Author's Note: I don't own Stargate.

Chapter Thirty-Four

1969

"You sure you're ready for this?" I asked, Skaara.

He'd been talking about this for a few days but finally worked up the nerve to request the mission from General Hammond.

We were going home to Abydos.

"I'm ready." He nodded.

"Ok." I adjusted my backpack.

All of SG-1 besides Sam were waiting in the gate room. Skaara shifted uncomfortably, feeling awkward in his SGC uniform.

"What is she doing?" Jack asked, tilting his head to squint up at Sam in the control room.

"Uh, she said something about having to time the calculations exactly right this time of year." Daniel answered.

"This time of year?" Jack scoffed. "What difference does it make?"

"Oh, she said something about solar… um." Daniel struggled, "uh…well, to be honest with you, I wasn't really paying attention."

I laughed, "It was solar flares that are prevalent this time of year. She's worried it could affect travel through the gate." Daniel squinted at me while Jack just tilted his head in confusion. "What? I pay attention."

"Course you do." Jack muttered and turned back to the control room. "Carter!"

Sam jumped a little when Jack shouted her name, "Almost there, sir." She spoke into the mic. "This time of year, the direct line between P2X-555 and the Earth takes us within 70,000 miles of the sun. I have to update the computer's drift calculation to include gravitational space-time warping."

His face went blank, "Right… I know that." He cleared his throat, "Let's go."

"Yes sir." Sam patted Simmons on the back and ran out of the control room. When she entered the gate room she was stuffing something in her vest pocket.

"Alright, dial her up!" Jack ordered, spinning his finger in the air.

The gate was spinning until it reached its last chevron and activated.

"SG-1, you have a go." Hammond spoke through the com system.

"Head out." Jack said, leading us up the ramp.

Skaara took my hand and we stepped through.

And steeped right back into the gate room.

"The hell?" I gasped stumbling down the ramp and gazing back up at the gate as Daniel and Teal'c brought up the rear.

Suddenly the gate was engulfed in a black mass that swallowed it and the ramp. Skaara grabbed my arm and dragged us both backwards, making it off the disappearing ramp just in time.

"Whoa!" Jack unhooked his gun and aimed it at the black mass. "Did you see that?"

I stumbled, falling hard on my knees and instantly our surrounding changed. The walls rippled and all the equipment in the gate room dissolved. I looked up only to see the bottom end of a nuke aimed at my face.

"Ah Jack." There was a slight whimper in my voice as I laughed nervously, "Tell me that isn't what I think it is."

Jack's eyes were the size of saucers, "It not." He said obviously lying, "You feel better?"

"Not really." I shook my head.

"What is that?" Skaara helped me up with one hand while his gaze never left the rocket above us.

"Remember what our people shot into space to destroy Apophis's ships? That's one of them." I backed us up against a wall.

He slowly turned his head towards me, "Oh shit." That was the first time he ever used Earth vernacular like that. I'd be impressed if not for the situation.

"Standing by for test burn in T-minus 20 seconds." A voice announced over a loudspeaker.

"What is a 'test burn'?" Teal'c asked, calmly staring up at the missile's exhaust.

"Just what it sounds like. Any ideas here?" Jack and Sam jumped off the launch pad and began to pound frantically on the blast doors. "Abort! Abort!"

"Dani, help me." I shouted at my brother as I ripped open the nearest electrical panel.

"What are doing?!" Daniel grabbed my hand, stopping me from ripping away a handful of wires.

"If we start tearing things up maybe they will notice we're down here?" I slapped his hand away and tore out the wires.

"I don't think that's a good idea…" He protested.

"15 seconds." The loudspeaker boomed.

"Good idea." Daniel was quick to change his mind and he ripped out a computer board.

"Abort!" Jack punched the speaker.

"Stand by for ignition."

"Cover!" Jack ordered

"10…9…8…"

Daniel pressed his face to the wall. Skaara was still staring upwards with no idea what to do. I pushed him face first into the wall.

"7…6…5…"

"Hands over your head!" I had to yell over the loudspeaker counting down.

"4…3…" There was the sound of a Zat discharging.

2…1. Ignition."

Nothing happened. I took a moment to breath and calm myself before looking over my shoulder.

Teal'c was still standing right under the missile with his zat aimed upwards.

"How'd you know that would work?" Jack asked shakily.

Teal'c raised his eyebrow. "I did not." He was painfully blunt.

A buzzing alarm blared and the lights in the room suddenly went red. The blast door to the left slide open to reveal about half a dozen heavily armed soldiers with their guns aimed at us.

"Hands on your heads! Get on your knees!" The leader jammed his gun in our faces.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"The past?" I said incredulously.

After the soldiers had taken away all our weapons we'd been escorted through all too familiar halls and detained in the brig. This was the SGC, and yet it wasn't. There were no SGC personal, no scientists, just USA military. Very outdated military at that.

"The past, seriously?" I repeated, leaning across the table at Sam.

