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“Where’s the MALP?” Sam blurted as she came through the Gate. Not only was the MALP missing, but the landscape was nothing like the one they had seen on the playback when planning this mission to K91-335. For one thing there was no snow or ice. For another this was a desert. She frowned and turned back towards the rest of the team.
The others were not behind her. She stared through the Gate at the rolling sands behind her. “What the…?” She turned a slow circle and then charged down the ramp towards the DHD. She touched her hand rapidly to the symbols for home and pressed the center disc. Nothing. She tried again, twice, but still nothing.
Taking off her pack and her stifling parka, she sat on the sand and pulled her toolkit out and the panel off the DHD. After working on it, she determined that there was no power. She wasn’t getting through that Gate without help.
Just as she was about to climb the Gate to get height enough to look for anything beyond the dunes, she heard a very odd noise. It was a loud mechanical grinding. She turned towards the source and blinked as a blue – something - materialized behind the Gate.
Snatching up her P-90, she went up the ramp and ducked behind the Gate. A man in a sports coat, bow tie and a red fez leapt out of the doors of the box, which Sam could see said “Police Call Box” – in English - atop it. After stumbling a few steps in the sand, the man looked around and then directly at her hiding spot. “Hello! Do come out, I’m friendly.”
He seemed unarmed, and he was speaking English. Sam peered around the edge of the Gate. “Don’t come any closer. I’m armed,” she warned. He stopped, leaned over and rested his hands on his knees as he looked at her.
“Is that…? Well, I am surprised to see you again, Major… Carlyle? No… Carson? No. Ah, Carter, like the president. Where’s the rest of your chums, uhm… Jake and Teal and Danny?”
“I don’t know you!” Sam raised her weapon and eyed him suspiciously.
“Ah, right, I guess we’re at the start then, are we?” He stood up and wiped his hands on his jacket as he came forward with his hand extended. “Very well, I’ll start. I’m the Doctor.” He pointed to himself. “That is the TARDIS, and you’re Sam, if I remember your name correctly. It has been a very, very long time since I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve never met you before…”
“In your life. I understand. You haven’t met me yet, but I’ve met you. Time Travel can be such a pain in the noggin. Now, do you have any idea why my TARDIS picked up a huge temporal anomaly coming from this planet?”
She shook her head. “Not a clue.”
“Does the Gate thingie work?”
“No.” He seemed harmless enough so Sam lowered her weapon.
“Stranded here then?’
There was no denying it. “Yes.”
“Well, get your coat and come along. Let’s go find your friends. I assume you’ve lost track of them?”
What a peculiar man. Slowly backing away, Sam picked up her coat and pack and followed at a distance as he went to his TARDIS.
He left the door open, so she followed peeking in. As her jaw dropped at the sight, he waved a hand, “Yes, bigger. Funny, I don’t seem to recall our first meeting. I thought I would remember explaining all this to you, but I don’t. How odd. Now, I need to do a bit of calculating to figure out what has happened.”
Sam edged through the door and looked around as he began circling the center console and pressing buttons and turning knobs. This was the oddest thing she had come across in recent memory. She went back and poked her head out the door. Outside was still a sandy desert with the Gate a little way off. She looked over at the Doctor again. How very odd. Her curiosity drew her closer to the console. On a screen she saw some mathematical calculations and she couldn’t resist looking closely.
“X there. 3 there,” she pointed to the screen.
“No. Wait. Really? Huh,” he made the changes and then smiled at the result. “Clever girl, I liked that about you.” If he patted her head or twitched her nose, she’d bite him. But he didn’t, so she didn’t.
A machine pinged and he flitted around the console and flicked a switch. “There we are. It seems there was a minute tear in space-time in the Praxis system, near Qo’noS. The ripple must have crossed your wormhole stream and diverted you here.”
Sam groaned aloud at the word ‘diverted’ in the same sentence with wormhole. This was not going to be good. “Can we analyze the…”
“Trajectory, yes, already working on it. Hhmmm,” the Doctor leaned back and rubbed his chin with his hand as he stared at a small screen on the console.
When he didn’t speak after a few moments, Sam prodded, “Well?”
“Oh, sorry. It seems to have gone a little wonky. I wonder why that is? Anyway, look here, see how it sort of spirals around?”
“Is that Earth?”
He tapped the screen. “Earth. Qo’noS. Practically neighbors, on a cosmic scale.”
“So al the planets within this field are affected?”
“Well, only if they’re using wormhole technology. Odd, Qo’noS doesn’t have an Altaren Gate.”
“How did I end up here? Where is here, anyway?”
He twisted a knob and pulled a lever and the center of the console began to move up and down and make the odd noise Sam had heard earlier. He answered casually, “Egypt.” He pointed to the fez then went back to twitching dials.
