Chapter 8

"They can come home now."

This was what Harry Truman heard when he picked up the phone to answer Dr. Langford's call. The program had been mostly silent since their meeting last year, usually he only got a written report once every other month to give a status update on the progress their base in Nevada was making (at last report, they'd finished with the basic excavation, and were starting to add in the reinforcements so they could build the rooms; optimistically, the base would be coming online next year). For now though, they'd relocated operations to a larger warehouse at USNTS Sampson in New York. All parties had agreed that keeping the Stargate in a city warehouse wasn't the best idea, and being in a military base allowed some of the larger military equipment to be moved without much notice.

As Truman focused back to the phone call, he let the full weight of everything wash over him. He was stunned by it, but the meaning sank in quickly. The five words were quite vague in an ordinary context, but, knowing their origin, it was easy enough to realize the importance of them. If the people at Heliopolis could return, they could also bring back what they found, get it to the people who could do research in the relative safety of Earth.

More than that, they no longer had to persuade people to risk a one-way ticket.

That phone call had also been when Truman learned that a roster for the people stationed there to get a chance to return home and visit their loved ones had already been drawn up. And that the professor was planning to visit the site himself. Truman quickly made the arrangements to go there in person. After all, it was about time he saw in person what he and his late predecessor had set in motion.

Pressing a button on his desk's intercom, he spoke to his secretary.

"I need a telegraph sent to Downing Street right away please." he said.

"Certainly Mr. President, do you know what you want the message to say?"

"Tell them, 'Our friends can finally come home from their trip to the Sun Palace…'"

January 11th, 1946

Clement Attlee smiled as he looked at the telegraph again. While he had no reason to doubt Truman's word that the soldiers would be able to return, there had always been a small niggling worry that followed him over the well-being of his soldiers. Now though he could breathe a sigh of relief. Not only could they come back, but now any reservations he had about sending more resources to the American's Initiative were gone.

Now sharing his office were three other men whose efforts would be key to ensuring a steady stream of support to the program from the Unite Kingdom. Sitting to his left was Albert Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty. In the center was Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton and to the right was Secretary of the State of War Jack Lawson. The past several hours had been spent briefing the three on the program and current British contributions. Now they were brainstorming how else they could support and gain from the program given the Crown's limited resources. Attlee, being both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense afforded him a wide amount of sway and say with the military as well. Together the four could marshal a grand sum of the Empire's military might, as well as what remained of its financial clout as well.

Returning to the conversation, Attlee spoke "With the news now that a reliable two way connection back to Earth can be established, I no longer have any reservations about throwing more support behind this program" he finished to a small murmur of agreement from the three. "Though again, what are we capable of giving to the program now, and what might have to wait?"

Lawson spoke first "Well as I'm sure you know, our situation is a tad precarious right now. Currently, as I'm sure Mr. Dalton will tell you, much of our economy is tied up in our armed forces right now."

"Indeed, currently and this is without hyperbole, half of our economy is tied up in maintaining our armed forces." Dalton chimed in.

"Indeed, so our first step before we contribute anymore to the Americans will be a mass demobilization. The sooner the better, though we must ensure all our men are paid their due, and the process goes as smoothly as possible, transitioning from one to another can be a might bit tricky. Then there's the matter of our colonies."

"Ah yes, you just came back from a trip to the East, how is the situation there?"

"Honestly, it's a bit of a powder keg. The Indians in particular are clamoring for independence as I'm sure you're aware, and we're slowly losing control of the situation over there. Gandhi and his movement have done a decent job of keeping a lid on most of the people there to prevent an all-out armed revolt, but it's still tenuous. Quite frankly Mr. prime minister, I'm not sure we can hold India and even if we wanted to, as the Lord of the Exchequer will tell you, we're spending at a lost to maintain control. We're at around 2.6 Billion pounds right now, and that's rising on the order of several million more a day. By 1947, we'll be spending close to three to hold on the whole thing. In short, if we're going to embark on a new series of exploration and settlement, then we'll need to get our finances in order." he finished with Chancellor Dalton nodding in agreement.

Atlee folded his hands together in thought as he examined the situation. In addition to the Initiative, he also had plans for reforming much of the social model in Britain, healthcare and other form of welfare and assurances for the population, well-earned after more than a half decade of strife and adversity. If they wanted to reap the benefits of the American program, while jump-starting their own reform efforts, on top of making payments to the Americans they'd need to make cuts and sacrifices somewhere, and it was looking increasingly like the colonies would be the place to do it.

