"Night Jack," she mumbled against his back as they settled down.

"Night," he sent back softly.

Refreshed and ready to go, they ate breakfast in the pre-dawn dark and were trekking back to their basecamp as the first rays of sunlight began streaming through the trees.

Another 7 hours put them back in camp around noon.

- - -

- - -

Ch 22: BE THE FISH

- - -

After checking their supplies and alarm systems and a quick trip to the 'Gate to look for any evidence of visitors, they finished unpacking and settled around the camp with small tasks and chores.

"Sam, what say we take the next two days off?" he proposed.

"Off?" she queried back while looking up from her work on a little repair of the small drainage ditch they'd dug around their campsite. It hadn't rained yet, but they didn't want to get flooded when it did.

"Yeah, off, as in 'no work'... no hikes, no big projects around camp... 'off' like a weekend," and at her raised eyebrows he hastened to continue, "We've worked on something every day we've been here. And we're burning out. We're working hard and not replacing all of the calories that we're burning... So I propose a couple of days of doing nothing and going nowhere. Letting our bodies recharge and repair a bit."

She studied him quietly. Rarely in her life had she ever taken two days in a row and just... sat around... When she did take time off, she went somewhere... and did something... rode her motorcycle, went hiking... visited friends... something... but she didn't just sit around. And she didn't think he could either.

"Do you want to go to the lake?" she asked.

"Nope. That's a day's walk away. Too far for this no-work weekend," he stated definitively.

She studied him for a few more moments. Weighing the options and possibilities. "I can work on the laptops?"

He considered it. He'd rather she didn't, but he also didn't have much else to amuse her with for two entire days. At least she wouldn't be very physically active and it would give her body a rest. He wasn't sure how to rest her mind... if that was even possible! So, he nodded, "That's OK, just not for sixteen hours straight," he qualified.

"OK then," she agreed and gave him that small shrug and smile again before turning back to her task.

- - - - - -

That night, they'd returned to their previous sleeping arrangements in their tent. The insulating warmth of the tent and the extra sleeping bags didn't justify the bivouac sleeping arrangements in basecamp. They both however, missed the comforting presence of the other snuggled up in the same bag, but neither of them voiced this out loud.

- - - - - - -

Their two weekend days passed slowly but their bodies needed the rest. Sam predictably spent the entire first morning working non-stop on her computer. Whereupon, after lunch, Jack took the laptop away and demanded that she find something else to do. To his surprise, she didn't argue much and popped the laptop batteries into the solar recharger and then accompanied him down to the river to try a little fishing.

He could see the fish, but hadn't caught one yet. The stores of supplies had included some hooks and some line. For a pole, he'd stripped the leaves from a young branch that had a little bend to it while still being fairly sturdy.

He'd tried a variety of native bugs and worm-like slimy things as bait. So far, however, he hadn't enticed even a nibble of curiosity from the fish in this river.

An hour or so passed as they sat by the peaceful stream. Watching the water sluice by with the rippling reflections of the light and shadows streaming through the trees... the only sounds coming from the rustling of the leaves in the wind, the occasional small critter scampering across the forest litter, and Jack's sporadic muttering and cursing as he tried each new type of bait that he could come up with.

Tossing his newly baited hook back into the water, he turned to make a comment to Sam, only to realize that she was sound asleep. Propped up against a log, she'd drifted off. He smiled gently at her sun-dappled figure relaxed here on this river bank. He wondered how many times in her life she'd been in a position where she could just relax, and take a nap? And so-called power-naps with her face on her keyboard didn't count!

- - - - - - -

"Jack! I got one!"

"Wha-a-?" he snapped awake... from where he'd dozed off.

"I got one!" She repeated excitedly and he focused his eyes to see her dangling a slimy, dripping-wet fish in front of his face. He instinctively jerked his head back before it touched him.

"Ooops, sorry," she pulled it back.

He looked at the fish more closely. It was roughly 6-7 inches long with iridescent green scales. With a forked tail-fin and eyes on either side of its head, the native fish looked just like a fish from Earth. If the comparison continued, he estimated that a fish that size could yield at least several ounces of meat.

