Like so many visitors before him, Jonas could not fail to be impressed by
Sam and Jack's multi-level villa stepping up the hillside, as he exited the
aerocar near the ornamental front gates. White walls, red tile roofs -
definitely Greek stylistic origins, he thought. Most of the world of Mythor
was kept by its inhabitants in a state of aesthetic grace, without question
or argument. The tradition had grown up over so many generations that
allowing unkempt, dirty or ramshackle sites to develop was just
unthinkable. 'Like Earth's Switzerland used to be before money became too
important.' he found himself thinking, recalling a memorable vacation
during the time he'd served on SG-1.
The ornate gates opened soundlessly as he approached and he passed through into the most exotic gardens he had ever seen. Other visitors had talked often about them, and how Sam had devoted so much of her soul into creating and maintaining her masterpiece. Even though he knew this, the water cascading gently down through the several levels of landscaped enclosures looked, sounded and smelled like nothing he'd ever experienced. Trees, bushes and flowers that he knew must have originated on many different worlds blended in a visual and olfactory treat, the perennially mild climate ensuring vibrant displays of purples, reds, yellows and blues at all times of the year. He spied an arbour at the far side of a pond, where a servant was laying the table for a meal.
As he strolled up the stone path towards the large polished wood front door to the porch, it swung open and Sam stood waiting to greet him. Jonas had grown used to seeing so many Mythorans habitually wearing robes and loose garments that it took him by surprise to see her in a chequered shirt and slacks that might be mistaken for jeans at a distance.
"You haven't changed much in five years, stranger!" smiled Sam as their outstretched hands came together. She pulled him towards her and kissed his cheek.
"Neither have you, Sam!" beamed Jonas. The last time they had met was on Kelowna, at the party celebrating Jonas' appointment as head of the national TV network. He turned and gestured at the gardens. "This is breathtaking, Sam. I'd heard about it but they didn't do justice."
"Why, thank you, Jonas." she purred. "It's been my dream for twenty years. It's only really looked like this for the last five. I kept adding to them while Jack was extending the house up the hill and landscaping the back. Come on through - he's looking forward to seeing you too." She led him through the atrium and up a flight of wide stone steps into a large lounge. A hand-woven rug in multiple shades of green covered the centre of the marble floor, surrounded by deep comfortable armchairs, and behind them an array of ornaments on wall shelves. Jonas could see other rooms leading off on three sides.
"How many rooms do you have, Sam? Are your sons still living at home?" asked Jonas.
"Twenty-three in all, not counting the guest lodge and my lab in the back garden." she replied. "Jacomb and Danil still have their own rooms for when they visit, but they're away most of the time these days. I suppose now that Jack's retired from being Guild President we'll have less visitors, but we'll never move. We built this place together and we'll both see out our days here. We love it. We've got smaller houses on other worlds, mostly to stay in when we're away on business, but this is *home*."
"No, er, grandchildren on the horizon?" asked Jonas tentatively.
"Not yet, but Jacomb's getting awfully interested in a red-haired girl - one of Karinne's nieces, actually. You never know." Sam explained.
"If we get to be grandparents before he's wed, he'll get my boot up his ass, octogenarian or not! And that's nothing compared to what he'd get from Ari." came a gruff voice from behind Jonas. He turned to meet Jack's huge smile and outstretched hand.
"Jack! You're looking well. Great speech last night, by the way - I saw the telecast. I bet Sam thought so too. Congratulations!" Jonas turned to see her smiling and blushing.
"Credit where it's due, that's all." said Jack. "I'd be nowhere without her."
"Works both ways, dearest." Sam chirped up. "Did you know he turned down an offer to become a Senator, Jonas?"
"Too many old farts in the job already." grunted Jack. "Anyhow, I kept getting this nightmare of turning into a ghost from the past - Kinsey! Don't get me wrong: it's a tough job. It just isn't me, is all."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"Where do you want to do your interview, Jonas?" asked Sam. "Shouldn't there be a cameraman or somebody to film us?"