Jack stood pacing the room, looking for a way out if I knew him, which I did. Daniel on the other hand set on the bed closest to the door beside Skaara. Teal'c sat at the table, way to calm.

"Come on Teal'c," I addressed the Jaffa, "Doesn't this freak you out in the least?"

"Erin Clark, I do not as you say, freak out." He nearly broke a smile.

"But really, time travel?!" My voice got shrill

"Yes Erin," She sighed. "I'm fairly certain that we've traveled back in time, roughly about thirty years." She smiled, excited at the prospect, "For a second or two, I think we were in both time-frames simultaneously, which is why the Stargate seemed to be there one minute and was gone the next."

"You know, I think you're having too much fun with this." I groaned.

"Little bump in the calculations, Captain?" Jack emphasized 'captain'.

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what to say." Sam shrugged.

"Well, I'll tell you what. Get us back home and we'll say it never happened." Jack pounded his fist on the door, wincing when he hit it a little too hard.

"Or get us back before we left and it won't happen." Daniel offered.

We all stopped what we were doing to stare at him.

"I don't think it works like that Daniel." I said.

He stood and pulled over a chair and sat on it backwards, "But, but, think about it. We're the first people in human history to go back in time, well, for all we know. If we could figure out how to do this again, just think of what we could do. We could actually visit Babylon, we could—we could—we could see the Great Wall of China being built."

That got Teal'c attention "Or prevent regrettable events from your history from ever occurring, or my people's history."

"No, no!" Sam and I yelled.

"What?" Jack whined. "Come on what would be wrong with that?"

"Seriously?" I scoffed. "Haven't you ever seen a movie? We change one thing in the past and who knows what happened to our future."

"The grandfather paradox." Sam added.

I looked at her blankly. "Yeah… I um have no idea what that is but I'm gonna play it safe and agreed with you."

Sam's long suffering sigh was starting to become familiar, "If you went back fifty years and murdered your own grandfather, your own father would never have been born."

"So you're saying that if we change our own past…" Daniel began.

"We could change our world in ways that we can't possibly imagine. We might even cease to exist, along with everything and everyone we know." Sam finished.

Teal'c sat back in his chair nonplused, "I myself have no part in the history of your world."

Sam rolled her eyes, "We need to consider all the ramifications. When they find out about the Goa'uld threat, they might have second thoughts about opening the Stargate in the first place." She held her hand up at Teal'c, "In which case, we never meet…and you're back to being First Prime of Apophis." Then she switched to Skaara, "And Skaara, we never go to Abydos, Ra is never defeated and your people are back to being slaves."

Skaara looked at me from across the room, expression dark. There was no way we could let that happen.

Teal'c eyebrow rose, realizing the seriousness of what Sam was saying, "I see."

"So…" Daniel ran his palm over his face, "we don't tell them about the Goa'uld."

"How do we explain the larval Goa'uld that Teal'c is carrying? Our advanced weapons, our GDO's?" Sam countered.

A horrible thought came to my mind, "What about us being here now? We're changing things just being here."

Sam nodded, "We have to concentrate on damage control. At the very least, destroy our advanced weapons and technology. We also cannot tell anyone anything" She peeled off her SGC patch, "about who we are or where we're from."

"Carter," Jack pointed a finger in the air like a kid trying to get the attention of their teacher, "This is a top secret facility. Anonymity does not go over big here."

Sam became extremely serious. "We cannot tell them we're from the future, sir. Even if it means…"

She was cut off when one of our guards abruptly threw opened the door and marched in with two other soldier holding nasty looking guns.

The unarmed man walked right up to Daniel, his gaze obviously sizing my brother up. Then in Russian, "You Soviet spies?"

Of course, the red scare and the Cold War. We just had to appear inside a nuclear missile site during the freaking Cold War. I tried to keep my face neutral ad pretend I didn't just understand what the soldier had said. Never thought knowing fifteen languages could ever be a bad thing.

Apparently Daniel didn't quite catch what was going on.

He looked right at the soldier and answered, "Nyet." With a shrug.

Jack glared daggers at the linguist. "Daniel?

"What?" Daniel completely oblivious, "He just asked if we were Soviet spies. I just…" He realized his error a little to late, "Oh"

"Come with me." The Officer, smug as all get out, waited for Jack to get up.

"Sure," Our leader groaned and slowly unbent his knees, "You bet." And as he passed by Daniel, who was blushing profusely, Jack gave him a little nudge. "Nyet?"

Daniel waited for the door to close behind Jack, "Well, that went well." Cheeks still red.

"It really didn't." I grimaced.

"I don't understand." Skaara directed his question at Sam, Dani, and I. "What just happened."

Since we had the time, I settled in next to him on his lower bunk and gave him a crash course on Earth history of the 1960's. By the time I was done he gulped, "I'll repeat what I said earlier. Shit."

I wrinkled my nose at his choice of profanity, "Jack has got to stop teaching you those kind of words."