"We'll definitely face some backlash, but we need to find the money somewhere, we'll need to start drawing up plans for a draw down and withdrawal from India, the sooner the better preferably. Get in contact with the Viceroy and start getting some consultations done. If we do this, we'll save a few billion pounds, and if we can do it with little muss and fuss, then we have several more locations we might want to consider as well. Now lets move onto the Rolls Royce Engines…"

January 13th, 1946

Ernest, The Professor and Catherine looked at the gate as the last of the soldiers streamed through back from Heliopolis. This was the last of the group that would be coming through for their first shore leave, to borrow a naval term. The British squad had volunteered to stay behind since they'd gotten to the base later than the rest of the personnel, and someone had needed to also bring the new relief squad up to date. In addition about twenty of the civilian personnel had also received permission to come back, a surprising number of them had decided to stay for an extended period rather than come home in the first wave (which consisted of mostly the married personnel), some like Dr. Norwich and Stevens were making surprising progress on many of the glyphs in the base, with Norwich confident he'd have the runic language cracked soon.

January 15th, 1946

"Do you have any idea what this means comrade?" Pavel asked Boris as they leafed through folders of communiques spies in Britain left for them. It was technically the purview of another department, but Pavel and Boris were the ones who usually got settled with the more esoteric letters and messages sent between nations and leaders.

"Eh, not really." Boris said as he took a puff from his cigarette. "Though my guess would be something to do with the Far East, most likely Japan."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but who have the Americans sent over that would warrant telling the British?"

"Dunknow. MacArthur and his team maybe?"

"Hmmm, well, we'll put this one in the pile for now. Let's get back to the bigger question, what's this Paperclip the Americans have been working on?"

January 17th, 1946

Ernest and Catherine were sitting in a small coffee shop in New York, catching up with each other after almost a year of absence. The past couple of days had been a flurry of activity, rescheduling the wedding, renting a small apartment in Watertown (since gate operations wouldn't be moved to the new base for at least another year), and enjoying each other's company. The group now on leave had been given a full three weeks off. While this was a bit longer than the time they had accrued, all agreed that being isolated for so long warranted some extra time off. Plus with lots of soldiers returning home, many of the men had no trouble finding plane or train rides to their corners of the country to be reunited with friends and family.

As he stirred several sugars into his coffee, he snuck a quick glance up and looked at Catherine, who smiled back at him. Grinning, he looked back down and gingerly took a sip. Delicious.

January 18th, 1946

Sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him, he pushed open the back gate of his house and ran into the field behind his house. He'd come upon him with no noise, and started the chase.

Don was running, he was close behind him now, but he couldn't shake him. It had seemed like the chase had been going on forever, but his hunter never seemed to waiver. He'd tried to hide in several spots, behind some bushes, even up a tree, but to no avail, his foe was just too good. Jumping down, his leg seemed to slow him down. Damn, he must have mussed it up getting out of the tree. Pushing the gate open, he went back into his family's backyard. He'd though he finally eluded his opponent, when suddenly a blow from behind his legs sent him to his knees. Sprawled out, he felt the arms of his captor around his neck and felt resigned as he was taken prisoner.

"Ha, gotcha, Dad!" the boy exclaimed as he climbed on his father after winning yet another game of tag.

Grabbing his son from his back, Don smiled as he lifted him up "You sure did George, I guess I'm just too slow for you."

"Ha!" his son laughed as he stood up and placed him on his shoulders. "Wanna play again?"

"Maybe later." he said as they walked towards the house "Daddy's got to rest, besides, I think your mother wants us cleaned up for dinner."

Ducking slightly so his son wouldn't hit his head on the ceiling, Don walked inside and was greeted to the smell of warm pot-roast. His wife, Molly, smiled at him as they entered.

"Dinner's almost ready you two, go wash up." she ordered as Don set George down, his son sprinting towards the bathroom. Walking to the kitchen sink, he quickly rinsed his hands and dried them before wrapping his arms around his wife and giving her a quick kiss on the forehead.

Grinning cheekily, she whispered "Martha's taking some of the kids to the community center tonight for a movie, I was thinking of sending George with them, give us some time to catch up." she said with a small wink.

"I'd think he'd like that." Don said "Is it the one with the cowboys and the train?"

"Mhh, nope, I think it's the one with the sailors in Hollywood."

