The plants kept to themselves for most of the day. Jack never saw any of them move again.
And he was happy about that. He was not happy about Carter remaining unconscious.
He had made his fire finally.
Found a way to move about a little more easily and had collected as much fire wood as possible.
He had wrapped up his legs and then left them alone. He wasn't a doctor and didn't care to prove himself either.
Keeping a close eye on the vegetation he had scoped out the wall Carter had been inspecting before. Yes there were handholds, and a way out but he would never make it up.
His next option was the hole in the side of the mountain that he had been sending pebbles through. It was big enough around to slide through, the problem was the drop to the water, and the jagged rocks that were far too close for comfort at the bottom.
Sitting down again, his legs throbbing, he stared through the hole.
Tossing a few stones into the water he considered the problem.
They had plenty of day light.
Their little cave like thing was warming up.
They had food, for a bit. At the thought of food he glanced back to the packs. Then to Carter, making certain she wasn't attracting the plants again.
Water?
He looked to the water below them and it hit him that he might find a way to get down there without dying.
Crawling over to the packs he searched through his until he found the knife, then crawled closer to the flora he had been worried about before.
What better way to get out of this than to kill two birds with one stone?
Slicing the vine like root from the base of one plant he pulled on it.
Avoiding getting plant guts on his hands but yanking the length of it from the ground, uprooting it easily until he hit the resistance of a another base plant.
Fun.
Grinding his teeth together, painfully, he moved to the next base plant and freed it from the vine like root. Then again he was pulling and yanking the root from the ground.
The root he had exposed seemed firm enough to handle just about any kind of tension and the longer it was in the open air the more the fleshy surface of the vine hardened.
All the better.
Almost two hours later he was sitting beside Carter once again.
His legs were bleeding again. What had been broken bones and cuts were now becoming open sores.
But he was happily in possession of almost fifty feet of coiled rope, not much else mattered. With his back against the wall and far beyond exhausted he waited.
For what?
Well . . . for Carter to wake up.
Working alone was never fun.
And he was certain, if nothing weird and alien was wrong with her, that she would be more help to the situation than he was being.
He glanced around the prison once more. At the crude orangish rock, the strange plants that had been all torn up by his latest exercise.
The sun streaming steadily through the crag in the rock.
It was...peaceful.
He could hear the waves sliding up gently against the rocks below him and there were no sounds of birds or other animals.
It was just quiet.
And warm and peaceful.
Like Maui.
He jerked his eyes open. Maui?
Was he dreaming of Maui?
On an alien planet!
With his 2IC unconscious, no help for a billion, gazillion miles and the plants themselves as a predator.
And he was dreaming of Maui.
He jerked his head around and checked on Carter, then the sun.
The light was dimmer.
He looked to his watch and found he had indeed been dreaming, sleeping. For almost two hours. Far too long.
He dropped the rope, which he found to be still in his arms, and turned to Carter. The canteen beside him was open and he poured a tiny amount of water into his palm, patting it against her face.
No more sleeping. They had to move.
Calling her name and checking for any sign of waking up, he kept it up until she started to groan and open her eyes. Much to his relief.
"Colonel?"
"Carter. You've been out for a while."
"I have?"
"Uh . . yah."
Carter blinked, her eyes groggily taking in her surroundings. "It can't have been that long..." she drifted off, her eyes closing.
"CARTER!"
Her eyes flew open again and she gasped a bit. "Sorry, sir."
"Sit up, come on. Move around, shake it out of your system." Jack would have pulled her to her feet at that moment, if he had been capable of using his own.
Thankfully Carter did as she was ordered and stood, albeit drunkenly.
She was immediately holding her head between two pale hands and wondering what she had been drinking.
And for how long.
And most importantly why.
The answers would have to come later as two very familiar voices suddenly filtered down to the them.
Both of them realized who it was, and what may well happen to them if they got any closer.
"Daniel! Teal'c! Get the hell back!"
"Get out of here! Get off the mountain!"