"No, we've got these little holocams now." he replied, taking a small silver object from his pocket. "We can just set it up in the room anywhere. It not only photographs what it sees directly, but bounces signals off the walls and ceiling to build up a three-dimensional image of the room and its occupants in real-time. We'll cut and paste the images to give continuity for the broadcast tonight." He had Sam's attention but Jack was already in a state of obvious withdrawal.
"I see!" said Sam enigmatically. "And the computer-generated holo images are so realistic now that you can make it look as though we're being filmed from any angle throughout the chat! I could do with one of those for recording experiments in my lab."
"Amazing." said Jack dryly. "I'll have one installed in the guest bedroom for voyeurs."
They eventually settled on the sun lounge at the rear of the house for the recording, and after finishing their drinks, Jonas began with the introductions to camera and set the scene. He'd already warned them that some of the questions would be tough, but they'd faced worse both as traders and during Jack's time as Guild President, and were not concerned.
"How did you become Guild President? After all, JS Trading is one of the youngest companies in the Guild." asked Jonas.
"I was a compromise candidate." Jack explained. "There are so many distinguished families whose membership goes back generations that sometimes they act like rival groups of royalty contesting the throne. Five years ago the power blocs couldn't agree, so - enter the youngster who couldn't do much damage. I know for a fact that they didn't realise that Sam and I were coming with an agenda."
"What agenda was that?"
Jack looked towards Sam and she took up the challenge. "Well, throughout Guild history, there's always been the Goa'uld empire. Some traders fell foul of them and were eliminated from time to time, but most just co- existed and chose to ignore the excesses of subjugation and slavery. The Guild was essentially a society for advancement of its members and a means of keeping the rewards of trading in its own hands. It was more than that, of course, and there are many ethical and paternalistic companies out there. But the Guild had never taken any official stand on issues like the freedom of peoples and economic exploitation. With the war against the Goa'uld going well, we decided to try to use the situation to our advantage."
"How did you go about getting the changes in place?"
"We were sneaky, of course!" replied Jack. "We kind of let several trader families think that the ideas were coming from their rivals. You know, buy themselves a page in the history books for reasons other than profit. Quite a few actually wanted to move in that direction for good reasons as well as self-gratification, so within two years we had The Trading Charter being talked about across the Gated worlds, and implemented as Guild policy last year."
"Yes, you certainly lobbied Kelownan Universal about it for a long time." said Jonas. "What does it mean to you personally?"
"No more standing by or participating in trading activities that sustain slavery, economic or otherwise." said Sam, the light in her eyes revealing her inner passion for the subject. "Regulated trade through the Stargates is a powerful means of influencing those things."
"Try to stop people carrying on screwing up their worlds with technologies that shouldn't be there, or should be controlled better. Sure, we're probably nothing more than a pin-prick on the face of time, but it's a start." said Jack. "If you want to know how I think about that, I want to be able to go to a world - any world - and fish."
"Fish?" came Jonas' astonished response. Astonished for the camera's benefit, of course. As a seasoned journalist he was just loving the colour of the interview, and the way Jack and Sam's personalities were going to make the broadcast of this normally dry subject so much more watchable.
"Yup." Jack responded. "Can't do that if the water's polluted or the fish stocks are dying or exhausted. I can name a whole string of planets where that's already gone down." Jonas knew that both Earth and Kelowna were somewhere near the top of this list.
"Do you think the regulations will stick over time?"
"They've got to." replied Sam. "Most of the planets where the Stargates have been in use for generations are actually the ones going along with the new standards. They're glad to be rid of the Goa'uld and can see the benefits. The loudest opposition is coming from worlds like Earth, for example, to whom the Gates are still a novelty. They just see them as a means of expanding their influence or importing resources that are lacking on their own world. They don't want to acknowledge restrictions or rules that they don't have control over."
