Jack was the last to arrive at the dig the next morning. He was carrying a duffle bag which was full of weapons, in case they needed them. He also had a zat hidden under his bulky jacket. Giles and his people were standing a little way back, watching what was going on with interest. He saw that Buffy had a duffle bag at her feet, similar to his own. The strange 'axe case' was lying on top of it. Jack came up beside her and lowered his bag onto the ground. "Whatcha got in the bag?"
Buffy turned and smiled up at him. "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours."
"Oh, I hardly think that would be a fair exchange," said Jack.
"You afraid you might come up short?"
"Hasn't happened yet."
"Jack, we're just about ready here," called Daniel.
Jack picked up his bag again. "Duty calls." He went over to where Daniel was with the archaeologists.
Dr. Hawley and his people had finished clearing the overburden of dirt off the stone slab. It was square, a little over a meter on a side. There were two holes in it that appeared to have had once contained some sort of iron fittings, but all that remained of them now was some reddish rust stains. On the opposite edge of the slab from the holes was what appeared to be a hinge, carved from the stone. The archaeologists were all amazed by the quality of the stonework. The slab and the hinge seemed to have been crafted from a single piece of granite.
Dr. Hawley probed through one of the holes with a rod. "The slab seems to be about ten centimetres thick." He looked around at the rest of it. "It must weigh half a tonne." He probed deeper. The probe went in about another thirty centimetres before it hit something that sounded like rock when he tapped against it.
"Not much room down there," said Jack.
"This could be the cover for a stairway," said Daniel. "If it went down that way…" He pointed north, toward the hinge side of the slab. "…that might just be the top step. Here, let's try this." He produced a small television camera mounted on the end of an articulated rod, along with a small halogen light. The combination was barely small enough to fit through the hole.
Daniel gave the camera to Jerry Morrison, the most junior member of the archaeological team. He snaked the camera through the hole. A cable ran from it back to the laptop computer that was set up on a table. Everyone gathered around; Hawley and the other archaeologists immediately behind Daniel, and the rest of SG-1 behind them. Giles and the others were relegated to the back row, trying to peer around people's shoulders.
Daniel directed Jerry in how to aim the camera as he watched the display on the laptop screen. As the camera turned a stairway came into view, leading exactly the direction Daniel had predicted. It went down until it faded into the darkness. Daniel adjusted the camera's sensitivity, and more of the stairway came into view, until the bottom of it could be seen. It seemed to lead into a corridor that led away to the north, about ten meters down.
"Is that water seepage?" Dr. Hawley pointed to some stains on the wall, and the steps.
"Looks like," said Daniel. "The seal from the slab isn't water tight."
"Does anything show up on the IR?" asked Jack.
Daniel switched the camera over to its infrared mode, and the picture displayed on his screen became black and white. It didn't really show anything that they hadn't seen in visible light images. "Nope."
"The walls look like this passage was cut right into the bedrock," said Dr. Hawley. "You can see some of the veining in the rocks." He pointed to the screen. "Here, zoom in on that. It might be some sort of writing."
"Jerry, turn the camera twenty degrees to the left, and tilt down five degrees," said Daniel. "Then hold it steady." He adjusted the zoom on the camera to focus it on the place Dr. Hawley had pointed out. Delicate lines ran over the rock.
Daniel looked at them carefully. "It doesn't look like any form of writing that I'm familiar with, and I'm not seeing anything that looks like any sort of regular pattern. It looks more like some sort of natural phenomenon."
He had Jerry pan the camera back and forth slowly, recording everything in its range at maximum zoom, in both visible and infrared light, before he pulled it out again. "I think we've seen everything we're going to see with the camera," said Daniel. "It's time to open it up."
"Are you sure that's wise?" asked Giles. "No need to rush this, there's still lots to excavate above ground, before we go poking under it. Who knows what exposure to the outside air might do to any artefacts that are down there?"
"We don't have a lot of time here," said Jack. "And it's not like we have to worry about introducing moisture. Looks like it's plenty damp down there already."
The other archaeologists quickly agreed with Jack and Daniel, and work started to lift the slab. Buffy moved over beside Giles as she watched them. "They seem awfully eager to see what's down there," she said quietly.
"Yes," said Giles, "and I'm afraid its going to get them killed."
"If I'm right about what Jack's got in his bag, they may think they're ready for whatever they're going to find…maybe they know what's down there."
"Sometimes it's best to let buried demons lie," said Giles.
"But things that have been buried have a nasty habit of getting dug up at the worst possible times," said Buffy. "Better to kill it now, before it comes up and bites us in the ass when we aren't expecting it."
A large tripod had been set up over the slab, supporting a block and tackle connected to a rope that had been threaded through the holes. When everything was ready the three junior archaeologists took their positions on the rope and started to pull, taking up the slack in the block and tackle. When the rope went taught, they started to pull harder. Doctors Jackson and Hawley continued to monitor the video image from the camera under the slab while Jack and Murray stood by watching the slab itself. Murray was holding his staff, and Jack had his hand inside his jacket. Buffy knew that he had something concealed under it, and it was a bit big to be handgun. Sam was standing by too, with Jack's bag at her feet. The three of them were positioned so they could set up an excellent crossfire on anything trying to come out from under the slab, without having any of the people in their lines of fire.
The men pulled harder, and the tripod creaked as the load on it increased. The rope through the holes in the slab slipped a bit as the tension increased, but the slab didn't budge. Buffy glanced at Giles and Xander. "Why don't you give them a hand?"
Xander started to clap. "Bravo! Well done!" which earned him annoyed looks from just about everyone.
