Richie turned around when the resident Asgard entered the room. Adam noticed Richie's confused face pale several shades making him look almost ghost-like.
"Would someone PLEASE explain why I seem to be standing on some kind of space ship which is, by the looks of it, orbiting the Earth with little grey people, aliens, or whatever, is on board?"
"Not right now!" O'Neill shot Richie a 'be quiet look' then turned back to the Asgard. "Hi, Colonel O'Neill nice to meet you."
"Mani, Head…"
Before he could continue, Jack cut him off. "Nice to meet you, Mani! But what I REALLY want to know is this? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT?"
Several members of the assembled representatives of Earth winced at the volume the Colonel could produce. They also knew that he wasn't done yet.
"THOR TOLD US ONLY THE GATEROOM! WHAT PART ONLY DIDN'T YOU GET! Carter sure as hell wasn't in the Gateroom! Louise and…" Jack waved his hand in Richie's direction not knowing his name.
"Richie!" came a chorus of voices.
"…thank you…Richie weren't even in the mountain! Hell! Richie has never even been in the mountain!"
Mani calmly looked at O'Neill and blinked once before replying. "Commander Thor was reviewing some information supplied to him by myself after he was in contact with yourself, he was unable to re-establish contact with yourselves so he asked myself to bring up a few extra people at the same time as I brought you up."
Jack spun around and eyed Carter. "Just wait until I get my hands on that scrawny little grey neck of his!" Jack mumbled under his breath in her direction. Carter gave him a pleading look. Jack sighed and then shook his annoyance off and looked back at Mani. "I need to contact Thor immediately."
"As you wish. If you step on the platform over there I will connect you to him." Mani pointed to the far end of the room as he walked over to a control panel.
Jack did as he was instructed and walked over to the small platform and stepped up onto it. At the control panel, Mani moved a few egg shaped controls and O'Neill started talking to what appeared to be thin air to everyone else in the room.
"What's going on? And why is he talking to himself?" Richie whispered to Louise as they stood watching O'Neill.
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like this before." Louise whispered back just as puzzled as Richie was.
"He's communicating with Thor." Sam cut in over hearing their whispered conversation. "Think of it as a hologram of Colonel O'Neill's which is being transmitted to Thor and Thor's end of the transmission is being directed directly into Colonel O'Neill's brain because he's standing on that platform."
"That's, Errr…?"
"…Weird?" Richie finished for Louise.
Jack stepped off the platform and shouted over to Janet, "Hey doc, he needs the technobabble! Well medibabble… oh it doesn't matter it's all nonsense to me. Just get on the platform!"
"Yes, sir." Janet stepped onto the platform taking Jack's place in communicating with Thor.
"Right." Jack was glad someone was listening to him. He turned to flesh and blood Asgardian to see if he would have any better luck. "Mani, would you care to explain why you have brought Louise, Carter and Richie here? Thor didn't want to discuss that little matter with me until he got here. I, on the other hand, want answers NOW!"
"I think it would be best if we do as Thor suggested and await his arrival." Mani suggested as he moved back one step. It was the only external indication of his reaction to O'Neill's temper.
"I SAID I WANT ANSWERS NOW and by God I'm going to get answers NOW!"
Everyone spun to look at the two. O'Neill looked like he was at his limit. Mani took another step back away from O'Neill. "Very well, Major Carter was brought here because we believe that her child could hold the key to our survival. Louise has been brought here, as Thor would like to meet the child of Major Carter and yourself. I am afraid I was unable to bring Louise here without bringing her companion up as well, so I brought them both up."
Richie turned to Louise and whispered, "Sam and Jack are your biological parents?"
Louise just nodded her head in response and went back to listening to the conversation between Jack and Mani.
"And it never occurred to you to wait until Louise was alone before bringing her here?"
"Waiting is always an option. The Asgard are a patient race, however, given the urgency of the circumstances I am afraid that waiting would not have been acceptable. Based on the data we have gathered on your species, it was unlikely that Louise and Richie would have become sufficiently separated anytime soon. Therefore, it was prudent to bring them both."
"Great, so you beam him up here and leave us to deal with the whole 'He's not meant to know you exist' problem?"
"I agree that Richie knowing of our existence is unfortunate but it was unavoidable."
"No, it wasn't unavoidable. You just had to go and be impatient!"
Mani just blinked his eyes. He was about to speak when a beep sounded from the console behind him.
A puzzled Janet suddenly turned around and stepped off of the platform.
"It just turned off!"
"That is because Commander Thor's ship has arrived."
"But, I thought he was going to be a couple of hours?"
A flash of white light appeared and quickly disappeared, leaving Thor standing in front of the group.
"Greetings, O'Neill, it is good to see you again. As it is nice to see you again as well, Major Carter."
"Thor, about Carter being here. Why did you have Mani over here beam her up?" Jack was going to keep asking the question until he got an answer he liked.
"I believed it was necessary. When you contacted me I had just received the information from Mani but I had been unable to review it. However, when I did finally review the information I found some data worth investigating. I asked Mani to bring Major Carter up at the same time as you. I also requested your 'offspring' to be brought up as well. I wanted to meet her." Thor then looked at the group of people gathered around the room and looked back with a slightly puzzled look on his face, although none of the humans noticed the difference, "I am familiar with Doctor Fraiser but I am afraid I do not know the other two men whom you have brought."
