy weapons. And, not incidentally, one of our smaller tactical nukes going missing in 1994. Don't think there wasn't a stink about that. Not officially, of course."

"I didn't realize you'd care," said Daniel. He hadn't quite minded where the bomb ended up, all things considered, but he was still unable to comprehend the reasoning that had proposed to use it in an inhabited area. Jack thought about things like that, and... Jack hadn't been entirely sane at the time. The people who had given Jack his orders were still deemed sane and competent. Daniel had given up trying to understand it long ago.

"We keep track of those things," said Calavicci, irritably. "They're dangerous. This isn't Russia, you know."

"I hope not. I can't confirm any of what you said, but you have my undivided attention. Who told you that stuff?"

"No names, but they know you even if you don't know them. You're famous in some circles, Dr. Jackson, for your role at Stargate Command."

Daniel winced. "Better than what I was famous for before, I guess."

Calavicci grinned. "Being a crackpot? Rumors of ancient alien invasions and missing links?" Today he was wearing a gold-and-black ensemble slightly too conservative for Liberace. He pulled the cigar from somewhere and waved it.

Daniel winced again. "Something like that." Whatever information source Calavicci had tapped, he'd found out more than enough to show he could work outside the box. How far outside?

"It's tough to be ahead of your time."

"According to you, I'm ahead of my time right now."

"Yeah. So... I know who you are and what you do. Can you tell me, leaving out as many classified details as possible, where you were and what you were doing just before you found yourself here? The sooner I find Sam and get him fixed up, the sooner you go back to business as usual."

"You may be well-informed, but I haven't heard anything that convinces me about the time travel." It explained the bland holding room and cutting-edge fashions, and even the lock-up, maybe. Not the changed body. Daniel didn't bother trying to look at himself, which only confused him; he knew he felt different, was different. It was a pretty good body, but not his, and he couldn't warm up to the idea of using one like a Goa'uld. Even less did he like thinking that Jack and Sam and Teal'c were dealing with someone else "borrowing" his body. They might have noticed by now. They'd be upset.

"This Stargate project of yours sure doesn't foster trust," muttered Calavicci.

"Not particularly." Daniel shook his head, suddenly weary.

"Well, how about something concrete?" The admiral reached into a pocket, sorted change expertly with the hand holding the still-unlit cigar, and flipped him a quarter.

It was the familiar weight, size and color of a U.S. quarter. Dated 1998. It looked and felt absolutely real.

"It was minted in Denver," said Calavicci sweetly. "Good enough for you?"

"It looks real."

"It's real. Now, take a look at this one."

Another coin flashed toward Daniel's borrowed hand, which caught it with an unthinking ease Daniel could only envy. "Ever live in Connecticut?" It was a very crisp, new quarter, except that the back showed a tree, and the date on it was 1999. "Or Delaware?" Another flash, another odd-design quarter. 1999.

"Look at those three data points," said Calavicci. "What do you think?"

"Wherever I am, you can make genuine-looking quarters. And others."

"Yeah. Now, why should I show you the second two, if the first one's good enough to fool you?"

"Verisimilitude?"

"Got it in one. Is it verisimilar enough for you to believe in?"

"Puns," said Daniel sourly. "But... good. Coinage changes. It's a believable update."

"How believable?"

"Oh, God." Daniel dropped the quarters on the table and scrubbed at his face. He was lost, and he didn't know how or where, but someone else might be lost in his body and be able to come back. He might be able to go back. "I was at SGC -- I hope your source told you where that is, because I shouldn't -- last thing before I was here. I was ready to go through the Gate to somewhere else, somewhere you probably can't get a signal from. If someone in my body has done that, he'll have to come back before you can find him. And my people won't know what to make of him."

"Somewhere off Earth?" The cigar described a wide arc, as of zenith to azimuth.

Daniel shook his head wearily. He shouldn't answer.

"Okay, he's away somewhere. But he'll be with your people, and Sam's had practice at this," soothed Calavicci. "He's there to do something or fix something. He'll know that much. He usually has my help, but he'll think of something anyway."

"If my people decide he's... not me, he could wind up dead. More likely in prison. They'd want to know all about him, that is, about what they think he is."

The other man's eyes narrowed. "Things are bad, huh?"

