Author's note: my sincere apologies for keeping lots of people waiting for this chapter. To everyone who wrote, the usual excuses - pressures of work and family, plus a new one - computer died, and was replaced.

Perhaps you'd like to go back a chapter or two and pick up the threads again. I'm sorry if it's spoiled things for you. Ted

Chapter 14 – Tempus Fugit

In the blackness of interstellar space, darker objects are invisible until you are almost upon them, unless they happen to be brilliantly lit. While Jack could see the flashing navigation beacons of the Bio-pod from the full distance he had traversed, the way his nerves tingled when he realised that there were more flashing lights than there should be as he made his way 'home' was something he would never forget.

He turned on the mini-pod's spotlight and directed it at the Bio-pod from a distance of three and a half kilometres, but nothing could be discerned. But there! A return flash of light from somewhere just beyond the target. He waited to see if further signals – for that was uppermost in his mind – would be sent, but after half a minute, there had been no response. On a whim, he moved the spotlight slightly and was rewarded with another flash of light.

'It's a reflection!' he thought, and released the breath he had been holding. 'But why? From what?'

He only began to make out the dim shape of the adjacent alien craft when it became faintly visible from around one kilometre away. And alien to human eyes it certainly was. It refused to clearly discern itself to the naked eye, and it was not until he was braking to a halt as he neared it that he realised that all the surfaces were mirror-like and highly glossy, clearly reflecting the faint light of distant galaxies as well as his own artificial illuminations. He switched on all the mini-pod's spotlights and observed three interconnecting spheres with a cylindrical form held mid-point between them, all without discernable colour.

He estimated that overall it was around the same size as his own makeshift home, but it was difficult to tell from the way all surfaces curved out of sight from his viewpoint. It had matched the Bio-pod's trajectory exactly and was stationary some five hundred metres distant. He loosened the data collector from the mini-pod's claws, making sure that it would not drift away in the event of him still needing it later – how cautious he had become these last weeks! Slowly he manoeuvred the mini-pod to its usual position near the Bio-pod air-lock and set about his now routine transfer procedure.

His strategy was driven by pure instinct now, spiced with a heavy dose of fatalism: he had no weapons, no chance of survival outside either craft, and no knowledge of the intruder. His only current option was to re-enter the Bio-pod's airlock to confront or communicate with whomever or whatever had taken an interest, and he took it without hesitation.

As the lights in the panel inside the cramped chamber indicated that air pressure was up to normal, he removed his helmet and hesitated only slightly before activating the inner door. When he froze.

You remember how it was when you were small and young and protected from the real world by doting parents? When you wanted something badly, you wanted it really badly; such that little else mattered and you sometimes would shout and scream until someone – anyone – would deliver that item or just give you their attention to pacify you. Then slowly, you grew up and came to know that just wanting something was rarely followed by fulfilment, and so, at least in Jack's case, one of his early lessons in self-discipline had been to harden himself against disappointment, almost to the point of permanent self-denial of even the possibility of personal satisfaction.

Across the room, Samantha Carter floated just as he did in zero-gravity. She was dressed just like him too, in a space suit minus her helmet. In her gloveless hand she clutched the clipboard to which Jack's journal was attached, but she wasn't taking her eyes away from his own stupefied gaze.

"Carter?" was all he could think to say as the silent seconds stretched out. "Is that really you?"

"Believe it, Jack." she said softly, her own voice not behaving as she would wish.

He stared back, not knowing what to say, nor how to control his every screaming nerve ending as what felt like an electric current galvanised his senses.

"Did everyone on the Prometheus...." he asked hesitantly, but stopped and sighed with relief when she nodded a positive affirmation.

She was the one to break the moment. She gestured slightly towards him with the clipboard. "Why did you never tell me?" she continued in a quiet voice. "Not once in ten years. Did you think I would be offended?"

"Tell you what?" was, he thought, a feeble response, but in truth he couldn't think of a better, and gave it anyway.