Looking up at her, he caught the still-excited look of the proud fisherman on her face. "Very nice," he allowed, but then just had to qualify it with, "But you do realize that actually catching a fish thoroughly spoils the Zen of Fishing..."

She just rolled her eyes at him and then looked back at her prize with a puzzled expression, "Um, I've never cleaned a fish before, have you?" He narrowed his eyes at her too-innocent tones. Looking back over at him, she smiled, although he could swear it was more of a small smirk, "Because if catching fish spoils the Zen, I suppose that you'd not get to the cleaning part very often?" and the smile was wider now.

"Very funny, ver-r-ry funny," he returned.

"So, you do know how to clean a fish in order to eat it?" she clarified.

"Yes Sam, I do know how to clean a fish!" he retorted.

"So, what do we do first?" she asked while watching its weak flopping. "Should I get the zat?"

"You've never cleaned a fish?" he asked in disbelief.

"No, never caught one before, either," she replied simply.

"Speaking of which, just what did you do to catch this fella?" he asked.

"I tried one of the water bugs for bait," she answered. "While we were sitting here earlier, I was just thinking about this and that... the reflections of the trees and bushes on the water... the ripples and how they reminded me of the wormhole event horizon... the mathematics of the reflections on the ripples...and then I started thinking of what it must all look like from the fish's perspective...,"

"From the fish's perspective?" he interjected incredulously.

"Well, you're always mentioning the Zen of Fishing-," she started but he interrupted with,

"It's the Zen of Fishing... the quiet, the peace, the solitude... the... act of just doing nothing... you're not supposed to 'Be The Fish'!" but he couldn't keep the wide grin off of his face as he made fun of her.

She arched an eyebrow and looked pointedly at her fish. Her fish!

Now he rolled his eyes and relented. "OK, ok, continue... you were Thinking Like a Fish, you Were The Fish," he deliberately played it up, "Then what?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, but then continued to explain, "Well, the refractive properties between air and water create a wide-angle-lens effect for the fish... what is typically deemed a fish-eye view," and she glanced at him sideways, waiting for him to insert something sarcastic, but he kept quiet this time and just looked at her innocently. "So I started thinking about what these fish had available for a food supply. Some fish are herbivores and graze on underwater algae that coats rocks-,"

"How do you know all this?" he couldn't help himself.

"Know all what?" she asked, and he was certain that she was being deliberately obtuse.

"All about fish! That's what! How can you know what a fish eats when you've never caught one or cleaned one?" he elaborated.

She just shrugged and gave him a small smile. "Biology class? The Discovery Channel? A nephew who likes a children's book all about fish?" All said with a complete innocence apparently designed to drive him insane.

"OK, ok, continue, You 'Were The Fish', with wide eyes and eating nasty green slimy stuff, so then what?" he synopsized with that typical Jack O'Neill sarcastic slant...

...that almost never failed to elicit a smile from her that she couldn't seem to completely hide. And this time was no exception, although she tried to offset it with a bit of eye-rolling. "So, I just watched these fish for awhile. And every now and then, I noticed a small set of ripples would seem to originate from near the shoreline or the edges of some of the rocks that stick out of the water. I couldn't figure out what was causing it, so I went closer to the water, but I couldn't see anything. There weren't even any ripples anymore. After awhile, I came back up here and then noticed the ripples every now and then again."

"Eventually, I went back to camp and got the binoculars," and she pointed to where they now sat over on the ground next to where she'd been napping earlier. "I focused in on the portion of the shoreline where the most ripples seemed to be coming from... and I saw the water bugs. Apparently they are extremely shy, and when we come close to the edge, they hide in the weeds and rocks."

"I watched them for awhile, but none of them were moving enough to create the ripples that I'd seen," and she paused for a breath and checked to make sure that he was still listening. Seeing that he was, she continued, "Well, to make a long story short, I was watching the water bugs when there was a blur across my view. I lowered the binoculars and could see ripples moving outwards from the area that I'd been watching. It only took a little while longer to figure out that the fish were snacking on the water bugs," she concluded.

"If they are so shy, how did you catch one?" he asked.