"If I weren't me, the way they might think he isn't me... I'd want to be dead. Maybe. No, I wouldn't, but it's that bad." It was worse, but he couldn't explain.

Calavicci said, testing, "Instead of being in prison?"

"No. Instead of being that thing." Daniel supposed he shouldn't have said that much, but he couldn't take it back, couldn't stop the shake in his voice.

The admiral didn't say anything for a moment, frowning into deeper and deeper lines. "Do your friends feel the same about it?"

Daniel, looking at the face that showed fear over exhaustion, realized the man understood what he'd said. "They won't hurt me if they have any choice."

"Let's hope not."

Daniel rubbed his face again. He was always deathly tired after thinking about the Goa'uld and what they'd done to Sha're, to all their hosts. Most of the time he managed to forget, to ignore the horror. "It could happen, but only if... never mind." Jack would do it if he had to. "They're my team."

"That sounds pretty bad, except the last part."

"I know. I can't tell you about it. I'm sorry. Don't send that doctor after me. I can't tell her either."

"So we just wait to see if Sam comes back?" demanded Calavicci. "Ziggy, are you getting anything useful?"

"There's no sign of Dr. Beckett there, Admiral."

"Keep searching at the Cheyenne Mountain location. Below NORAD," he added pointedly. Daniel swallowed and said nothing.

# # #

"For time travel," said Beckett, "you take another angle on superstring theory. First, if you add another dimension to the ten, and compact it back to ten dimensions, you have the basis for a supergravity dimension." They were still sitting around the lantern, Captain Dr. Carter listening urgently to Sam Beckett's explanation. The colonel had had Teal'c release him when Carter was satisfied with the first round of the quiz, but both of the other men loomed over Sam, watching and listening.

"Oh," said Carter. "M-theory. Yeah."

"Kind of. Now if you do that with more than one of those dimensions being time, you get something else, sort of a loop string theory instead of a winding string theory. The intuitive explanation is to visualize a loop of string as the time axis of your life, and then wad the string into a ball..." He stopped because Dr. Carter, after a moment of incomprehension, was suddenly nodding and giggling madly.

"... So any of the points on the string can touch!" she gasped. "And zap, you're there! You've explained this to laymen a lot, haven't you?"

"Uhh, yes."

She subsided to a flash of grinning teeth. "Have you ever had to explain a black hole in terms of a donut? To a general?"

"Hey!" said Colonel O'Neill.

"Oh, um, well, it got the point across. But," she sobered. "Dr. Beckett, do you have any idea how many people in the Pentagon you've pissed off?"

"Probably not," he said.

"I worked there for two years and I can't count them. That's how many."

"Carter," said the colonel, in a steel-edged tone.

"Oh, yes sir. Colonel, Dr. Beckett is one of the top physicists in the world today. He says he's part of a time-travel project gone wrong. I heard a little about that same project while I was at the Pentagon, and Dr. Beckett's description fits everything I remember."

"Not wrong," said Beckett. "I'm just not the one controlling it."

"That sounds like 'wrong' to me," said the colonel.

"In a way, you're the one controlling it. Whatever I'm supposed to do here, you can help me find it or you can keep me from doing anything." Teal'c still hovered ominously. O'Neill's gun was still in one hand.

"Carter? I don't like it, but you're the expert. Suggestions?"

She chewed her lip. "I believe him, but tactically... well, either we take him back though the Gate to SGC, or we don't. Here, he stays in Daniel's body. If we leave him here, we leave Daniel here."

"Not an option. Jesus, Carter, you know that."

"On Earth he should be able to talk to his liaison, he says, and solve whatever the glitch is. We can contain him in the SGC and check him -- Daniel's body -- for unauthorized visitors. The only thing we can't stop him from doing is, well, immaterial time travel. Which would prove his claim. We have to go home sometime and we have to take him back sometime."

It took about ten seconds. "Okay," decided the colonel. "We go back to base. Let's get packed up. Teal'c, let Carter look after Dan-- Dr. Beckett. And Carter -- maybe he's Beckett, but he's an unknown quantity and we want Daniel back. Don't get careless."

"Yes sir." The tone was as professionally Air Force as she'd been professionally easy with physics a moment ago, and she remained Captain Carter during the packing up and the stumbling pre-dawn hike back to the huge empty circle of the... thing. The "Stargate"? In the growing light it looked like an enormous stone hoop with Egyptoid decorations, but Beckett strained to see it better. Given the element she said it was made of, how could it possibly work?