“Slapping a hand on the console to get his attention, this guy was easily distracted, it seemed. Sam pointed towards the door. “That was not Egypt!”
“Oh, it was, I assure you. 29th Century BC.”
There was padded bench behind her and she sat down and stared, thinking over the facts she had.
“This is Earth?”
“Yes. Well, it was, we’ve left there now.”
Sam never wanted to hear diverted and wormhole in the same sentence again.
~*~
“The right time. And yes. The numbers spoke for themselves. There was a convergence point here in 30BC.”
“Egypt again?”
The Doctor looked back over his shoulder at her. “Well, yes. The Gate was buried in a sand storm at some point during the Roman occupation. This convergence point is the most logical place to search for your friends. Off we go. Straighten your veil and try to look inconspicuous.
“You’re wearing a bow tie and a fez.”
He looked down at himself and fingered his striped robe. “I’m wearing a suitable disguise. Move along, chop, chop.” Huffing out a breath, Sam started walking.
“Let’s go that way,” the Doctor said, pointing in a seemingly random direction.
“Why that way?”
He smiled at her. “Because something smells delicious down that way, shall we go investigate?”
Madman. She was following a mad time traveler in the hopes of finding the rest of SG-1.
Munching on the nuts he purchased, though how he happened to have coins in his pocket for this century, she had no idea; she walked beside him, taking in as much living history as she could. “I hear a lot of noise coming from that way,” she said, tipping her head towards a road up ahead. “Shall we go see?”
He nodded happily and they emerged from the road into a wide open plaza. Sam groaned as she saw that Teal’c was tied to a pole surrounded by a crowd holding rocks and looking mean.
“Oh dear, isn’t that Teel?”
“Teal’c, yes. I wish you’d let me bring my weapons.” He had stubbornly refused to let her leave the TARDIS with her sidearm or rifle. She had only the knife strapped to her ankle that he didn’t know about.
“Despise the things. No need for such extremes.” He waggled a blue-tipped tool he’d drawn from his pocket at her. “I’ll cause a distraction; you go use your knife and cut him loose. Run back to the TARDIS, I’ll meet you there. Here, take the key.”
She took the key, looped the ribbon it had been tied with around her wrist and watched him run off, skirting the edge of the plaza.
Wriggling through the crowd prepared to stone her teammate, she got as close as she could, keeping her head down. Teal’c stood proudly and unafraid, facing his accusers as they read off charges that he consorted with evil.
A high-pitched whine caught her attention, as well as the attention of the crowd. When they looked away, she ran forward and immediately started slicing at the ropes holding Teal’c.
“It is good to see you, Major Carter, a most timely arrive.” He smiled as she knelt and cut the ropes at his ankles.
“I had some rather odd help. Can you run? We need to run.”
“I am able to run. Let us go.”
There were a few shouts as they started away, but whatever noisy thing the Doctor had done had certainly diverted their attention. No one seemed to be following them. Ducking through roadways and alleyways, Sam led Teal’c to the TARDIS. As she fumbled with the key and pushed the door open, Teal’c looked at the blue box, touching the wood surface with open curiosity. She grabbed his arm and dragged him inside.
By the time the Doctor turned up, Sam had shown Teal’c around and explained how she had come to be traveling in such weird manner, as well as filled him in on the peculiar man that owned this ship.
“Ah, Teal’c…” he smiled at Sam when he got the name right, “So good to see you again. Now, we must be off, no time to dawdle, we have to follow the trail before it disperses.”
“Disperses? You didn’t say anything about dispersal,” Sam said as she followed him to the control console.
“Didn’t I? Oh, yes, well, the residual trail we’ve been following will not last long.” He pulled a lever and the console center moved up and down, making that odd grinding noise again.
Teal’c put a hand out and gripped the back of the bench, but otherwise, his expression was as stoic and unruffled as usual. Sam both loved and hated that about him. She was certain she looked every bit as frazzled as she felt.
After a short time spent watching the frantic maneuvers of the Doctor, Sam leaned back and beckoned Teal’c close. She whispered, “Looks crazy, but I think he knows what he’s doing.”
“Indeed.”
~*~
Daniel looked up at them from the floor and smiled. “Hi Doctor. We need to leave. It isn’t safe to dawdle around these parts.”
Trying to disentangle himself from Jackson, O’Neill finally gave up and shoved him and then sat up and looked at Sam. “Carter!” he barked, “In less than ten words, tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Temporal anomaly, Gate malfunction, wormhole diverted, time machine, rescue.” Ticking off the words on he fingers, she smiled, waggled her thumb and added, “Hi!”