"Well, first I sat by the water's edge for awhile and waited for the water bugs to come back out. Then... I used your hat-"

"My hat?!" he looked around and saw his soggy boonie hat over neat the water's edge.

"Yeah, I just sorta dropped the hat down and then scooped the edges together around the insects. I missed a lot before I finally got a couple," she admitted.

"Why MY hat?" he asked with narrowed eyes as he looked over at the -dry- baseball cap on her head.

"Errr... you weren't using it at the moment? And the soft boonie hat just seemed like it had a better chance of wrapping around..."

"OK, so you caught some water bugs..., then what? No, wait- I slept through all this? How long did all this take anyway?" and he looked at his watch. It was 1815 local time... he'd probably been asleep for a little over 3 hours!

She just shrugged. "I'm not sure, I didn't look at my watch when I woke up from my... nap," and he smiled at her embarrassment. Sam Carter was not used to taking idle naps in the middle of the day while just kicking back next to a river!

"So these fish like water bugs?" he mused while studying the river.

"Very much, apparently," she answered following his gaze. "Though they won't seem to take the bait unless you kind of drag the bug over the surface of the water," she added while watching the reflections on the water.

He stared at her. "That's called fly-fishing, Sam," he informed her.

"These look more like they would belong to the order Hermiptera than Diptera," she objected distractedly.

He looked a bit non-plussed, but she didn't notice as she was still watching the surface of the water. "I thought you were a physicist?" he protested with a small smile.

"Astrophysicist," she replied with a small smile of her own.

"So... how does an astrophysicist know so much about bugs?"

"Same young nephew," she returned with a roll of the eyes.

"Most little boys only want to know what's the slimiest and creepiest, they don't want to know the Latin names and classifications!" he pointed out.

She just shrugged and smiled again, "He was so excited about different kinds of bugs that I got him an insect photo-id book. It was a little advanced for someone his age, but there were good photos of all of the insects."

"So what did you do, read the whole book while he was running around searching for new bugs to identify?" he accused and was rewarded with a shy blush on her part.

"Not the whole book," she returned indignantly and then decided to change the topic away from her reading habits, "Well, how about you show me how to clean this?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am, that sounds like a good idea," he agreed as he started to stretch, "Time to move around a bit anyway, the old muscles are getting bit stiff."

- - -

A half-hour later and the fish was cleaned and cooked. As Sam had caught the fish, she had the honors of acting as test guinea pig. As he had done with the 'rabbit' meat, she ate a little less than an ounce or so and then they burned the rest so that it wouldn't attract scavengers into their camp.

- - - - -

The second day of their self-declared idle-weekend was harder for Sam. Jack allowed her to spend time on her laptop, but then he demanded that she find something else to do. Unfortunately, with her body well-fed and her mind well-rested, she was antsy and fidgety. Jokingly, Jack told her to try thinking like a fish again, to "Be The Fish", but she eventually just scowled at him, so he let that one drop for the time being.

Jack finally hit on a solution. They had found some stringy tree bark on some young saplings, that when stripped, could be twisted and woven to make a fairly nice, strong rope. So the two of them spent a while stripping bark and then spent a few hours sitting quietly weaving and creating lengths of rope for such things as lashing pieces of their shelter together more strongly, or for such things such as a clothesline.

As the second day of their 'vacation' came to a close, and with Sam displaying no ill effects from the cooked fish over the previous 28-hours, they declared fish as the second basic meat for their growing list of alien edible foods.

- - - - -

Lying under the stars at the close of that second day, Sam spoke quietly, "The days off were a good idea, Jack, thanks."

He glanced over at her, "We both needed it," he agreed.

And they had both needed it. They'd worked their bodies hard over the first several weeks and the last two days of recuperation had revitalized them both. They hadn't regained much of their lost weight but Jack was much more relaxed and Sam had regained a bit of the sparkle in her eyes and color in her cheeks.

"So, how does that whole fishy-eye-view thingy work?" he asked.

"Are you sure you want to know?" she always asked, just to be certain, before launching into enthusiastic technobabble.

"Do I have to 'Be The Fish' in order to understand it?" he joked.