At Colonel O'Neill's jerk of the head, Carter turned him over to Teal'c and went to the mushroom-footstool device at one side of the hoop. Apparently it was the control for the Stargate, but after she'd entered a code combination in symbols neither Beckett nor the terrestrial Egyptians had known, she waited and... nothing happened.

"Carter?" asked the colonel.

"Let me try that again. Maybe I dialed something wrong." From her tone, she was sure she hadn't.

Two tries later, Carter looked up at O'Neill. "It's not working, sir. I don't know why not."

"Can you find out?"

"Yes sir." She scrutinized the control device, the upright stone hoop, the stone platform -- made of plain rock, while the Stargate itself shimmered in the sunrise like cloudy gemstone -- obviously trying to decide where to start.

The symbols on the control device were odd, angular; they didn't belong to any script or syllabary Beckett knew, but he'd seen them. He spoke without thinking. "Some of those symbols are in the writing on the... in the building here."

"Show me," said Carter. The colonel harummphed. "It can't do any harm, sir, to see if an inscription here matches the dial-home code we think we should be using."

"Okay, okay."

Beckett dug through his borrowed backpack and pulled out the notebook he'd used for the site records. His notes might be sketchier than Jackson's style, but he'd drawn the odd symbols as accurately as he could, documenting the anomaly.

Carter looked them over, read the rest of the page, and stared at him. "Don't tell me you actually translated something in one of Daniel's pet languages!"

"I do know a little about Egyptian symbols and some Greek. Not as much as your expert, maybe..."

"Huh. I guess you really were working all day." She looked at the page again and shook her head. "So you know about the Goa'uld."

"Are those the aliens posing as gods?"

"That is exactly what they do," said Teal'c, behind him.

"'Cept they're not playing," said O'Neill. "They're serious. And, Beckett-whoever-you-are, they're classified need-to-know."

"Yes, sir," said Beckett. "I understand." He wondered if he'd remember anything about it. He wondered if he'd ever tell Al, if Al would ever "need to know," and suddenly his stomach dropped out from under him. What if that was the reason for this Leap? Aliens playing god... He tried to swallow and failed, and hoped he wouldn't remember it, because he wouldn't need to know. God? Is this why I'm here?

Carter said to Beckett, "You're accepting the idea of intelligent aliens awfully easily."

He managed to swallow this time. "I, uh..." If he needed to know, now he did. It wasn't a difficult concept, and by the time he'd realized what the wall's story said, he'd already had more than enough evidence to believe it. "Do I have a choice?" He looked up at the slightly-too-close horizon disguised by the bumpy landscape, the unfamiliar plants. "Do you?"

"Maybe not. Point taken. All right." She traced over the seven symbols with a finger and checked them on the control device. "This is a different address."

Teal'c was still hovering over Beckett, presumably to make sure he didn't abscond with the Stargate. "I do not recognize this address. It is not used by Apophis or any of his allies."

"Meaning?" said Beckett.

"Meaning," said the colonel with a shushing gesture at Teal'c, "we don't get an easy answer."

Carter asked, "Does the rest of the writing where you found this refer to Earth?"

"Maybe. I think so." Beckett smiled apologetically. "The people who came here through the Stargate came from a place that could have been Earth -- they mention the constellations in Earth's sky, and they used a lot of Greek, of sorts, for what that's worth. I thought it was Earth, but at first I thought this was Earth. A lot of my translation was, let's say, based on inference."

She snickered. "You were making it up."

Her humor in this touchy atmosphere was catching. He gave a helpless return snicker. "As I went along. Yes."

She sobered, looking at him with suddenly-different eyes. "Daniel hates that movie. And you--"

Beckett sighed. "He's not here. If he were here, he'd have seen that series of symbols as the kind of 'address' you're looking for right away, wouldn't he?"

"Well, yes."

"So, I haven't told you anything he couldn't have, yet."

"Well, no."

"It wouldn't be that easy. But if we compare the addresses, how closely do they match? What do those symbols mean? Are they arbitrary?" Please let it be just a minor breakthrough in theoretical physics that the universe needs in this time and place.