They talked for another twenty minutes on Guild activities, revealing both Jack and Sam's stated lack of interest in entering politics. But it was clear that both would be involved with the Guild, and thus not really outside politics, for the rest of their lives.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
After a break for more drinks - Jonas was trying to work out whether the local fruit juice was not just a little bit more alcoholic than he suspected - they resumed the recording.
"It's clear that isolating several Goa'uld home planets tipped the scales in the war against them." stated Jonas. "How did you think of it?" Jack motioned in Sam's direction, hoping to avoid the technospeak himself.
She shook her head and laughed. "Oh no, Jack! That was your idea originally. I just adapted the Asgard technology. You said 'We just need to run quicker than them, that's all.' It was when we were escaping from Huygens 4B with the kids." She turned back to face Jonas. "He couldn't sleep when we got home, and he sure as hell was stopping me from dozing off. So I got up and made us some tea, and as we sat up in bed drinking it, he just came out with 'Frozen Replicators!' He then said we should ask the Asgard for a time-dilation device and I took it up from there. Thor was amenable and I modified the design for a gradual switch-on instead of instantaneous effect and managed to miniaturise the design so it could be easily hidden."
"Yeah, like that was a straightforward job for your everyday time-dilation engineer!" Jack interjected. "Even the Asgard had never done that."
"No, Jack." she retorted. "The clever person is the one who starts with a blank sheet of paper. Adapting and developing stuff is relatively easy. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open."
"Humph!" snorted Jack. "This from the woman who started DU Industries and has patent rights on dozens of gizmos on sale throughout the universe. Including that holocam over there, I might add!"
The said camera caught Jonas' open-mouthed surprise so well. "Er, DU Industries? You own the company?"
"Yup. 'Doohickies Unlimited' it was originally." said Jack. "Sam's present to me on my sixty-fifth birthday. Our son Danil is now the chief executive and pretty much runs it by himself. I hate to say it, but he's even more of a geek than his mother."
Sam smiled - she was used to this. She continued "But to get back to the point, you already know how we concealed the devices and got the Goa'uld to take them back to their planets. But what we didn't fully appreciate at the time was that we had closed the doors, so to speak, but didn't have a key to open them again. It wasn't until Daniel Jackson got himself marooned that we had to think of a way of getting him off again. And that took us sixteen years in our time - fifteen to develop the means, and one to get him off, all the while he only aged fourteen hours."
"So how did you do it?"
"We had anticipated that the planets' Stargates would cease functioning, and that ships' computers would be in trouble crossing the time-gradient. Our first attempts to have a rescue craft gliding under manual control through the time barrier in the atmosphere came to nothing." explained Sam. "We watched from geostationary orbit in one of our freighters and as soon as the pilotless test-craft became submerged in the time-change boundary, it was already going slowly and just froze where it was from our viewpoint. It was clear that we might get it to work eventually, but our great great grandchildren would be the ones to greet Daniel. Then we took up another of Jack's ideas and went fishing instead." Her eyes sparkled mischievously as she said it.
"Fishing?"
"Well, kind of." said Jack. "I'd read somewhere about the idea of running a cable from geostationary orbit down to the surface of a planet, to form the basis of an elevator system into space. Sam, you explain, please."
"Possible in theory, but no-one's ever had the materials available to try. We needed a cable forty thousand kilometres long from stretch from orbit to the surface. We thought we could shoot a rescue cage straight down so that when it crossed the time-change barrier, it wouldn't take forever. But the only material known to be light yet strong enough to support its own weight and the stresses we would be putting on it was Fullerite."
Jonas nodded knowingly but asked, "Please would you explain that for the benefit of the viewers?"
"It's a form of carbon fibre with a special molecular pattern that gives it such strength. It was originally called Buckminster Fullerene, after its inventor. We knew about the properties, but it's still a pretty rare material and we needed enormous quantities. It does occur in nature, but almost exclusively in the corona of red dwarf stars. We firstly had to design a means of recovering it from there."