Just then George ran back into the kitchen, reluctantly letting his wife go, don and his son sat down at the table as she set the hot meal down in front of the two. Taking a small moment to pray, the three sat in silence for a moment before digging in. Smiling, Don served his family several pieces he'd carved.

It was good to be home…

February 4th, 1946

With the first batch of personnel well rested and back from leave, the work at Heliopolis, which had slowed down for a bit, was finally starting to pick back up and the teams were hard at work on the next plan, actually exploring a non-hostile extra solar site.

With the recent discovery of additional addresses, both from the cartouche and a successful connection from a cold dialing (standard procedure had been to do random dials to find new locations that might not have been influenced or visited by Ra, and recently they'd gotten lucky), several self-contained atmospheric diving suits were sent through to Heliopolis. Heliopolis would conduct the initial survey of the planets, and then a team from Earth would be sent through.

Arbitrarily designated ES-4 through ES-53 (Since Earth was still Earth and the planet Ernest had connected to first, already designated ES-2, was also listed), these worlds were the first targets of exploration. Going in order, they tried ES-3 first, this had been the world found from the cold dial. They made a connection, and the probe reported no unusual activity. The video feed showed an empty field with the gate on a small raised stone platform, with the pedestal below on the field. So they geared up a gate diver in an atmospheric diving suit, attached an open-air cage containing a rat to it, and were preparing to send the diver through.

"Making final radio test, Simmons, can you hear me?" Ernest asked through the headset.

"Yeah, I read you, not sure again how I got roped into this duty again, I mean I saw the video, it looks nice, but what if the air is…I dunno corrosive or something and eats through my suit, or hell what if there's some weird bugs there that might detect my tasty human flesh and want a bite?"

Ernest looked over to Hammond and both rolled their eyes. Taking the radio, Hammond responded "Because you're currently the only one rated to operate one of those suits, Ernest can't go since it'd be a bad idea to send our leader through, and you're family has that underwater salvage company. Ergo, you're the one."

As he walked to the gate, Simmons continued "Yeah I realize that, but when I signed up for the army, I wanted to get far away from these damned bubble suits, not spend more time in them, we're training more guys for this right, I mean it's not a bad idea too…" his speech was interrupted as he walked through the gate, resuming several moments later "…have some more people who can use these things, since we have no clue what's out here. Oh, look, I'm here. When did that happen?"

"Do you see anything unusual?"

"Nope…Just lots of empty grassland, kind of reminds me of my uncles place out in the Dakotas"

"Is the rat fine?"

"Yep, little fella's just moving around in his cage, but he doesn't seem panicky or anything, just pissed that he'd stuck in a damn cage."

"Okay. Start the clock!" he yelled over his shoulder as a large clock began to spin. Radioing "Okay, you remember the mission, stay put for ten minutes just to make sure everything's on the up and up. After that dial back and come home. Do you remember the address?"

"Yep, sideways Y, triangle with two handles, line, little dipper, hour glass, curved line to the left, and whatever symbol wasn't on the Heliopolis pedestal."

"Good, well hopefully you'll be back no problem."

"Well, time to pass the time. Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine of beer…"

Ten minutes later the radio crackled once more "…Sixty six bottles of beer on the wall, sixty six bottles of beer!"

"Simmons! It's been ten minutes, you can come back now. Are the suit and rat fine?"

"Yep they're all good. I'll be back in a second."

"Okay."

Sure enough Simmons returned to Heliopolis with no problems, and his rat was no worse for wear. Happy with the initial success, Ernest radioed Earth to let them know the initial survey was a go…

February 4th, 1946

The rat didn't die, and the gate diver made a preliminary search of the area. Once that was confirmed as secure, Earth would dial in.

Paul Langford looked to the assembled group. They managed to put together another two squads, with Britain contributing one more. The count was now at six, four American and two British. This trip would be a little bit different though.
In the warehouse was a small fleet of vehicles that would be going to ES-3.

The British had sent a couple Daimler Dingos and a group of six Universal Carriers, though only three were going on this trip. Meanwhile, the US was sending two pairs through the gate, one pair of M8 Grey Hounds, and the other being a pair of M3 Scout Cars. The plan was to have the group do a thorough survey of the land around the gate, try to find civilizations they could meet with, or new resources that the program could use. While the initial impression was that the land was just an empty plain, Paul hoped the there might be more out there. If they discovered something, they could always move the gate closer to the source, since it had become apparent that gates and pedestals could be moved (they'd moved the Heliopolis pedestal a couple inches accidentally a couple weeks prior during a botched testing of the Portcullis (with the winch in the vicinity of the pedestal, they'd failed to secure it properly, so the metal grate dropped down and yanked the winch into the pedestal), and nothing bad had happened.).

