"Has it ever occurred to you, Carter, that not every phenomena needs to have a scientific explanation? Why does everything have to be theoretically thought out and when have you ever stopped 'thinking'?"

Carter, who had just been cut off by Jack's comment, raised a brow and turned to face her CO.

"I was going to suggest a way out sir." She said carefully, keeping any smile or smart-ass look from her face at all costs.

There was a pause in their little prison while Jack sat looking an awful lot like a man who's bluff had just been called.

Finally he muttered, "Oh," and turned back to the small fire he had been attempting to build.

Sam smiled slightly in triumph and looked back to the haggard, haphazard foot and hand holds she had been considering before. She was tall enough to reach the first hand hold and from this perspective the rest looked relatively easy. The marks on the insides of the holes, that she could see, could have been the result of a cutting tool, a knife or chisel. As though someone else had found themselves in this mess and come up with the same solution of climbing out.

High above their heads she could see the pink sky through a three-foot wide crevice that ran the length of the valley. The rest of the horizon was obscured by solid rock that curved outward and downward to form what could be called a hall of some sort. The very hall they were trying to escape.

She could climb it. She was certain of that despite the numerous parts of her body crying out for attention. But what about Jack?

Carter looked over to her CO, his own attention raptly spent on the stubborn leaves, twigs and scraps he was throwing into a pile. He hadn't left that spot, that she knew of, since he had been freed from the weight of the...

She paused in her thoughts, noticing for the first time that the huge log Jack had been under was gone. No trace, as if it had never been there in the first place. She stepped quickly to the spot where she could have sworn that it was. Nothing. No Asguard either.

"Sir..." she started, but by that time Jack had not only caught on to what she had figured out but apparently already had something of an answer.

"It's missing."

"I know, Carter."

"Well, it couldn't have just..."

"I was under the opinion that the little gray dudes paid a visit last night but..."

"Why would we still be here if they had been able to transport the dead out of here." Carter finished for him. The calm morning, around which they had centered their focus purely on patching up and getting communication to the outside was fast changing into a desperate need to get out.

Carter recalled the slimy...the substance she had encountered when she first awoke and made a swipe at her cheek. Whatever it was had dried and fallen off as her cheek was free from anything foreign. She rubbed the hand across the back of her neck closing her eyes.

She did not like this place anymore. She hadn't 'gotten the creeps' since she was three but...this place definitely spooked her. The purple plants, disappearing dead Asguard, the pink sky, the tiny view of a deep purple lake through the only 'window' in the valley. The hole through which Colonel O'Neill must have been throwing the rocks so many hours earlier.

Her mind was wandering she realized and she shook her head. She was tired, that was it. They both had to be. Just concentrate.

Concentrate on finding a way out. On helping the Colonel. The Colonel who was still working on making a fire. A warm fire. A nice warm comforting fire. She smiled. Watching the Colonel who hunched awkwardly over the tiny gathering of materials trying to make a nice, comfortable fire.

She remembered a similar figure, hunched over a fire. The only fire she remembered him making. The only child hood memory even remotely pleasant that she remembered involving him.

The three of them together.

Alone in the wilderness.

The trip, she later came to the conclusion, was merely so he wouldn't feel so guilty about leaving them all the time. Or at least that was how the suggestion had come about.

She could remember her mother, constantly promising that he would come home. He would make it because he had promised! He would come home and take her and her brother on that forever-planned camping trip.

He had promised.

And for once . . . he came through.

He had walked in that door, five minutes after Sam had trudged in from the back for a glass of milk. The little girl, the little blonde-haired, blue- eyed angel had stood still for such a long time. Afraid that if she blinked he would disappear. But when she did finally blink he was still there. Standing in his dress blues, his cap folded neatly in his hand staring right back at his baby girl. She cried his name in sheer happiness and ran into his arms, buried her head in his shoulder and held on for dear life.

Oh how much she loved her Daddy. And how happy she had been in that moment. He was home, he was there, she could see and feel and kiss and hug her Daddy to her heart's content and she took every advantage she could of that. She doubted any other little girl could love and miss her Daddy as much as she did.

And Jacob had held on as well, tears welling in his eyes. He hadn't seen his little girl in nearly seven months. She had grown so much. But she was still just the right size. From the way she was clinging to him she couldn't hate him. She wasn't about to throw insults or hurl names she shouldn't even know at him. Not like her brother. No he still had hope in her.

Then they had gone camping. Fishing, and hunting for food, Sam had had the time of her life. With her Daddy and her brother at her side she could and did face almost anything.

Sam smiled. That had been a wonderful time. She wouldn't trade a thing in the world for that memory. She only wished she could have had more of them. Like most normal children. Why couldn't she have had a Daddy that came home from work everyday instead of every millennium.

She sighed sadly. It was simply not meant to be.

"Carter?"

It was something about the cosmos that simply and purely decided that she was not to be that lucky. She was not to be given a father that would hold a simple job, in a simple office and live a simple home life.

"Major!"

There was just no way in hell that she was going to get all those things she wanted. Not her childhood dreams, oh and certainly not her adult dreams. There was just no way. It was simply not meant to be.

"SAM!"

Blue eyes snapped open, surprised clarity flashing in the irises before they closed again, rolling into the back of her head. The plant material around her ankles and hands and sliming over one half of her face was repulsive. Pulsing, seething and leaving a trail of some sort of green...mucus everywhere it went.

Jack was panicking, and why the hell shouldn't he be. After all the goddamn plants were attacking!

He chopped and sliced as carefully as he could until the Major was free, dragging her back to the plant-less rocky area where he had finally managed to start the fire.

His legs were a mess. Mess enough to make dragging Sam only about ten or fifteen feet take an hour. Almost. He felt like an eighty-year old by the time he was seated, Sam safely tucked into a sleeping bag and close by. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

Nope.