"So that was the end of that idea, then?"
"Oh no." said Sam. "We captured some Goa'uld ring transporter devices and adapted them to repeatedly dip into the stars' atmospheres from orbiting ships for rapid extraction of the elements. Gradually we captured enough. We converted a derelict space station into a factory for refining the material and spinning the fibre - it's still there today, in orbit around Barnard's Star, producing ninety-seven percent of the spun Fullerite in the known universe. Eventually we had enough, but it had taken over eight years before we started lowering the cable into the atmosphere. Fortunately by this time Daniel had managed to land his Tel'tak on the surface of the planet. We could watch it all from orbit, like freeze-frame actions, over the years we were working to get him off."
"So that was how you got them off the planet, then?"
"Unfortunately not." replied Jack. "Even though we'd developed a control system for our freighter to hold it absolutely still in orbit over the site of Daniel's crashed ship, we hadn't allowed for the effects of solar wind on the cable itself. The slightest movements in the cable above the time- change barrier caused the cable below the barrier to move at supersonic speeds in a kind of whiplash effect. The furthest we got was two kilometres below it before we lost that cable as well. They all broke apart near the barrier. That was when we decided that this was never going to work under these circumstances."
"So, what happened next?"
"We were stumped, quite frankly." said Sam. "Jack was actually contemplating leaving all of us to take the glider option to the surface by himself when our son Danil came up with the beginnings of what eventually turned out to be the solution."
"And that was?"
"The Quantum Traverse Effect." said Sam. "From the age of eight, he's been engrossed in the physics of atoms and molecules. He got the idea from seeing how electrons in orbit round the nucleus of an atom could jump from one orbital to another in zero time and back again. He thought that if he could engineer a field big enough to contain a small ship, then it should be possible to travel instantaneously from one place to another in 3D space- time. It took us seven years to build the ship that made the trip last year. I will admit though, that we splattered some of the prototypes across the universe before we got it right. Our other son Jacomb is the skilled pilot of the family, and was the only person to trust Danil's calculations enough to even want to test-fly it."
"Last year? I thought that they returned only ten or eleven days ago!" exclaimed Jonas.
"They did." said Jack. "But even though they descended from orbit to the surface instantly, once they got out of the ship it took them nearly an hour in their time to convince Daniel and his three companions to get on board. That's been about a year in universe time and again we were able to watch it all in slow-mo from orbit. Teal'c volunteered to go because if it came to it, he was going to subdue Daniel's protests and carry him on board. Jacomb piloted the craft, Danil was the flight engineer and our foreman Ari was there to convince Daniel's followers to come back too."
"Why Ari? I can see the reasons for the others to be there." said Jonas.
"Because in addition to being our right-hand man and the new CEO of JS Trading" said Jack, "he is also the High Priest of the Avorian brethren. You know, the religious group whose stolen icon caused all the fuss in the first place. His full name is Evenerari. He worked on the scheme to dupe the Goa'uld with us right from the start and had someone slip his signed note asking for help to an Earth SG team. That's how we snared Daniel into the scheme in the first place. We knew Daniel's helpers would recognise him and hopefully not put up resistance to leaving the planet. Seems it worked. We made sure his wife Karinne and their kids were looked after in his absence."
Jonas was mentally dancing for joy. 'Is this a scoop, or is this a scoop?' he kept thinking. He tried to calm himself for more probing questions about the new Quantum technology, but was interrupted by the call tone of a small videphone on the table beside Sam.
She looked up at Jonas and said in a serious voice, "Cut the recording, Jonas. Now."
"Camera off!" called Jonas, and it obeyed.
"Accept call." said Sam and the miniature screen came to life to reveal Ari's features.
His message was terse. "SJ Trading." was all he said.
"Thanks, Ari." said Sam. "Phone off." The screen went blank again.
"What was that?" enquired Jonas.