"No, but it might help," she sent back with a cheeky grin before launching into an explanation of light refraction through translucent media of different densities. She held his attention with examples of marching bands walking through sand and then she explained how it worked for telescopes such as the one that he had on his viewing platform at home. He, on the other hand, was actually discovering that he was enjoying listening to her talk enthusiastically about science.

- - - - -

"What? You think you could what?!!"

"Well, it's just a theory... I haven't had a chance to try seeing if it would ever work... it just seems to make sense that it would..."

"What would it take to test it?"

"I'm not sure... I haven't had a chance to run any tests along those lines... It really is just an idea..."

"So- what? How long would it take to develop... a couple of days, a week, a month, what?"

She widened her eyes and shrugged both her shoulders and her eyebrows as she tried to quantify the unquantifiable, "Well, probably more like months or years... if it ever worked...," she stated realistically.

"Sam, why are you always so pessimistic? You almost always pull off scientific magic that makes everyone's head spin!"

"Jack, I am a theoretical astrophysicist... that means that I come up with hypotheses and ideas... Very few astrophysicists ever get to test-out or prove their ideas... With the Stargate system, I've just been in the rare position of being able to actually see and touch phenomena that are just conjecture for the rest of our planet."

"I know for a fact that 'just' any old theoretical astrophysicist would not have been able to pull off what you have... Face it – there are lots of other scientists at the SGC, and none of them have your insight and brilliance," and even though he couldn't see her face well enough by starlight, he knew that she was blushing. "I heard through the grapevine that one Rodney McKay said that you were an artist in your field. He was right. He was a right-pompous pain-in-the-mikta the rest of the time, but he was right about you... you are an artist when it comes to all that Stargate-physics-slash-blowing-up-suns-stuff."

"I don't think that blowing up suns should be considered an art, Jack."

"Each to his own," he replied. "I thought it was pretty spectacular... better than any Fourth of July fireworks that I'd ever seen."

"The shock wave blew us over 4 million light years... and it would have taken over 125 years at hyperdrive speeds (distances from Episode 501 "Enemies" Transcript by AQ) to get back to Earth, if the replicators hadn't built the engine accelerator," she reminded him.

"Pish tosh... details, details. You blew up a sun. That was cool," he maintained.

"Actually, when the Asgard collapsed a sun to create that black hole... now that was cool!" and her face lit up a bit like it had on Thor's ship when they'd gone to ask for help reviving one frozen Colonel in Antarctica.

"So... collapsing a star is more cool than blowing one up?" he asked skeptically.

"Absolutely!" she replied with conviction. "When they collapsed that star, they didn't just destroy a star, they created a black hole! When we blew up Vorash's sun, we destroyed a sun and the inner planets in its solar system - we didn't create anything except destruction and a shock wave. But the Asgards created a black hole... that's... just... well... pretty cool!" And as the starlight glinted off of her teeth, he knew that she was grinning foolishly at just the thoughtof creating a black hole!

"Hmmph," he chuckled, "If you say so...," and he figured that he was earning a grin of sufferance from her in the dark. "So... back to your other idea... that would be cool... how do you think it might work?"

She looked over at him, startled that he'd actually remembered what she'd been 'technospeaking' about earlier. His interest in her scientific ramblings had set her off-balance at first, but she was pretty sure that he was doing it for her. To let her "blow off some scientific steam"... and, well, it was so much more fun to share her thoughts than to have to keep them all to herself day in and day out. What had surprised her the most was that he was apparently listening and trying to follow what she was saying... he wasn't just prompting her to talk while he drifted off with his own thoughts. So, she was trying hard to reciprocate by working to find analogies that made the physics more tangible and visual.

"I was listening," he pointed out with a challenging smirk.

"Er, yeah, I'm just not quite used to it yet, sorry," she smiled back at him.

"So, 'Splain it to me, Lucy,'," with a horrible Spanish accent that made her wince... and that made him chuckle lightheartedly.