"Not really. They're..." Her eyes went vague. "Let me think about that."

After a few minutes of puzzled silence the colonel said, "This doesn't sound like progress to me."

She shook her head in frustration. "Not yet, sir."

O'Neill scowled at them both. "You found a Stargate address in the writing in that temple, you said?" Carter nodded, and Beckett did the same.

"When we first found an address like that in a native building near the Stargate," said O'Neill, "it was our ticket back to Earth. Is this? We're pretty far out, if we're at the far edge of the galaxy. Maybe the address book has changed, and someone gave us a new one."

"Dialing an unknown address could get us into a lot of trouble, sir."

"Tell me about it. We're not dialing anything yet. I want some answers first, like why the DHD doesn't work and whether Beckett has anything to do with it."

"How do you figure that?" asked Beckett, stung. He hadn't brought them here. He might have landed in this Leap to get them all home, if the "dialing" system they had wasn't working. He really hoped that was it.

"You're here. We're stuck here. Pretty big coincidence, wouldn't you say?"

Beckett shook it off, trying to put the puzzle together. The address Carter had didn't work. The address Jackson could recognize easily wouldn't work, if this problem needed someone who wasn't Jackson to solve it. "Colonel, what happens if you don't go back to Earth?"

"SGC will reopen the Gate for a survey-and-message vehicle when we're two hours late. Then they'll send a retrieval team, back-up, whatever's needed."

"What if none of us, nobody who comes here, can leave? What if the Stargate here won't form an outward wormhole? Then what?"

"Worst case, we die. Best case, we set up as a colony with 'wwaaay too few people and resources. Then we die later. Not my career choice."

"What happens then on Earth?"

"They hold our funerals." O'Neill gave him a very shadowed look. Carter shivered and even Teal'c twitched once.

"What else?"

"We wouldn't be there any more. How would I know?"

"You wouldn't be there... while soul-eating aliens, or whatever those things are, are running around the galaxy."

"The Goa'uld do not eat souls," said Teal'c. "They take possession of bodies. They would gladly re-take Earth as a source of hosts."

"Uhhhh..." said Beckett, remembering the overlords-or-gods he had read about on the building walls and the aliens in Jackson's diary. If those were the same, more than an abstract danger, not an ancient myth in horrific symbols... Re-take? His mind stuttered for an instant before it caught up, and he felt blood leaving his face. "Oh," he said, mostly to himself. "I read it. I didn't know what it meant." The animal representations and superimpositions weren't stylized metaphors, then.

He looked up and saw O'Neill staring at him silently, tight-mouthed. Beckett said, "Hosts. To aliens? He's not making it up, is he?"

"No," said O'Neill. "And I'll give you a hint: The jury is still out about whether you've stolen Daniel's body and what to do about that."

"Oh, boy," said Beckett faintly, and then, "Believe me, Colonel, I'm as anxious to get us all back to Earth as you are, because it's my home too. Daniel really is safe there and he'll come back when I leave. No one else." He glanced around at the three of them. "Do any of you believe I'm an alien?"

"That is not determined," said Teal'c.

O'Neill scowled. "You could be. I have to keep it in mind. Carter, you should too."

"I don't think he is, sir. I really don't. Not only does he know everything Dr. Beckett should know, but... the Goa'uld don't understand the Stargates. They use the Gates, same as we do, but they found them, same as we did. The physics and the gate addresses as a data system, those aren't Goa'uld. And it's those, not the Goa'uld concepts, that Dr. Beckett has been talking about."

"I thought numbers and elements and that kind of thing were the one true universal. He-- Daniel said so. Rosetta stone stuff."

"Raw numbers and physical constants, yes," said Beckett, "but the forms of mathematical expression, the terms and variables..." The colonel already had an all-too-familiar glaze of incomprehension.

Carter jumped in. "It's like Arabic numbers and Roman numerals, sir. They both express numbers, but they use different symbols and arrange them differently. Dr. Beckett is like someone from the same home town, who went to the same school."

"Stanford," said Beckett, hopefully. "Caltech. M.I.T."

"You went to all those?"

"Uh, yes. Caltech was just a summer thing at JPL. I liked the work, but I couldn't stand the smog. That was in the 70s."

"It's better now. Some."

"Carter, can we suspend old home week and solve this problem?" burst in O'Neill.