"Coded alert." replied Jack. "It means someone from Earth is sniffing around at the spaceport where our freighters are, asking about us. We registered the company as SJ Trading on Earth, but it's JS Trading everywhere else. They're going after us."
"Why?" asked Jonas.
"We're the enemy now, because of the trade regulations." said Sam quietly. "You might not want to be too close to us for the next few days, Jonas. Just in case."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
The ornate gates opened soundlessly as he approached and he passed through into the most exotic gardens he had ever seen. Other visitors had talked often about them, and how Sam had devoted so much of her soul into creating and maintaining her masterpiece. Even though he knew this, the water cascading gently down through the several levels of landscaped enclosures looked, sounded and smelled like nothing he'd ever experienced. Trees, bushes and flowers that he knew must have originated on many different worlds blended in a visual and olfactory treat, the perennially mild climate ensuring vibrant displays of purples, reds, yellows and blues at all times of the year. He spied an arbour at the far side of a pond, where a servant was laying the table for a meal.
As he strolled up the stone path towards the large polished wood front door to the porch, it swung open and Sam stood waiting to greet him. Jonas had grown used to seeing so many Mythorans habitually wearing robes and loose garments that it took him by surprise to see her in a chequered shirt and slacks that might be mistaken for jeans at a distance.
"You haven't changed much in five years, stranger!" smiled Sam as their outstretched hands came together. She pulled him towards her and kissed his cheek.
"Neither have you, Sam!" beamed Jonas. The last time they had met was on Kelowna, at the party celebrating Jonas' appointment as head of the national TV network. He turned and gestured at the gardens. "This is breathtaking, Sam. I'd heard about it but they didn't do justice."
"Why, thank you, Jonas." she purred. "It's been my dream for twenty years. It's only really looked like this for the last five. I kept adding to them while Jack was extending the house up the hill and landscaping the back. Come on through - he's looking forward to seeing you too." She led him through the atrium and up a flight of wide stone steps into a large lounge. A hand-woven rug in multiple shades of green covered the centre of the marble floor, surrounded by deep comfortable armchairs, and behind them an array of ornaments on wall shelves. Jonas could see other rooms leading off on three sides.
"How many rooms do you have, Sam? Are your sons still living at home?" asked Jonas.
"Twenty-three in all, not counting the guest lodge and my lab in the back garden." she replied. "Jacomb and Danil still have their own rooms for when they visit, but they're away most of the time these days. I suppose now that Jack's retired from being Guild President we'll have less visitors, but we'll never move. We built this place together and we'll both see out our days here. We love it. We've got smaller houses on other worlds, mostly to stay in when we're away on business, but this is *home*."
"No, er, grandchildren on the horizon?" asked Jonas tentatively.
"Not yet, but Jacomb's getting awfully interested in a red-haired girl - one of Karinne's nieces, actually. You never know." Sam explained.
"If we get to be grandparents before he's wed, he'll get my boot up his ass, octogenarian or not! And that's nothing compared to what he'd get from Ari." came a gruff voice from behind Jonas. He turned to meet Jack's huge smile and outstretched hand.
"Jack! You're looking well. Great speech last night, by the way - I saw the telecast. I bet Sam thought so too. Congratulations!" Jonas turned to see her smiling and blushing.
"Credit where it's due, that's all." said Jack. "I'd be nowhere without her."
"Works both ways, dearest." Sam chirped up. "Did you know he turned down an offer to become a Senator, Jonas?"
"Too many old farts in the job already." grunted Jack. "Anyhow, I kept getting this nightmare of turning into a ghost from the past - Kinsey! Don't get me wrong: it's a tough job. It just isn't me, is all."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"Where do you want to do your interview, Jonas?" asked Sam. "Shouldn't there be a cameraman or somebody to film us?"
"No, we've got these little holocams now." he replied, taking a small silver object from his pocket. "We can just set it up in the room anywhere. It not only photographs what it sees directly, but bounces signals off the walls and ceiling to build up a three-dimensional image of the room and its occupants in real-time. We'll cut and paste the images to give continuity for the broadcast tonight." He had Sam's attention but Jack was already in a state of obvious withdrawal.