"That's the thing Thor; yeah, we brought Adam up, as we needed to discuss something with you about his, um, heritage." Thor just blinked at O'Neill, so he continued. "Well, you see Adam is an immortal, as is Janet and Louise. Janet can explain that. Anyway back to the matter at hand, Richie coming up here was not our idea. Mani brought him up when he brought Louise up."
"That is unfortunate."
Mani bowed slightly toward Thor. "I thought it was necessary, given the circumstances."
Jack raised an eyebrow at the little grey alien. "Yeah, right. You can say that as often as you want, but I'm never going to buy it. Anyway, Janet, why don't you sum up for Thor and the rest why we contacted him."
"Yes sir!" Janet proceeded to explain their reason for contacting the Asgard. Thor thanked the doctor and turned toward Jack.
"O'Neill, you said that Adam is immortal?"
"That's right. Why?"
"I would like to scan Adam and see if you are correct."
Adam wasn't thrilled with the prospect of being poked and prodded again. Janet was bad enough and he knew what she was using. "Wait! Hold it one second! Since when did I volunteer to be pin cushion!"
Carter placed a gentle hand on her lover's arm. "It's not physically invasive at all, sweetheart. It's more like Star Trek's tricorder, They will scan you with…"
Jack could feel another technobabble coming on. "CARTER!"
Carter looked chagrined and ended with something less technical. "…pretty lights and no pain."
Adam grinned "Ok…" Adam turned to Richie once again. Seeing that Richie seemed to have calmed down slightly, he thought he would play with him a little. "…but Richie has to do it to, because he's also immortal."
"Gee, thanks, Old Man!"
Thor nodded and turned towards Mani. "Maybe it would be best to scan everyone. That way there should be no more surprises and we will have an updated scan of Colonel O'Neill."
"I didn't know you cared, Thor, old buddy!"
"Your continued health and welfare are always a concern of the Asgard, O'Neill."
Mani turned and adjusted several egg shaped controls on a nearby consol. A few moments passed in silence as Mani finished up the scans.
When the scans were complete Mani looked and confirmed what all of the human's thought, apart from Richie who still didn't know what was actually happening. "The presence of Asgard DNA is present in the ones called Adam, Richie, Major Carter, Doctor Fraiser and Louise."
"How has Carter got Asgard DNA? She's not immortal."
"The baby, Jack!" Adam shot back, unable to believe Jack couldn't have worked that out.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that."
"That would explain Mani's sensor readings." Thor cut into their discussion.
"What do you mean Thor?"
"As I was explaining before, Mani sent me some information to look at. The information was readings taken of Major Carter and her child. After the information you have given us regarding Adam's immortality I believe that is the reason."
"So we were right in assuming that the baby could help you?"
"I believe you were correct, O'Neill. Although I would like to run some more tests run to make sure."
"Hold up. Before you start talking about tests, none of these tests are going to hurt Sam or the baby are they?" Adam defensively took a step closer to Sam so that he was stood between the Asgard and her.
"Major Carter and her child will remain unharmed. All the tests will be done by scanning only."
"Good…" Adam relaxed slightly although he didn't move from where he was standing guard in front of Sam. "One other thing. While discussing the information we concluded that the presence of Asgard DNA might be the reason why immortals are unable to have children. Could that be the case? If it were, would there be anything you could do about that? I mean help other immortals so they would have the choice of whether to have children or not."
"Once again, I would require one of the present immortals to run some tests on. If the test results from Major Carter's child are positive I believe it shouldn't be a problem to help immortals solve their fertility issues as well." Thor confirmed.
"So, your saying that it's possible?"
"Indeed."
"Adam?" Richie voice broke into Adam's thoughts.
"Just give me a second, Richie. I'll explain everything to you in a minute!" Adam said as he turned to Richie.
Turning back to Thor he continued. "Thor, we'd also like to know if the Asgard race has been creating children with Asgard DNA and leaving them on Earth. There are not just a few immortals, there are and have been thousands throughout the ages. We need to know where we come from and if the Asgard are responsible. Did the Asgard create immortals?"
"I do not have any knowledge of that, but we will check through Loki's ship's database once again. We have only checked his most recent activity, going only back a few of your decades. We will do a more thorough search of his past experiments. It may bring up something that looked unimportant before this issue was raised. I would assume if Loki created Louise then it would have been possible for him to have created other immortals."
"Thank you Thor, anything you could do would be greatly appreciated."
Thor didn't respond with words, he just blinked his eyes and turned back to Mani. "Mani, please take Major Carter and do the necessary tests." He then turned to the three older immortals. "Adam, Richie or Janet, which of you would volunteer for some further tests?"
"Richie, could you go? I'd like to speak with O'Neill about a few things."
"What, I don't even know what's going on? Why do I have to go?"
"You don't need to know what's going on to let them do some tests."
"Fine, but you owe me some extremely big explanations."
"We'll see."
"No. No 'we'll see's', I want answers. No matter what it takes I will get answers. For God's sake, Adam! I've just been beamed to an alien space ship in orbit above the Earth, of course I want explanations."
Adam rolled his eyes, "Fine!"
"Good!"
A/N: - Thanks for the reviews people and keep them coming as you know how much i like reviews. :D