"Jack," she sighed, "you've just spent two months writing down your death-bed observations in expectation that no-one would see them for thousands of years. There are no lies or half-truths here, but not so much of your feelings about life either, except where it matters most. And if you want the truth from me – which you deserve – then I have to tell you that you are quite wrong in what you've written. I have never been quite so moved by anything in my life."

At his puzzled expression, she flipped through a few sheets of paper and picked one out, sliding it from the clip and offering to him. He pushed gently against the wall with his foot and floated over to her outstretched hand, simultaneously removing his gloves by unlocking the wrist joints. She watched them glide slowly away from him as he approached, and then locked her eyes onto his face.

Jack put out an arm to slow himself on the edge of the console and came to a stop in front of her. He took the sheet and immediately saw the item in question:

'This may be final log entry as tomorrow's risk factor is considerable. If so, I will state the following: I regret only three things in my life. First and foremost, the death of my son Charlie, for which I hold myself accountable. Second and third are the losses of respect from the two women in my lifetime whom I loved: my wife Sara, and Samantha Carter. They both found happiness with better men.'

"What are you saying?" he breathed almost silently. "There's nothing there I would retract on my 'death-bed', as you put it."

His open expression conveyed to Sam the realisation that he really believed these statements. This wasn't the military man she had known who had lived by the rules of personal boundaries and kept secrets as a way of life. His soul was on show, tempered perhaps by the solitude of facing certain death alone, but there was a look about him – 'The Far Look' – she had once heard it called, as if the greater picture of life's meanings were visible and self-evident. She took a deep breath and delivered the words that she hoped would make him understand how far she was trying to reach out to him.

"I love you, Jack. I have come a long way to learn just how much, and you know how many wrong turnings I've taken. My life is truly empty without you, and whatever happens from hereon in, I want you to understand that I'm offering you all the support and love that I can give you. For all the time we have." Her voice didn't quite last out until the end of the sentence, but he got its meaning. Sam's eyes had started to glisten, and he slowly extended his fingertips to gently brush her cheek, all the time staring at her in unblinking amazement. She leaned into his touch, or at least tried to, but floated away instead. They both smiled as he quickly reached out with his other hand and grabbed her arm.

"So you'll stay for tea then?" he enquired politely. She inevitably broke into a huge grin herself and they embraced. Well, as much as one can in space suits. To his mind, later confirmed on the cabin video camera recording before he disconnected it permanently, it resembled two Michelin men attempting to start a wrestling match.

"I might." She laughed back at him. "It depends on the Dish of the Day. It wouldn't involve Megaburgers, by any chance, would it?" she added, nodding in the direction of his recorded thoughts on the floating clipboard.

"Might do." He grunted.

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"So, the Asgard finally came through and leant you this..... Thing." said Jack, gesturing through the viewport as they sat at the 'table' that secured them in place while they ate. Sam, surprisingly, had completely finished her portion of 'Raspberry Burger Waffle Supreme', having agreed with him that did indeed have 'hidden depths'. "What is it? Gets us back to Kansas in no time at all, I suppose."

Sam's expression became serious. He could tell instantly that he was probably not going to be ecstatic about her explanations, even though they had to be better than his previous perspectives. Some hope!

"It's not what you might think." she started. "It might get us back, but the laws of physics that govern us also apply to the other races, including the Asgard. Their power plants will go critical at high sub-light speeds just like ours did."

"Then why aren't we watching it go supernova?" asked Jack, his frown knitting his eyebrows together.

"I was coming to that." she continued. "In short, their hyped-up generator is emitting a huge force-field all the time. That load stabilises the nuclear reaction. At present the field is directed away from here, but I can surround both the 'Tachyon' and this pod at any time. We won't need the ice nose cone any more to protect against impact damage."

"And?" he added, still expecting the other shoe to fall.

"And it still would require enormous gravity-field switching inside wormholes to try to slow down again. It was a miracle that the Prometheus made it back, and the chances for this craft are no higher, to be frank. Plus, you've been conditioned to living in zero-gravity for a long time and your weakened body would find it difficult to resist the loads put upon it. The journey could quite easily rupture every organ." She paused and waited until she saw his understanding. "I won't watch you die like that, Jack."