"I see!" said Sam enigmatically. "And the computer-generated holo images are so realistic now that you can make it look as though we're being filmed from any angle throughout the chat! I could do with one of those for recording experiments in my lab."
"Amazing." said Jack dryly. "I'll have one installed in the guest bedroom for voyeurs."
They eventually settled on the sun lounge at the rear of the house for the recording, and after finishing their drinks, Jonas began with the introductions to camera and set the scene. He'd already warned them that some of the questions would be tough, but they'd faced worse both as traders and during Jack's time as Guild President, and were not concerned.
"How did you become Guild President? After all, JS Trading is one of the youngest companies in the Guild." asked Jonas.
"I was a compromise candidate." Jack explained. "There are so many distinguished families whose membership goes back generations that sometimes they act like rival groups of royalty contesting the throne. Five years ago the power blocs couldn't agree, so - enter the youngster who couldn't do much damage. I know for a fact that they didn't realise that Sam and I were coming with an agenda."
"What agenda was that?"
Jack looked towards Sam and she took up the challenge. "Well, throughout Guild history, there's always been the Goa'uld empire. Some traders fell foul of them and were eliminated from time to time, but most just co- existed and chose to ignore the excesses of subjugation and slavery. The Guild was essentially a society for advancement of its members and a means of keeping the rewards of trading in its own hands. It was more than that, of course, and there are many ethical and paternalistic companies out there. But the Guild had never taken any official stand on issues like the freedom of peoples and economic exploitation. With the war against the Goa'uld going well, we decided to try to use the situation to our advantage."
"How did you go about getting the changes in place?"
"We were sneaky, of course!" replied Jack. "We kind of let several trader families think that the ideas were coming from their rivals. You know, buy themselves a page in the history books for reasons other than profit. Quite a few actually wanted to move in that direction for good reasons as well as self-gratification, so within two years we had The Trading Charter being talked about across the Gated worlds, and implemented as Guild policy last year."
"Yes, you certainly lobbied Kelownan Universal about it for a long time." said Jonas. "What does it mean to you personally?"
"No more standing by or participating in trading activities that sustain slavery, economic or otherwise." said Sam, the light in her eyes revealing her inner passion for the subject. "Regulated trade through the Stargates is a powerful means of influencing those things."
"Try to stop people carrying on screwing up their worlds with technologies that shouldn't be there, or should be controlled better. Sure, we're probably nothing more than a pin-prick on the face of time, but it's a start." said Jack. "If you want to know how I think about that, I want to be able to go to a world - any world - and fish."
"Fish?" came Jonas' astonished response. Astonished for the camera's benefit, of course. As a seasoned journalist he was just loving the colour of the interview, and the way Jack and Sam's personalities were going to make the broadcast of this normally dry subject so much more watchable.
"Yup." Jack responded. "Can't do that if the water's polluted or the fish stocks are dying or exhausted. I can name a whole string of planets where that's already gone down." Jonas knew that both Earth and Kelowna were somewhere near the top of this list.
"Do you think the regulations will stick over time?"
"They've got to." replied Sam. "Most of the planets where the Stargates have been in use for generations are actually the ones going along with the new standards. They're glad to be rid of the Goa'uld and can see the benefits. The loudest opposition is coming from worlds like Earth, for example, to whom the Gates are still a novelty. They just see them as a means of expanding their influence or importing resources that are lacking on their own world. They don't want to acknowledge restrictions or rules that they don't have control over."
They talked for another twenty minutes on Guild activities, revealing both Jack and Sam's stated lack of interest in entering politics. But it was clear that both would be involved with the Guild, and thus not really outside politics, for the rest of their lives.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
After a break for more drinks - Jonas was trying to work out whether the local fruit juice was not just a little bit more alcoholic than he suspected - they resumed the recording.
