Disclaimer: 'Stargate SG1' and all the characters associated with the show belong to someone who isn't me. As I doubt that the owners would be willing to trade their rights for some magic beans that aren't in any way magical, this is not going to change at any point in the foreseeable future.

Chapter Three

"It turns out that Jack was right after all." Daniel announced to the group sitting in the briefing room, passing out a folder of images.

"I was?"

"You were. The pool is, for want of a better term, a Fountain of Youth. The writings on the wall tell of Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth."

"A Goa'uld?" Hammond queried.

"I'd say that that would be a pretty safe bet." Daniel agreed. "The water supposedly grants youth and the goddess' blessing - which could be anything; a potion, a Goa'uld device, technology from the race who built the stargate, anything - made the effect permanent. It was probably a great way of ensuring loyalty, as well as increasing the length of time a warrior could serve her."

"And without this goddess' blessing?" Hammond pressed as patiently as he could.

"If the effect wasn't sealed, it reversed after three days and three nights."

"Three days?" Jack brightened. "I'm sure we can live with that."

"There's just one problem…" Daniel hesitated before pointing at one of the carvings, showing a man in armour kneeling by the pool, directing their attention to the tiny goblet in his hands. "As near as I can tell, Hebe's followers only lost a few years with the amounts of water they drank. They probably never anticipated someone tumbling in headfirst. To all intents and purposes, Sam overdosed."

"There are several foreign elements in the water - and in Sam's blood." Janet took up the narrative. "But whoever doctored the pool was centuries ahead of us. It could take years to figure out what they are, let alone work out how to reverse their effect."

"So the bottom line is we've got to wait until this wears off by itself." Jack was not pleased.

"If it wears off." Teal'c, ever the optimist, chimed in with his two cents.

"How long are we talking about?" Jack demanded of the unfortunate archaeologist. "Weeks? Months? Years?"

Daniel's response consisted of four words that none of them wanted to hear.

"I have no idea."

"Do you think that we should try and get in touch with Sam's dad?"

"Explain to Jacob that his only daughter got shrunk on my watch? Not a chance." Jack immediately vetoed Daniel's suggestion. "I'd like very much to live to see my next birthday, thank you very much. Besides," He added. "It's not like we can get in touch with the Tok'ra and would you really want to be the one to explain to Carter why her daddy's around twenty-five years older and exactly how stepmom Selmak came to be living in his head?"

"True." Daniel acknowledged. "Do you think that we should be worried about how good Teal'c is at braiding hair?" He asked playfully, nodding almost imperceptibly at the large Jaffa, who was braiding Sam's long blonde hair in pigtails.

"That's the least of our worries." Jack responded grimly. "I don't know about you but I am not looking forward to having to keep Carter occupied and out of trouble for a minimum of two more days."

"Is the general going to let us take Sam off the base? It seems unfair to keep her cooped up in a mountain."

"Ol' Doc Fraiser wants her to stay put for at least another twenty-four hours before she'll consider it and even then it'll only be for short trips. They want to be completely sure that Carter isn't contagious or something."

"That makes sense." Daniel agreed. "Do you want me to keep an eye on Sam for a while?"

"I was going to ask her to keep an eye on you."

Daniel scowled at Jack's jest. "Funny!"

"I thought so."

"Zoom!" Her lips pursed, Sam did her best to imitate the sounds she believed every self-respecting rocket should make as she launched her craft from Daniel's desk and flew it as high as her arm could reach.

The archaeologist's eyes widened in horror when he saw what she was up to. "Uh, Sam… honey… can you put that down?"

She looked horrified by this blasphemy. "It's a rocket. It can't go down once it's been launched. That would be very, very dangerous." She lectured him earnestly.

"Sam, please, that tablet is over five thousand years old." His eyes nervously followed the movements of the admittedly rocket-like artefact in her small hand.

"That's okay then." Her smile was serene. "At least it's not new. Do you want to play? You can be a spaceship." Her eyes combed the room, seeking a suitable vessel. The urn in the corner had potential.

"No, I don't want to be a spaceship. I want you to put it down. Now." Her eyes watered and her lower lip trembled slightly, making him feel guilty for his sharp tone. Daniel was sometimes accused of giving what Jack termed 'puppy-dog' looks to get his way but he now suspected that Sam Carter, adult or child, could run rings around him where that art was concerned, should she so choose.

"You're mad at me."

"I'm not, really." He tried to reassure her, not wanting to physically take the artefact from her for fear of accidentally hurting her.

As if on cue, the base alarms went off, signalling off-world activation and startling little Sam.

Daniel made a dive forward as the clay tablet slipped from her tiny fingers but was nowhere near fast enough to catch it before it hit the concrete floor of his office with impressive force, shattering on impact.

"Uh-oh." Her eyes widened in apprehension. "You're really mad now, aren't you?"

"Hey, Danny-boy." Jack paused at the entrance to his friend's office, looking down to see him sitting on the floor, some of the bigger shards of the tablet in his hands, trying to piece it together. "I think you're fighting a losing battle trying to put that back together."

"I didn't get a chance to start translating the symbols, or to take pictures or anything." Daniel lamented, finally giving up on his reconstruction efforts and reaching for a dustpan and brush to dispose of the debris.

"What happened?"

"Sam happened. How can somebody so small and so sweet possibly cause so much trouble?"

"I'm sure it was an accident." Jack said in pacifying tone, narrowing his eyes when a visual sweep of the room proved that the young lady in question was nowhere in sight. "You didn't kill her, did you?"

"Of course not." Daniel was affronted by the suggestion, even though he knew the other man was joking. "I was going to General Hammond to ask him to take care of her, but he was out and then Lieutenant Simmons volunteered to watch Sam. You know what they say about gift horses."

"There's usually a good reason they're being given away?"

"…And this is the dialling computer, this is how we put the addresses into the stargate." Lieutenant Simmons explained to the wide-eyed little girl sitting on his knee. Below in the gate room, the members of SG-7 were geared up and ready to depart for a mission to P5R-081. "Do you want to put in the last chevron." Sam nodded enthusiastically. "Just press this button."

A small finger stabbed the symbol for Earth.

"Chevron seven locked." Simmons intoned.

Sam was fascinated by the whoosh of energy and the wormhole that formed in the gate room below. "Can I get a closer look?"

"I'm sorry, Sam." Simmons apologized, his mind conjuring images of the likely reaction of General Hammond - not to mention the rest of SG-1 - if the little girl were to stumble into an open wormhole. It was a scary thought. "I'm not allowed to take you down there."

"Oh." She pouted, disappointed.

"Lieutenant Simmons?" Another technician spoke up from one of the monitors on the other side of the room. "Could you take a look at this?"

"Sure." Lifting Sam off his knee, he stood, sitting her back down on his chair before making his way to the monitor. "What's the problem?"

Uninterested in her temporary guardian's consultation with the technician, little Sam focused her attention on the far more appealing dialling computer, wanting to recreate the spectacle she had just witnessed, to have a chance to examine it properly.

She was pretty sure she remembered which buttons Lieutenant Simmons had pushed.

TBC.

Author's Note: That's all for now. Please don't forget to review. Teal'c's gotten off fairly easy so far - anybody want to see him stuck Sam-sitting?