"May I explain the Stargate physics to him? It's all need-to-know, but sir, we need to know what he thinks."

"You'd better be right. Go ahead. Teal'c, stay with them."

"Yes, O'Neill."

"You mentioned a whiteboard," said Beckett. "Will this do?" He proffered the site-record notebook and a pen.

"Yeah, great." She seated herself on the stone platform and began sketching diagrams and equations. "You take superstrings and discard the isomorphic case, and using D(2n+1) branes..."

# # #

"Territoriality," said Daniel. "The U.S. military is all about territoriality. I don't even mean the global politics, I'm talking about the internal structure. It's all testosterone-driven pissing contests. All of it."

"But it works," said Calavicci, adding a black stone to the Go board between them.

"Not as well as it could." Daniel put down a white stone. As long as he'd accepted the premise that he was somehow in custody of the Navy, not the Goa'uld, and therefore in a top-secret project that would never in a million years actually communicate with a top-secret project run by the Air Force for any reason however valid, he might as well work out a few ideas that never seemed to be the right ones to express around the SGC. He'd tried them on Jack and Jack would argue with him as long as the whole question was theoretical, but there was no budging Jack in practice.

"Whaddayah mean?"

"Just in research and development, for instance, you have a bunch of isolated, top-secret-project boxes, and they each cost a ton of money, right?" Daniel leaned back in his chair. "And nobody ever considers thinking about whether, say, time travel and space travel might have something to do with each other."

Calavicci raised wiry black eyebrows and twirled his cigar. "Do they?"

"If nothing else, they both use computers the size of the Great Pyramid, but sharing resources on that -- that would be too easy. Your military-hierarchy man is too busy protecting his territory to care about results."

"Do they do any better in Egypt?" Calavicci's eyes cut from the cigar to Daniel. They both knew that in Earth's Egypt the military situation was, if anything, worse.

"Not there. It's not Eden anywhere. That's not what I mean. But this patriarchal mine-or-nothing shit isn't the only way, or the best way, to organize anything." Daniel hoped so. The Goa'uld system lords were like that. If they were running on ego and not efficiency, Earth had a chance -- if it could opt for efficiency more than ego. He really ought to put this in terms General Hammond would listen to, if he ever got back.

He stared at the Go gameboard and snorted at himself. Territoriality, yeah.

Ziggy's voice spoke above them. "Admiral, I have some information from the coordinates you gave me."

Calavicci didn't bother to look toward the hovering voice as he placed a black stone. "Shoot."

Daniel was listening. Calavicci knew Daniel was listening. Ziggy, whoever she was, almost certainly knew Daniel was listening. It wouldn't be anything they didn't want him to hear, but Daniel listened anyway. He was more than sure Calavicci had offered to keep him company in hopes of coaxing more information out of him -- not just his views on U.S. military organization -- and turnabout was fair play.

"There is still no sign of Dr. Beckett. However, I have made friends with the computer at SGC."

"What?" Daniel added a white stone to the duelling, abstract fortresses on the board.

"She likes me," said Ziggy.

"To know you is to love you, Ziggy," said Calavicci.

"I know that," said the contralto smugly. "I didn't think you cared."

"I care, believe me. Now, what has your new friend said?"

"There's an SGC mission report about Dr. Beckett."

"There's what?" Calavicci actually put the cigar down and looked toward Ziggy's voice.

"It pinpoints his involvement in refining the wormhole-differentiation process with respect to loci."

Both Daniel and Admiral Calavicci gaped up at the ceiling. "Huh?" said Daniel, since it was his turn.

"Dr. Samantha Carter credits him as co-author on one of her technical papers. The revised theory in it presents some interesting possibilities."

"For-- Ziggy, you know better--"

"When?" said Daniel, quickly.

"That would be telling," said Ziggy, suddenly prim.

"It sure would," said Calavicci. "Good work so far, Ziggy. I'll be out to talk to you in a minute."

Daniel gestured at the board. "You can't leave yet. I'm winning."

"Sure I can. Unless -- what's Ziggy going to tell me?"

"On second thought, go ahead. Is this a wake-up call?"

"Maybe." The admiral bounced once on his black-patent-leather toes. "It's been interesting to have you here. Don't take this the wrong way, Dr. Jackson, but I hope you don't have to put up with my company for much longer. Someplace else, someday... it would be a pleasure." He picked up his cigar and tucked it away.