"It's clear that isolating several Goa'uld home planets tipped the scales in the war against them." stated Jonas. "How did you think of it?" Jack motioned in Sam's direction, hoping to avoid the technospeak himself.
She shook her head and laughed. "Oh no, Jack! That was your idea originally. I just adapted the Asgard technology. You said 'We just need to run quicker than them, that's all.' It was when we were escaping from Huygens 4B with the kids." She turned back to face Jonas. "He couldn't sleep when we got home, and he sure as hell was stopping me from dozing off. So I got up and made us some tea, and as we sat up in bed drinking it, he just came out with 'Frozen Replicators!' He then said we should ask the Asgard for a time-dilation device and I took it up from there. Thor was amenable and I modified the design for a gradual switch-on instead of instantaneous effect and managed to miniaturise the design so it could be easily hidden."
"Yeah, like that was a straightforward job for your everyday time-dilation engineer!" Jack interjected. "Even the Asgard had never done that."
"No, Jack." she retorted. "The clever person is the one who starts with a blank sheet of paper. Adapting and developing stuff is relatively easy. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open."
"Humph!" snorted Jack. "This from the woman who started DU Industries and has patent rights on dozens of gizmos on sale throughout the universe. Including that holocam over there, I might add!"
The said camera caught Jonas' open-mouthed surprise so well. "Er, DU Industries? You own the company?"
"Yup. 'Doohickies Unlimited' it was originally." said Jack. "Sam's present to me on my sixty-fifth birthday. Our son Danil is now the chief executive and pretty much runs it by himself. I hate to say it, but he's even more of a geek than his mother."
Sam smiled - she was used to this. She continued "But to get back to the point, you already know how we concealed the devices and got the Goa'uld to take them back to their planets. But what we didn't fully appreciate at the time was that we had closed the doors, so to speak, but didn't have a key to open them again. It wasn't until Daniel Jackson got himself marooned that we had to think of a way of getting him off again. And that took us sixteen years in our time - fifteen to develop the means, and one to get him off, all the while he only aged fourteen hours."
"So how did you do it?"
"We had anticipated that the planets' Stargates would cease functioning, and that ships' computers would be in trouble crossing the time-gradient. Our first attempts to have a rescue craft gliding under manual control through the time barrier in the atmosphere came to nothing." explained Sam. "We watched from geostationary orbit in one of our freighters and as soon as the pilotless test-craft became submerged in the time-change boundary, it was already going slowly and just froze where it was from our viewpoint. It was clear that we might get it to work eventually, but our great great grandchildren would be the ones to greet Daniel. Then we took up another of Jack's ideas and went fishing instead." Her eyes sparkled mischievously as she said it.
"Fishing?"
"Well, kind of." said Jack. "I'd read somewhere about the idea of running a cable from geostationary orbit down to the surface of a planet, to form the basis of an elevator system into space. Sam, you explain, please."
"Possible in theory, but no-one's ever had the materials available to try. We needed a cable forty thousand kilometres long from stretch from orbit to the surface. We thought we could shoot a rescue cage straight down so that when it crossed the time-change barrier, it wouldn't take forever. But the only material known to be light yet strong enough to support its own weight and the stresses we would be putting on it was Fullerite."
Jonas nodded knowingly but asked, "Please would you explain that for the benefit of the viewers?"
"It's a form of carbon fibre with a special molecular pattern that gives it such strength. It was originally called Buckminster Fullerene, after its inventor. We knew about the properties, but it's still a pretty rare material and we needed enormous quantities. It does occur in nature, but almost exclusively in the corona of red dwarf stars. We firstly had to design a means of recovering it from there."
"So that was the end of that idea, then?"