“Told you!” Daniel said triumphantly. He had gotten to his feet and crossed to climb the steps and gone over to greet the Doctor.
“Danny! Hello, hello. How have you been keeping?”
Teal’c was helping O’Neill to his feet. The three remaining members of SG-1 were all watching Daniel and the Doctor. “You know this guy, Jackson?”
Blushing slightly, Daniel nodded. “Well, I did. When I was a kid, I spent some time on this old girl, traveling with the Doctor.”
“You knew about time travel all this time and didn’t tell us?” Sam was actually a bit offended that her friend had been holding out on them.
“I didn’t remember it all, it was like a dream really, until I saw the TARDIS materialize out there just now.”
Sam looked over her shoulder at the closed door and then back at Daniel and the Doctor. “What is… was out there?” The TARDIS was in motion once again.
Jack, Daniel and the Doctor replied in unison, “Giza.”
“1928,” Daniel added.
“I knew it! I knew you were up to something. “Oh, let’s go explore a little Jack. Oh, we should get away from the Gate Jack. You little sneak. You knew where we were the whole time.”
“Now Jack…”
O’Neill scowled and pointed a warning finger at Daniel. “Not another word. I know what you were up to. You wanted to get your hands on the other stuff that was unearthed in the original excavation, the stuff the government won’t let you play with and has locked away somewhere with the Ark of the Covenant.”
The Doctor stood up straight and turned to look at Jack. “Do the Americans have that troublesome oversized jewelry box?”
Jack blinked and then shook his head slowly. “It’s real? I thought it was just in the movies.”
“Ah. Joking, I remember that about you now. Of course it’s real, Steven Spielberg’s uncle, or was it an uncle’s cousin? Anyway, a relative was on the excavation that unearthed it during the war. Derivative, yes, but based in part on fact.”
“I don’t know this guy. How does this guy know me?” Jack tossed his head at the Doctor.
“He’s a time traveler, Jack. You’re meeting him for the first time, but he’s already met us all at some other time,” Daniel explained.
Rolling his eyes, Jack crossed his arms and glared. “I hate this kinda stuff, Daniel.”
“I know, which is why I didn’t tell you where I thought we were before.”
The Doctor clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Well, let’s get you back to Colorado, shall we? Things to do, people to see, Earth to save.”
“Indeed,” Teal’c inclined his head. “I wish to return to the SGC.”
Tapping a few keys and adjusting a few dials, the Doctor patted the console. “Be there in a tick. You might want to hold onto something, for some reason she doesn’t rematerialize smoothly in the SGC.”
No sooner were the words out of the Doctor’s mouth than the TARDIS began to shake violently. Everyone lurched for the nearest handhold. Sam slipped and fell and ended up holding onto the railing near Jackson’s feet.
“There we are, safe and sound,” the Doctor announced cheerily.
Sam ran to the door and jerked it open. The alarm klaxons were blaring and the lights were flashing all over the Gate Room. “You landed in the Gate Room?”
“I didn’t want to scratch the floor in the gym, Jack yelled at me for that once already. There are not a lot of wide open spaces to aim for below ground you know, and landing here is difficult,” the Doctor said as he shrugged.
“Okay! And I for one have had enough and want off this carnival ride. Jackson, Carter, you can write me long, geeky reports about what happened that I probably won’t read before signing off on. Teal’c, let’s go get a pizza.”
Teal’c gave the Doctor a parting nod and followed Jack, who had darted past Carter to the relative safety of the SGC.
Daniel was starting to say goodbye when Jack and Teal’c returned and Teal’c firmly closed the door behind them.
Jack shook his head. “Wrong. Just, wrong. Press the buttons and try again.”
“Not our SGC?” Daniel asked, though he did not seem overly surprised.
“Not unless General Hammond is now a tall scaly lizard guy with glowing eyes.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, the Doctor scrunched his nose and looked over at the console. “Hhm. Well. Lizard people, you say? Green, blue or yellow?”
Teal’c replied, “Yellow.”
The TARDIS suddenly rocked in place. And Jack added, “Oh, and armed, with big guns. Really big guns. So, let’s go.”
“Ah, Rinarian invasion. We’re just a little sidetracked. I can fix this,” the Doctor assured them all.
Six re-materializations later and one side trip to Monacia to have dinner and sweet shaved ice with kawula berries later, they finally arrived home.
And only three minutes after they initially left through the Gate bound for K91- 335
Even Jack was slightly impressed and admitted that perhaps the TARDIS wasn’t completely useless. As they stepped out onto the ramp, he was about to suggest that perhaps Carter should take a look at the tech behind the thing when the engine ground out the noise they had grown accustomed to and the TARDIS disappeared.
“He does that,” Daniel remarked. “He’ll be back.”
The End