The plan was to have the survey take five weeks. They were preparing to send a couple fuel trucks after the convoy to allow them to have a miniature base camp to stock up on supplies, and refill their vehicles jerry cans. Their first few tests would be to figure out a reliable means of long distance navigation on the world, since it was unknown if compass or basic celestial or solar navigation would work. If it did, then they were prepared to send a Piper Cub through to allow for a small measure of aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. Since it was easy to assemble and disassemble, they'd taken the wings off and kept the fuselage intact so that as few pieces as possible would need to be reassembled.

All in all, even with their limited resources, it was a quite impressive array of resources. They'd still only assembled a fraction of the forces they'd wanted for the Initiative, but it was still a strong start. They were still in the midst of acquiring a few more APC's and armored vehicles before they moved onto the next phase of acquisitions. Tanks. In addition to being a test for the smaller vehicles, this would also hopefully set the tone for future endeavors in the program.

Standing proudly in front of the two squads, stationed in their vehicles, he cleared his throat, felt a brief moment of deja' vu, then spoke.

"Gentlemen, I see you're all assembled. You've all been briefed about this program and it's goals. We stand here now at a new phase of human existence, one where were're not bound by the cradle of our world. This device has delivered us a new way of life and a way to move beyond the stiff confines of our world. The last time we sent an expedition of this magnitude through, we discovered an alien location so advance we haven't even scratched the surface of the potential of their technology, but if we could even tap into a fraction of it, we'll have secured a future for our people never before imagined.

"While we comb over that site, we now prepare to explore once more. This site is known as ES-3, from what we've seen it's a plain that extends far. We hope that's not all that's there. You will be apart of this grand endeavor, your goal will be to find something worth while beyond that gate. This site could be the start of something wonderful for our nation….no our people, and we need to simply reach out and find it. Good luck and god speed" he finished as the gate locked the last chevron and activated. Steping aside, he watched as the vehicles filed towards the gate. The Greyhounds buttoned up and went through first, followed by the Dingos, the Universal Carriers went through next, followed lastly by the M3's, whose crews, despite the shushing from their NCOs, were hooting and whooping as they went through the gate.

Paul smiled, he couldn't wait to hear about the discoveries the scouts would make…

March 5th, 1946

Paul dejectedly set the folder down as he read the latest report. Nothing, that's what had been found as ES-3, a whole load of nothing. They'd spend five weeks exploring the area around the gate, more than one hundred square miles and found a fat load of nothing. No alien ruins, no strange new minerals, no aliens. Just miles and miles and miles of plains. The one noteworthy was that apparently the aquifer beneath the plains was massive, based on some speculation by several of the biologists when went through, one they claimed that could be as big, if not larger than the Ogallala Aquifer. While that was nice for agriculture, it was hardly what Paul had been hoping for. The Piper Cub had reported a similar story; the plain went on for hundreds of miles. Paul was trying to get authorization for a larger plane that could carry more fuel, and more fuel trucks for a potential exploration convoy, they needed to explore more and try and find something. There had to be something there, he couldn't fathom why the aliens would place such an important piece of technology like the Stargate on a worthless place.

Hopefully more would come of it.

March 13th, 1946

An's hand wafted over the crystal as the final countdown for the test began.

"All systems operational…Subsystems optimal." he said as the lights flickered.

As the system began final tests he'd though about how they'd arrived at this point. The vile machines continued their relentless movement across Ida, devouring everything in their path. The warships of the Asgard had done their best, but were slowly losing their effectiveness, some were worried that even the mighty Bilskirnir class mother ship might not be able the stem the tide. While many were working on projects to build larger and stronger warships, An and his team were working the other way, creating smaller ships that could be manufactured more rapidly, but still wielded potent weaponry. The second component of his plan was the ability to build the ships using older parts and components from other ships used by the Asgard. While rapid fabrication technologies made much of that moot, repurposing old material rather than breaking it down and reassembling it could save valuable time. Initial tests were promising for the prototype, but now was the most important test, the hyper drive.

They'd worked with a small budget and few pieces of actual equipment, what could be reused was usually pressed into the more established designs, so the fact that they'd managed to secure an old navigational computer and new model hyperdrive was wonderful. They'd jumped over several testing steps, but if this worked, An's goals would be validated, and his people could potentially have a new weapon to turn back their foe.