"Xander!" Buffy whacked his shoulder.
"Ow! Careful!" He rubbed his shoulder where she'd hit him.
"Serves you right." Buffy gave him a push. "Go! Help pull!"
"Yes Buffy, but you've wounded me." Xander wandered over to the men on the rope, still rubbing his shoulder. Giles followed him.
Even with five of them on the rope, the slab refused to budge. "Could it be locked somehow?" asked Dr. Hawley.
"I don't think so," said Daniel. "I think it's just stuck. Minerals deposited in the joints by seepage acting like glue."
"So give it a good whack!" said Buffy.
"What?"
"Hit it Danny!" said Jack.
"With what?"
Buffy picked up the Scythe case. "Here, let me." She walked over to the slab and started 'tapping' with the handle end of it around the crack at the edges of the slab. Her 'taps' were quite a bit harder than they appeared to be, but she knew that it would take a lot more than what she was doing to break the magically reinforced case. When she was done she backed away again, out of everyone's line of fire, and nodded to the men on the rope. "Try it now."
They strained on the rope again. At first it didn't look like it was going to work this time either, but then there was a sudden sound like rock breaking, and the slab sprang open a couple of inches. They pulled some more and the slab kept moving, with the grinding noise of rock sliding on rock.
They kept pulling until the slab was opened to a forty-five degree angle. Dr Hawley moved forward with a couple of poles that had been made for the purpose, and placed them at the corners of the hole, and the slab was lowered down onto them, to keep it propped open. As an extra safety measure the rope was knotted at the top of the tripod to keep the slab from falling back if the poles were knocked away.
Buffy saw Carter bend down and reach into the bag at her feet. She came back up with four sets of night-vision goggles, three of which she handed out to Jack, Murray, and Daniel before slipping the fourth onto her head.
"Okay folks," said Jack. "We'll go down and have the first look around. Check it out for any rockfalls, and such, make sure it's safe."
"I'd like to come too," said Buffy.
"Sorry." Jack pointed at his head. "Don't have a set for you."
"But—"
"No buts!" said Jack. "Besides, this is officially our dig, we have the permits, you don't, and our insurance doesn't cover accidents happening to non-members of our team, the university would have my hide if I let anything happened to you." He looked around at the others. "Let's go." He looked back at Hawley. "We'll keep in touch by radio, let you know if we find anything interesting."
Buffy stood and fumed as she watched Jack and his people disappear into the hole. She wanted to go after them, it wasn't like Hawley could stop her, but she knew he'd just radio down to Jack if she did, and then she'd either have to fight him and his people, or leave again, so she stood and waited, and fumed while she listened to the voices of Jack, Daniel and Sam coming over the radio as they made their way into the tunnel. She really hated waiting.
Daniel stopped to take a closer look at the marks on the wall that Dr. Hawley had originally thought might be some sort of writing. The delicate tracing of lines seemed to sit on top of the rock, not really a part of it. He reached out and touched it with his finger tips, and then pulled them away quickly, some of the lines coming with them. "It seems to be some sort of spider webbing, or something like that."
"Ugh!" said Jack. "I hate spiders."
They moved farther down the stairs, toward the tunnel at the bottom. They flipped down their night-vision goggles, and moved into the darkness.
The tunnel broadened at the foot of the stairs, about two and a half meters wide, and a similar height. As soon as they were far enough away from the stairs that they couldn't be seen Sam pulled a couple of P90s out of her bag, one for her, and one for Daniel. Jack pulled the zat that he had been concealing under his jacket out into the open.
"Okay, everyone keep your eyes open! Don't want to be surprised by any…falling rocks." Jack really hated that they couldn't talk openly with the civilians listening in. "Murray and I will take point."
They moved slowly down the tunnel. It seemed to be completely featureless stone with a slight downward slant. Daniel stopped every once in a while to take a closer look at something. "You were right, Dr. Hawley," he said into his radio. "This tunnel seems to have been carved right out of the rock. An incredible feat for someone working with ancient technology." The unspoken message for the others was that it was probably done with some fairly advanced technology.
They moved farther down the tunnel. The walls stayed just as featureless. A few variations in the grain of the rock, a couple of cracks that water was seeping through, but no signs of any markings that might be writing.
"If this goes much farther, we're going to run out of room," said Jack.
"I estimate another one hundred meters before we reach the cliff face, O'Neill," said Teal'c. "There appears to be something up ahead."
The image in their goggles was brightening, but Jack knew that it wasn't from visible light. Their night-vision gear was sensitive to infrared too, with the heat image displayed in red on top of the green image from the magnified light. Something up ahead was warmer than the tunnel.
The tunnel opened up into a large underground chamber. Daniel described it over the radio link for the others outside. "We're in a circular chamber, maybe thirty meters in diameter. The roof is a dome, about ten meters high in the center. There seems to be a pile of round boulders in the center of it. Thousands of them, mostly about fifteen centimetres in diameter. They're glowing with a faint heat. The ones on the outer rim are barely above the background temperature, but the ones near the center are several degrees warmer."
They slowly fanned out as they entered the chamber, Jack and Teal'c moving to the sides, while Sam and Daniel moved toward the pile of boulders.
Daniel knelt down by the first boulder he came to. He reached out with his hand to pick it up.
The boulder twitched as soon as he touched it, and Daniel realized his mistake. It wasn't a boulder. Something that looked like a giant spider unfolded itself, and scuttled back away from him on its eight legs. It paused for a second while Daniel stayed frozen in place, too startled to move. It leapt at his face.