"Well...," she pulled her thoughts back to their original conversation... which had started from basic refraction and the optics of a wide-angle lens... or the fish-eye-view... and then had gone to the optics of basic telescopes... and then she'd wandered to the watery effect of the Stargate's event horizon... From there she'd started extrapolating into some of her ideas of what they might be able to do with the Stargate in the future... in particular, since anything that entered one Stargate, exited the other end of the wormhole with the same momentum and trajectory, she postulated that they should be able to translate the light energy entering the wormhole into an image on the other end...

And this was what he thought was cool! That the watery, blue-grey surface of the wormhole would become a shimmering video screen that showed the view of the planet on the other end. And, unlike matter which could only go from the initiating 'Gate to the receiving 'Gate, electromagnetic energy (e.g., radio waves, microwaves, etc.) could go both ways through an open wormhole... So, they could get a look before they sent a MALP through. His mind was immediately working through the strategic advantages... they'd know if there were hostiles standing at the gate... armed Jaffa, or some others. They'd get a visual recon on some of the surface conditions... and maybe even save the SGC a ton of money when they didn't have to send MALPs into conditions where they couldn't be retrieved.

Sam, on the other hand, was still lost in the beauty of the multi-dimensional space-time physics that could make the potential visual image appear on the event horizon. She could see the military and/or strategic advantages when she needed to. But, right here, right now... lying under the stars on an alien planet... she didn't need to worry about the military or strategic advantages. She could just enjoy the sheer magic of the physics that controlled and shaped the universe.

"It would be cool," he repeated.

"Yeah," she agreed. "But it's just a theory, and I could have something wrong in my chain of logic or understanding... probably more than one something... so it might never actually work," she qualified.

"Ever the theoretical astrophysicist...," he confirmed and she could hear the affection in his voice.

"Always," she sent back softly.

"It would be cool," he sent back again and they both smiled up at the stars.

- - - - - -

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"For what"

"For this. For listening. For letting me go on and on about physics and science... and my ideas... for listening to the technobabble," she clarified.

"No problem," and he knew that her eyebrows were climbing into her hair, so he qualified that, "Well, not as much of a problem as I expected... I ... well, I've actually enjoyed a lot of it – but I'll deny it if you ever tell anyone!" he finished.

"I wouldn't expect anything else," she sent back softly.

A few moments of silence and then-

"Think you could pull in the Simpsons on that Carter-Gate-Screen?"

"You want to use the Stargate as a giant-"

"So that would be a 'No'?" he interrupted.

"Yes," with a sigh.

"Yes that's a 'No'?" he returned, deliberately enjoying being annoying.

"Yes Jack, that's a 'No'," she repeated patiently, but she couldn't keep from smiling at his antics.

"Darn! Guess that means no hockey games, either?"

And the sigh that reached his ears only made his grin wider.

A few moments of silence passed... and then...

"Was that a 'No' because it wouldn't be possible? Or was that a 'No' because you'd rather watch the Discovery Channel?"

Silence answered him again.

The moments ticked by as they watched the glittering sky.

"I'd share, you know. We could watch the Simpsons, then you could watch the Discovery Channel ... until a hockey game came on... but when it was over, you could go back to the History Channel or the Weather Channel if you wanted to," he just couldn't let go of this... it was just too much fun.

A moment passed, and he figured that she was going to continue to pretend to ignore his ridiculous statements.

Finally deciding to avoid the scientific complexities that he would disregard anyway, she offered something more practical, "First, even if you could turn the wormhole event horizon into a large-screen TV, Earth could not afford to keep the wormhole engaged and tied-up for consecutive 30-minute intervals for the purpose of... watching TV," she glanced sideways to see that she'd silenced him for the moment. A small grin crossed her face in victory before she added, "And second, the History Channel would be for Daniel and the Weather Channel is the express property of Jonas – I think he bought stock in it when came for his last visit to Earth."

A few more moments of silence, and then,

- -

"So, that's a definite 'No' then?"

- -

- - - - - - -

TBC

- - - - - - -

Author's Note: Special Thanks to SG-1 Yahoo Transcripts
wwwdotmoon-catchindotnet/transcripts.htm (just replace the dots with periods)
for Episode 422 "Exodus", Transcript by AQ
for Episode 501 "Enemies", Transcript by AQ.
for Episode 802 "New Order, part 1", Transcript by Callie Sullivan

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