Part Five Into the Night (xiii)

Jennifer's hands shook as she slid the slide into place, which was ridiculous because she knew it would work; it had worked in the service tunnel under Rodney's lab.

But this was the crucial test, the power relays for the Stargate.

The mould was loosing density, getting paler. "It's working!" she practically screamed.

Zelenka shouted into his hand held communicator. "Try it now!"

"Dialling," Chuck's voice was calm as usual. "Nothing's happening."

"Hovno!" Radek gave her a despairing look and she thought bizarrely that she would have to get a Czech/English dictionary sometime soon.

"Wait a minute," Chuck's voice echoed through the communicator. "It's dialling, slow, but it's dialling."

Jennifer's legs gave way. Chuck must have kept the talk button depressed because she could hear the whine and clunk of the chevrons engaging, then the boom of the wormhole.

There was a few seconds of crackling static then thinly, faintly, she heard the best noise in the Pegasus galaxy, relayed through two communicators was the sound of Rodney complaining.

"It's about time! Teyla's sick, I need a jumper." There was a buzz and a crackle as Chuck spoke, "Did you get that?"

"I did," Dr Zelenka took the tank and started to run, Jennifer assumed in the direction of the jumper bay, leaving her sitting on the floor with no communicator and a shaky idea of where she was and how to get back to the medical bay. She started giggling, how ridiculous was she?

She forced herself to stop laughing and took a few deep breaths, feeling dizzy and thinking that stress had given her a stomach ache.

A sharp cramp stabbed through her belly and she groaned, she remembered the coffee she'd drunk with Rodney that morning in his lab. It had been too hot so she'd tipped some out and run in some cold from the tap in the next door lab. She groaned again; Rodney had drunk from a can. She forced herself to stand on jelly legs and started the long walk back to civilisation and she hoped eventually, the infirmary.