"What happens now? Do I disappear in a flash of light or something?"

"You get to go home, you lucky dog." For a moment, Calavicci's face was not happy at all. "You might not remember much of this when you're back where you belong, but it's unpredictable. If you do," he grimaced, "just remember that this is a classified project, too. Capisce?"

"Capisco," said Daniel. "E la storia mia, 'classified.' "

"Way to go, kid. I know all about it. And good luck with..." His face twisted again. "Good luck."

# # #

"Having the formula to adjust the gate addresses for time distortion means you could adjust them to match any temporal locus," said Beckett triumphantly, as he wrote symbols into a final diagram. Samantha Carter nodded.

"If there's enough energy," she said. "That's still the problem."

"Right. The Gate here wouldn't engage because your target address is off in time, until it's corrected, and this Gate doesn't have the energy to push through to a time-displaced address."

"But we Gated in... Oh. The computer's been recalculating all the addresses we got from the map, but the return to Earth is a standard address that's been drift-adjusted for..." she frowned in self-recrimination, "the central part of the Milky Way Galaxy. And we're outside it. Oh. So we need a different one. I should have known. Ohmigod. I should have seen it coming." She slapped the stone surface she was sitting on, then winced and lifted her hand carefully.

"'The universe is not only larger than we imagine,'" Beckett quoted solemnly, "'but larger than we can imagine.'"

"I know how big the galaxy is! I should have seen it!"

"Don't beat up on yourself, Carter," advised O'Neill, who had been listening to their physics jargon for the better part of an hour with only occasional shows of impatience. "We've got the right address for home now, don't we? You re-figured it, right?"

"Dr. Beckett did, mostly. I can do it now, and I think it's correct, sir. We'll know when we try it."

"How soon can we do that?"

"Right away," she said briskly and hopped down from the stone platform, holding the notebook with the calculations. "This is Daniel's. He'll need it back, but I'm keeping these." She tore out the pages of diagrams and calculations, careful to leave everything else intact, and handed it to Beckett. "Put it in your pack."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

While they were leaning together over the backpack, she whispered, "We'd never have made it back." Her face was pale in the morning sun. "You were here because I wouldn't have recalculated the address by myself, and something -- Something -- made sure you could fix it, through time and causality and being in the right place at the right time." Dr. Carter hadn't had any problems at all in grasping the principles of time-travel Leaping.

"Don't be sure of that," he whispered back. "You knew what was wrong. You had all the data. You'd have worked it out. Maybe I'm here to get you home faster, so you don't miss something that happens this evening. You weren't scheduled to go back for two more days, right?"

"Maybe," she said, and gave him a wavering smile. "Thanks for the tutorial, anyway. If we have to go back to Earth, what's going to happen that we have to do?"

"Don't worry about it. You'll be there. You'll do whatever you have to." Beckett wished he knew as much for himself. The Gate would take them back to Earth in sync with the time as elapsed on Earth since they'd left. If this was the reason he was here, his Leap in time wouldn't be affected. He'd still be Leaping, searching, hoping to do the right thing, at the intangible direction of Whatever it was that had sent him. Was he sorry? He didn't know.

Would he remember that there were aliens? If he did, would it matter?

"Carter!" The colonel and Teal'c were standing beside the mushroom dialing device, the colonel looking impatient. "You two had better be whispering about physics over there!"

She and Beckett both stared at him. Beckett said, blankly, "Yes, we are, sir."

Carter shrugged apologetically. "Time and causality, sir."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Sorry, sir. We're ready now." She went back to the dialing device and pushed symbols for the revised combination. Sam Beckett heard, for the first time, the eleven-dimensional white-noise sound of a wormhole forming. Knowing what it was he faced the shimmering event horizon with awe, but the other three, even Dr. Carter, walked up to it as though it were any other door.

The light of the Stargate, blue-shifted by energy from the wormhole's dimensional twist, swallowed four people on P7Z992 and disgorged them on the ramp of the SGC Gateroom. To Sam Beckett it seemed as though the same light exploded through him a moment later, carrying him elsewhere to a rendezvous with a hermit computer hacker, an enraged skunk and three free-lance conspiracy buffs. He found the hacker. The skunk found him. "Oh, eeeuuuhhboy," whimpered Sam. This wasn't going to be an easy Leap, he could just tell.