"So, how do we....?" he intimated.

"Get back?" she added. "Quite simply, we don't. We have only one realistic chance of survival." His face was blank as she came to the crunch. "We jump forward to almost the speed of light and keep the load on the generator. The ship was designed to withstand that."

"And?" he said again.

"Asymmetric ageing will give the Asgard time to study the problem and develop a means to rescue us" said Sam. "They have no assured way right now and will need perhaps many hundreds of years to work it out and develop the technology and materials to do it."

"But we'll be dead ourselves by then! That's just the kind of craziness that....." he exclaimed.

"Not necessarily. At just below the speed of light, what will seem like months to us will mean the passage of maybe twenty to thirty thousand years back on Earth or the Asgard home world. All we have to do is wait for them."

The normally silent man was even quieter than usual. Sam reached into a pocket in her flight suit and produced a mini-disc. "I knew you would find it hard to believe, so I got Thor to copy the recording of my first meeting with him after the Prometheus got back. She handed it over and he reached across to the nearby bank of instruments and inserted it.

As she watched him watching it, she remembered the details only too clearly.

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"Where is O'Neill?" had been Thor's blunt question when Sam found herself standing in front of the Supreme Commander amidst the now-familiar greyness of his ship's control deck.

"About time!" Sam had countered, still fired by the determination that she had gained after her interview with Celia Chen. "I've been trying to contact you for....."

"Where is O'Neill?" The repeated words had brought her sharply to a halt. "We cannot ascertain his location on Earth. It is vital that we do so."

"He's not here." She had stated simply. "We know where he is approximately, but we are having difficulties getting to him. There is a possibility that his life-support will not last long enough for us to rescue him, so we have been calling for you."

Thor had seemed to consider her statement with alarm, as far as she could tell, but his limpid gaze gave little away. "Explain, please, Colonel Carter."

Sam looked around for a seat, but in the absence of anything resembling an Earth-like example, chose to sit on the edge of a dais around an instrument console and started her explanations. The Asgard had listened intently, and to her surprise came to sit beside her after she had described the events that led to Jack being marooned in the Bio-Pod while the Prometheus began its chaotic wormhole jumping back to eventual safety.

The two had sat in silence for a while before he had uttered the phrase that shocked her to the core.

"He is beyond our reach. We have no way of reaching such high sub-light speeds without encountering the same problems that you did. In fact, the situation is worse because we utilise a much-upgraded form of naquadria to power our ships. It would reach its critical mass before your rather crude form did. Have you not observed that all ships leaving wormholes travel at low sub-light speeds? If you had asked us before embarking on this foolish expedition, we would have told you."

"But we are preparing the Prometheus for just such a rescue attempt." Sam had replied. "We worked out that keeping an enormous load, such as a very powerful force-field, running all the time would drain power from the naquadria at such a rate that the outflow of energy even when it was nearing its critical mass would stop the generator from overloading."

Now the Asgard had definitely allowed a surprised look to steal across his impassive features. "We did not consider that." he had admitted.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"So we've both effectively already said goodbye to everyone we've ever known on Earth." said Jack after he had reflected on the disc's contents.

"Not quite." replied Sam. "We can send one more sub-space message home before we jump to near light speed. Then they will quite literally cease to exist in our own space-time."

"Sam, let me ask you this one time." said Jack, reaching across to hold her hand gently. "As I understand it, going back by slowing down is dangerous but not impossible for you, but would probably do for me, right?"

She nodded in reply.

"Then I want you to take the chance if that's what you really want to do, deep down." he said earnestly. "You owe me nothing: you have the chance of a 'normal' life. If we do the other thing, we'll be emerging like a pair of Neanderthals into another world, if there is one. Or we might die together here on board waiting for Thor's umpteenth cloned body to greet us."

"And what would you do if the situation were reversed?" she countered. And after his momentary silence, she said, "Let's record the message, Jack. Together."

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