"Initiating testing in three…two….one!" he said as he inserted the final crystal and watched as the ship disappeared in a hyperspace window. They hadn't placed any actual Asgard on the ship; just several blank clones to make sure the inertial dampeners were working properly. So far, all vital signs were good.

"Ship entered the window with no complications, hull integrity is fine, inertial dampener's are holding. Test is successful!"
"Excellent, bring the ship out of hyperspace and back here!"

"Yes sir, one moment….oh, oh dear." the technician said as the crystal flashed red.

"What is it?"

"I'm locked out of the navigational computer!"

"How? We made sure to purge all old data before using it!"

"I am unsure, but the ship is locked on a course and I can't override it!"

"What is our best estimate?"

"Well, we did repurpose a navigation computer from one of the old Evacuator freighters we used to use to move individuals between worlds. The system was fairly robust in order to make sure individuals made it to their intended destinations in case any failures were detected in the system. That lies in the secondary subroutines of the system, so that would have been unaffected by our purge. The ship most likely defaulted to its sub routines and is returning to its last location."

"If that's the case, then where's it going?!"

"Based on trajectory, it would appear it is leaving Ida, destination unknown."

"Can we catch it?"

"It's doubtful…We were using a new model hyperdrive, only our newest warships have those installed, and currently all of them are deployed on the frontlines…"

An curled his small hand into a fist in frustration, months of work gone, and who knew where they'd be able to get more resources. Sighing after several minutes, he finally spoke.

"Well, let's contact the shipyards to try and find new components…"

March 19th, 1946

Langford groaned as they rotated the gate's symbols once more to try and dial ES-4, and once again the slow hum started but then stopped once the last symbol was locked. Looking at the gate technician he frowned. Paul couldn't understand it. "What do you mean, it won't connect?" he asked.

"I mean, we get the sequence input, and it shakes, but it doesn't connect."

"Heliopolis connected to it less than an hour ago!" Paul exclaimed. "Ernest even said that Simmons reported the planet was heavily forested!"

"I know, Professor, and that's what doesn't make sense. We dialed Heliopolis just to be safe and everything is working fine with that. But when we dial ES-4, well…" he gestured to the inactive gate.

"Why not?"

"I don't know! The gate works fine, though. If I had to guess, I'd say that, for some reason, the connection can't be made from Earth. We have everything, but it's like we're missing that special something, and it takes a while to spin that gate around, it's not like Heliopolis where they can just dial and poof! I don't know what it is but it's like the gate is rejecting our command and..."

It hit Paul. "The pedestal!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"We don't have a pedestal like Heliopolis or ES-2 or those other sites. Maybe the pedestal device is critical to forming certain connections. Maybe some kind of alignment issue that the pedestal resolves. Like needing an operator to connect the phone line to its destination when you're making a long-distance call."

The operator furled his brow. "I guess that makes some kind of sense, but you were in charge of the group that was excavating this thing, there wasn't a pedestal there was there?"

"Well…no." the professor said, cursing his ignorance from nearly twenty years ago. "When we found the gate I was so excited, I moved a lot of our crews away from the other sites to focus on this. In hindsight, we might have left some stones unturned."

"Well that's not too bad, we just need to go back and dig, I'm sure.."

"No, the thing is after we left, dozens of other groups went over that area, there were a lot of expeditions there in the intervening years, from what my old colleges said when I visited a few weeks ago was that the site was picked clean of most artifacts."

"Well if that's the case, then who has the pedestal now sir?"

March 23rd, 1946, St. Petersburg, Russia, USSR

Joseph Orbeli clasped his hands in anticipation as the crates were gingerly wheeled off the trucks. "Careful! Careful!" he half shouted out of habit as the pieces were being slowly moved to their new home. The past couple of years had been difficult on the State Hermitage Museum, but with careful planning and hard work, he and his colleges had managed to save most of the priceless pieces of work in the Museum before the Nazis began their siege of the city. Now that the trains had brought the art back home from their temporary safe haven in Sverdlovsk, he'd been slowly working to try and add new pieces to the museum.

Currently they were preparing a new exhibit, one that would simultaneously showcase the great works of the world, and the glory of the motherland's soldiers.

His assistant walked up to him and checked several boxes on a form. "And this is the last shipment from Berlin, sir." he said. "We just have a small group incoming from Potsdam, but this is it."