"Oh no." said Sam. "We captured some Goa'uld ring transporter devices and adapted them to repeatedly dip into the stars' atmospheres from orbiting ships for rapid extraction of the elements. Gradually we captured enough. We converted a derelict space station into a factory for refining the material and spinning the fibre - it's still there today, in orbit around Barnard's Star, producing ninety-seven percent of the spun Fullerite in the known universe. Eventually we had enough, but it had taken over eight years before we started lowering the cable into the atmosphere. Fortunately by this time Daniel had managed to land his Tel'tak on the surface of the planet. We could watch it all from orbit, like freeze-frame actions, over the years we were working to get him off."
"So that was how you got them off the planet, then?"
"Unfortunately not." replied Jack. "Even though we'd developed a control system for our freighter to hold it absolutely still in orbit over the site of Daniel's crashed ship, we hadn't allowed for the effects of solar wind on the cable itself. The slightest movements in the cable above the time- change barrier caused the cable below the barrier to move at supersonic speeds in a kind of whiplash effect. The furthest we got was two kilometres below it before we lost that cable as well. They all broke apart near the barrier. That was when we decided that this was never going to work under these circumstances."
"So, what happened next?"
"We were stumped, quite frankly." said Sam. "Jack was actually contemplating leaving all of us to take the glider option to the surface by himself when our son Danil came up with the beginnings of what eventually turned out to be the solution."
"And that was?"
"The Quantum Traverse Effect." said Sam. "From the age of eight, he's been engrossed in the physics of atoms and molecules. He got the idea from seeing how electrons in orbit round the nucleus of an atom could jump from one orbital to another in zero time and back again. He thought that if he could engineer a field big enough to contain a small ship, then it should be possible to travel instantaneously from one place to another in 3D space- time. It took us seven years to build the ship that made the trip last year. I will admit though, that we splattered some of the prototypes across the universe before we got it right. Our other son Jacomb is the skilled pilot of the family, and was the only person to trust Danil's calculations enough to even want to test-fly it."
"Last year? I thought that they returned only ten or eleven days ago!" exclaimed Jonas.
"They did." said Jack. "But even though they descended from orbit to the surface instantly, once they got out of the ship it took them nearly an hour in their time to convince Daniel and his three companions to get on board. That's been about a year in universe time and again we were able to watch it all in slow-mo from orbit. Teal'c volunteered to go because if it came to it, he was going to subdue Daniel's protests and carry him on board. Jacomb piloted the craft, Danil was the flight engineer and our foreman Ari was there to convince Daniel's followers to come back too."
"Why Ari? I can see the reasons for the others to be there." said Jonas.
"Because in addition to being our right-hand man and the new CEO of JS Trading" said Jack, "he is also the High Priest of the Avorian brethren. You know, the religious group whose stolen icon caused all the fuss in the first place. His full name is Evenerari. He worked on the scheme to dupe the Goa'uld with us right from the start and had someone slip his signed note asking for help to an Earth SG team. That's how we snared Daniel into the scheme in the first place. We knew Daniel's helpers would recognise him and hopefully not put up resistance to leaving the planet. Seems it worked. We made sure his wife Karinne and their kids were looked after in his absence."
Jonas was mentally dancing for joy. 'Is this a scoop, or is this a scoop?' he kept thinking. He tried to calm himself for more probing questions about the new Quantum technology, but was interrupted by the call tone of a small videphone on the table beside Sam.
She looked up at Jonas and said in a serious voice, "Cut the recording, Jonas. Now."
"Camera off!" called Jonas, and it obeyed.
"Accept call." said Sam and the miniature screen came to life to reveal Ari's features.
His message was terse. "SJ Trading." was all he said.
"Thanks, Ari." said Sam. "Phone off." The screen went blank again.
"What was that?" enquired Jonas.
"Coded alert." replied Jack. "It means someone from Earth is sniffing around at the spaceport where our freighters are, asking about us. We registered the company as SJ Trading on Earth, but it's JS Trading everywhere else. They're going after us."
"Why?" asked Jonas.
"We're the enemy now, because of the trade regulations." said Sam quietly. "You might not want to be too close to us for the next few days, Jonas. Just in case."
XXXXXXXXXXXX