Chapter Three

That was the last he saw of her until she was scheduled to leave. Teal'c and Daniel were standing at the base of the ramp, ready to go. Daniel was chomping at the bit, pacing excitedly. Although Teal'c had no particular desire to get to their destination, he seemed pleased to be going somewhere. He never liked hanging around the base for long. Jack was standing in the control room, staring down at his team, well, half of it, and once again wondering if he could get demoted and back on SG-1.

Daniel glanced up at the window. "Sam, come on! You're late!" His voice held the whiny, grating tone of a child.

Jack turned to the right and watched as Carter continued pressing buttons frantically. She sped up slightly at Daniel's words. Jack raised an eyebrow, but the expression was missed by her entirely. "Uh, Carter? You sitting this one out?" He hadn't seen her that worried about timing since…

"Solar flares, sir."

"Oh, well, then, take your time. You do not have my permission to go mucking around in time without me." He smiled at her as he reached for the intercom. "Daniel, give her a minute."

Daniel folded his arms over his chest, but he didn't argue. Jack decided it was for the best that neither he nor Sam heard whatever it was that Daniel muttered which caused Teal'c to look up at the control room.

Carter was once again scribbling on her notepad and, even though pretty much all equations looked the same to him, he was pretty sure it was the same page she'd been writing on in the briefing. She stood up and faced him. "I'm finished, sir." Tearing two pages out of the notebook, she stuffed one in her pocket before carefully folding the other and placing it in an envelope. "Sir, would you mind, leaving this on my desk?"

Jack opened his mouth to suggest that she order one of the other people in the room to do it, but at the sight of her tongue jutting out of her mouth to lick the envelope, he couldn't think of a single good reason to argue with her. "Yeah, ok."

"Thank you, sir." She headed for the stairs, jogging the short distance. Jack knew she wasn't kidding about the timing, which is why it threw him when she paused to glance back at him. She looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words.

"Good luck, Carter." His eyes met hers and, as was usually the case when their eyes met, the rest of the room faded away. There were so many things he thought she deserved to hear, things he wanted to tell her, but they always had to settle for the occasional heated stare. He fought the familiar urge to close the distance between them and pull her into an embrace. He gathered strength from the fact that he was pretty sure she was fighting the same urge. He nodded toward the gate room. "Better hurry before Daniel has a coronary."

She nodded with a smile. "Yes, sir." She turned and darted down the stairs. She didn't look back again as the three active members of SG-1 headed up the ramp. Jack could hear Daniel's excited voice rambling on about something as he stepped through the gate. He watched as Carter and Teal'c looked at each other, probably rolling their eyes at one another as they followed. Jack smiled to himself as he headed for Carter's lab with the envelope she'd given him.

Three hours passed while Jack worked. He missed his friends whenever they were off-world, but he was actually able to get more work done when they weren't around. When they were there, he inevitably got distracted as it was far more enjoyable to talk to them about anything than it was to actually work. He was proud of himself for the rhythm he'd found. Closing another file and tossing it in the finished pile, he cursed as the unscheduled off-world activation disrupted the peace in his office.

He reluctantly stood up and headed for the control room, just as SG-1's signal was recognized. He ordered security to the gate room, fearing something terrible had gone wrong to warrant their quick return. But it was only a radio signal that was being sent through. Thesignal was fed through the monitors in the control room and within seconds Jack was looking up into the faces of Carter and Daniel. They were squinting from the bright sunshine, but appeared uninjured.

"What's going on, Colonel?" He kept his voice even to hide the relief he felt that they were all right.

"Well, sir, the UAV data that indicated this planet was uninhabited was wrong. The natives are friendly enough, but they won't let us near the ruins without discussing trade first."

"Then discuss away." He wasn't entirely sure why he was being consulted for such a mundane issue, but he suspected it was just because they missed him on missions.

Carter glanced at Daniel. "Sir, I tried, but they absolutely will not discuss anything not related to child-rearing with a woman." She looked positively disgusted, but Jack couldn't help the snicker that escaped. He'd be hard pressed to find someone less qualified to discuss child-rearing. "They want to talk to our leader." Daniel tried to hide his own snicker, as did Carter, but they were standing a foot away from the camera on the MALP. "That would be you, sir."

"That would be me, Carter." He figured she was just trying to pull off one of her secret missions to get him off-world again and he felt he should offer at least token resistance. "Did you consider telling them that Daniel is your leader? He's good at that negotiation stuff."