"Excellent! We'll divide the works up accordingly; we'll have the paintings in one wing sorted by date and period. The larger pieces will need some more ordering and separation."

"Then there's also the matter of the artifacts the Nazis pilfered from Egypt."

"Oh yes, those will be in the Egyptian collection, I understand we recovered a surprising amount of them?"

"Yes it was quite interesting, apparently they had sent several expeditions to Egypt and found a number of artifacts, quite a few statues and other pieces of furniture mostly." He said as a large statue of a jackal headed man was pulled from the crate.

"Wonderful, they'll make excellent additions to the exhibit…"

Several hours later, Joseph Orbeli looked with pride at the newly expanded collection from Egypt, the liberated material adding more splendors to the hall. The statures made up a new centerpiece to the exhibit hall, but other pieces were given their own place as well, a sarcophagus containing a mummy was placed near the entrance, and a collection of furniture, with a ceremonial pedestal were placed near the exit. He made sure the workers polished the stones on the pedestal to bring out their natural beauty. He'd have to remember to assign someone to inspect the symbols on it as well, they didn't seem to match any hieroglyphs from the period, but perhaps this was a new find that was for an old temple.

Lost in thought he headed to the antiquities wing to inspect the new paintings…

April 1st, 1946

"...Aaaaaaaand with that, we have soil sample X-87 secure, moving to secondary site four sample collection of X-88" Dr. Monroe muttered to himself excitedly as he picked up a small vial of dirt and walked back towards the jeep.

Simmons was bored. ES-3 had no mystery or wonder to it, compared to the splendor that was the castle of Heliopolis, this place was more boring than a small farm on the plains, at least there you crops to watch out for, here, he only had an egghead to babysit.

He took a long dreg from his cigarette and sighed. When we learned he'd be going to other planets, he'd envisioned something more like the adventures he used to read out of the old magazines he used to read, ray guns, space princesses, amazing adventures, but so far all he did was sit around and occasionally go into one of the damned bubble suits. Hardly the glamour filled life of a space explorer he'd imagined.

As the doctor entered the jeep, Simmons sighed, back to the boring grind. Absentmindedly, he flicked his cigarette away and jumped into the drivers side of the jeep.

Suddenly a large fireball erupted several feet away, in the direction of his cigarette.

"THE FUCK?!" he screamed as he shielded his eyes. After several seconds, he lowered his arm to see a small fire burning over the ground.

"The fuc…" he started to say before Monroe chirped in.

"My goodness! Simmons…I think you found a natural gas deposit!"

"I wha..?"

"Yes natural gas, sometimes it exists in pockets close to the surface, or veins have shafts that extend upwards. It must have been seeping close up and that cigarette…How did I possibly miss that? Never mind, Simmons this is great, we finally hav…" The doctor was cut off as the fire began to expand around where the ball scorched the grass, quickly consuming the brownish plants that made up the plains.

"Oh shit!" they both yelled as Simmons hit the accelerator and drove towards the fire, if they were lucky, maybe they could use the wheels to stamp it down before it spread…

Later that day-Heliopolis

Sitting in the chair of his makeshift office, Lieutenant Hammond pinched the bridge of his nose as he listened to the two repeat their story again.

"So….You two started a wildfire after flicking a cigarette onto a natural gas pocket."

"It was an accident, honest!"

"Then you proceeded to spend the next hour and a half driving over the site putting out the fire with your wheels."

"Well yeah, we couldn't let the well burn, or let the fire spread out too far unless we wanted to endanger operations on ES-3 an…"

"At ease Simmons, I'm not mad at you, I'm just…I honestly at a loss for words. Your little discovery might have just given us some help, honestly."

"Sir?" Simmons asked.

"We've been stumped about what we're going to do with this site. Apart from some small scale agricultural efforts to supply Earth base and any other ES sites we might come across, there wasn't a lot of value here. Even a base would require fuel and it'd be inefficient to ship it through the Stargate each day. With the natural gas deposit here though, we could move the Stargate closer and even potentially establish a base of operations here, it'd give us a hell of a lot more room compared to Heliopolis that's for sure. We'll know more when Langford talks to Truman next month, in the meantime, I'll need you to go back and mark down exactly where that gas pocket was. If we're lucky there might be more there."

"Yes Sir." Simmons said as he turned to walk away.

"One more thing…You might want to shower, you're getting soot all over the place."

"Oh…" Simmons said as he locked down and realized his uniform was caked beneath a thick layer of dark brown soot.

"Whoops."