# # #

Daniel opened his eyes in a less-than-comfortable kneeling position on the Gateroom ramp at SGC. Teal'c was there, helping him up, steadying him, and then not letting go of his wrists. After a moment Daniel said, "Teal'c? It's not really customary to hold hands in the Gateroom. It bothers the airmen."

None of the usual welcome committee of armed airmen from the security detail batted a single eyelash among the eight of them. Teal'c did not release him. "Can you tell me who you are?"

"I'm Daniel. Jackson." He looked around at the Gateroom, the former missile silo housing scientists, explorers, aliens -- and him -- while denying their existence to all outsiders. He worked for a hierarchical, uptight, intensely paranoid organization. He didn't have to agree with it, but he had to work with it. "I think I can remember my social security number, if someone wants that kind of thing."

"Mother's maiden name?" asked Jack from nearby, somewhere between hopeful and stern.

"Ballard. Claire Ballard." He remembered so little of her, but he knew her name. "Jack, why are you asking?"

"Where is she?" asked Jack, more softly.

He blinked, affronted. "She died a long time ago. I thought you knew that."

"As long as you're sure," said Jack. "You're going to have to give us a big, fat security check as well as a debriefing."

"Why? I-- Oh." Recent memory of a white room warred with memories of an uneventful stint of pure, blissful translation on P7Z992. Antiseptic white and dusty hieroglyphs achieved an uneasy overlay. "I feel like Janus. I think I've got a headache." It was going to be a sinus headache. His own sinuses, his own familiar headache.

Welcome home.

# # #

Epilogue

Al appeared to Sam Beckett in a hologrammatic burst of light only moments after Sam had sunk into a bath dosed with skunk-scent remover. "Glad to see you got back," said Al, poking at Ziggy's handlink.

"Back? I just Leaped in an hour ago."

"Back on-- never mind." Al made a show of inspecting the bathroom instead of Sam in the bathtub. "Nice tile you got here."

"Oh," said Beckett. "Back. Don't worry, I remember where I was."

"You do?"

"I was on P7Z992, which is a planet in some galaxy far, far away. But, it wasn't long, long ago. It was 1997. What year it is now?"

"1989," said Al. "Your name is, believe it or not, Billy Joe Barrymore, and you're a..." He trailed off at Sam's level glare.

"What year is it for you?"

Al sobered. "Uhhh, it's past 1997. Okay?"

"So we still don't know if the Leaps will go into my future -- if I have a future. Can Ziggy record? I should really tell you as much as I can about the temporal loci determination aspect of wormhole theory. I had a few thoughts about it and they might make it possible to--"

Al cut him off. "I guess you do remember. Do you know who you were?"

"Someone named Daniel Jackson. He knows a lot of ancient languages and I think he must be accident-prone."

"Not that I noticed," muttered Al, and played with the handlink, which began flashing something complicated and urgent, from the way Al stared at it instead of pretending not to stare at Sam.

"What was that?"

"Uhhh, Ziggy says to tell you."

Sam had hours before the skunk-odor-removal could be considered finished, and Al's version of the Lost-in-space Leap should be a better distraction from his nose's misery than anything else he could imagine. It wasn't like Al would be bothered by the smell. Unlike Sam himself. "Tell me what?"

"Oh, you don't remember after all?" Al made as if to put away the link.

"Tell me."

"What?"

"Whatever Ziggy said to."

Al managed to look embarrassed. "Ziggy said you needed to know..."

Sam's stomach clenched as he remembered cool, clear air on his face, a pictured story of gods and snakes, and a voice with too much experience behind it saying, They would gladly re-take Earth as a source of hosts. "Need to know what?" Was it him or Al who needed to know, and how much?

"Whatever you did on P7Z992, the team there went back to Earth safely, and about three months later, they saved it from an alien invasion."

"Oh."

"And after that..."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, no, right. I can't tell you, but most of it didn't happen, so we're fine on our cozy little blue planet. Ain't life grand?"

"That's something," said Sam, wondering what he'd been shivering about. Alien parasites? Nonsense. He forgot not to pay attention and smelled himself in the bath. "Skunks. Why did it have to be skunks?"

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