Daniel winced. "Jack, I kind of already introduced Sam as the one in charge of SG-1, so they're not going to buy it."

Content that no one could see it, Jack let his lips curve up into a smile. "Ok, what am I walking into?"

Daniel launched into a mini-lecture on their customs, at least as far as he'd been able to gather in three hours. Jack's eyes glazed over, until the word 'arrows' popped into the conversation.

"Arrows, Daniel? Exactly how advanced are these people?"

Carter hid her laugh behind a cough. Daniel winced again. "I believe the question would be more appropriate if it contained the word primitive. And the answer is very."

Jack closed his eyes, thankful that Daniel was far, far away from him at the moment. He wanted to strangle someone. "Then why are we discussing trade? I see no need for arrows to be added to the list of standard issue SGC equipment."

"Because I want to get a look at those ruins, Jack. Anything you offer will impress them. Hell, Jack, they were amazed by Sam's flashlight."

He let out a sigh that he thought impressively covered how giddy he was at the idea of going. "Fine. Give me a few minutes."

He was just turning away from the monitor when Carter's voice continued. "Sir, because of the solar activity, you're going to have to time it just right. I've done some rough calculations here and there's a window of three minutes that will greatly reduce the chance of any temporal displacement."

With a sigh that wasn't at all fake, Jack turned back to the monitor, suddenly very grateful that Carter couldn't see the look on his face. He was so not happy about getting both an archeology and an astrophysics lecture in the same day. Jack looked at one of the gate technicians and asked him to take notes. Carter heard him, of course, and glared at the camera for a second. Then she continued with her explanation.

It felt like two hours later when she finally stopped talking. "That's about it, sir."

His eyes widened. "You sure? I'm sure we can get a tape recorder in here if you want to keep going." He waited for another glare from her. "I got it, Carter. I'll time it exactly and I'll see you in a few."

Carter stared into the camera for a moment and then she nodded. "I'm not kidding, sir."

"Got it, Carter. So does trusty Sergeant-" He leaned over to see the name of the man who was still desperately scribbling notes on what Carter had said. "Thomas. If something goes wrong, you make sure you court martial his ass when you get back."

Sergeant Thomas looked up, sheer panic on his face. Before he could say anything, Jack smiled. "I was kidding, Sergeant." The man didn't look at all relieved.

"I'm not, sir. Timing. Exact. Got it?" She waited a beat before adding 'sir,' making it clear to everyone around that she was giving her CO an order.

Jack scowled at the monitor. He liked it when she got cheeky, especially when it was in an effort to protect him from winding up on prehistoric earth or something, but it was embarrassing when he was in a room full of people. "Yes, Colonel, I got it."

She ducked her head, accepting the use of her rank as a reprimand. "There's one more thing, sir. If you could bring that envelope I gave you this morning, I'd really appreciate it." Then she looked back at the camera with the same look on her face he'd seen that morning. "Good luck, sir. Carter out." The last image he saw was her hand reaching forward to terminate the connection. The wormhole disengaged and the room started buzzing with normal activity.

Jack somehow managed to make it to the locker room without skipping. He was so excited about going off-world. He wondered if Daniel was helping Carter out with ways to get him off-world. He changed quickly and caught himself humming as he headed for Carter's lab. It didn't even bother him that Carter and Daniel both seemed considerably more testy than normal. He tucked the envelope into his jacket and headed back to the control room.

Sergeant Thomas was not at his post. When Jack asked, one of the other techs pointed to the notes on the chair Thomas had abandoned. Everyone in the room swore Thomas had gone to lunch, but Jack was pretty sure he was just hiding, for fear something would go wrong. Jack couldn't blame him. No one wanted to face Carter's wrath.

Jack picked up the notes and handed them to another sergeant, asking if she could handle it. She looked at the notes and offered to try. Jack ignored the uncertainty in her voice and headed for the gate room. A few seconds later, the wormhole opened and Jack started up the ramp.

"No, sir, not yet!" The sergeant's voice was frantic. She was obviously just as afraid as Thomas.

Jack turned around, starting to feel like he imagined Daniel had that morning. "What's going on up there?"

The sergeant was leaning over to someone else with the notes. "Does that look like a one or a seven?"

Jack turned away, shaking his head. "Oh, what the hell." Without waiting for the go-ahead, he stepped into the wormhole and only bothered at the last second to pray that he hadn't just made a huge mistake.