By the time Cam, Teal'c and Sam made it back to the Mekrit city, the suns had almost slid below the horizon and a large, fat moon was rising to cast its soft light across the harbor. Sam sat at the window seat of their guest room in the main government building and looked down to the street below, to where many of those who had been at the ceremony were just making their way home. There was an eerie silence to the procession, which Sam could only put down to everyone being in shock.

She turned and looked over at Cam, who was lying on his bed with one hand rubbing at a sore spot on his ribs.

"You sure you didn't break anything?"

Cam stopped rubbing and let his hand fall to his side. "Na. Not much I can do about it even if I have."

"We should attempt to return to the Stargate," Teal'c said from the next bed. "The refusal of the Mekrit to assist us in recovering Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran is unacceptable."

"Relax, Teal'c," Cam said. "They simply want to play it safe and wait until morning."

Play it safe. Sam had predicted a tsunami and she had been right, only the unusual geography of the peninsula had protected the city but not some of the smaller islands farther out in the bay. By the time the wave had made it into the harbor, it did nothing more than produce an unusually large high tide. The Mekrit, swayed by centuries of experience living with such diverse weather conditions, had instantly dismissed any thought of sending a fishing boat to the island Daniel and Vala were on. It was too dark, the seas were too unpredictable, and there was no one willing to take them.

"There's also the length of the rupture to consider. It would take us hours just to navigate around the furthermost point and just as long to go the rest of the way to the Stargate," Sam added as an afterthought, and then returned to looking out the window. "The SGC will check in once we're overdue."

"Which will be in about..." Cam checked his wristwatch. "Twelve hours."

A bolt of lightning streaked across the darkening sky, illuminating the horizon with a flash of brilliance that reflected off the ocean. The wind was picking up again, and Sam thought she could just make out heavy clouds rolling in from the west. "Looks like a storm," she said softly as another flash of lightning seemed to strike the ocean.

"If this world did have a device similar to the Madronan Touchstone, then it would appear likely to have been stolen," said Teal'c.

"No, I don't think so." Sam got up from her window seat and moved to sit on her bed. "The weather on Madrona was extreme, far worse than what we've encountered here and on Earth. Madrona was almost tearing itself apart."

"You on to something, Carter?" Cam asked.

"No." She shrugged. "Well, maybe. More like hypothesizing. I think we can assume there is more than one Touchstone, which at this point we fairly well know to be true, unless the Mekrit stone was taken and given to the Madronans."

"Likely?"

"I don't think so. I think it's a more acceptable assumption that there is more than one Touchstone, and that whoever created them did so because they needed to terraform more than one planet. It could be that each Touchstone is specifically calibrated to the planet it was made for."

"Custom made?"

Sam turned to Cameron and smiled knowingly. "In its simplest form, yes. So whether the rogue NID team played with the calibration or not, the Touchstone they stole would never work on Earth, except to do the damage it did."

"Still hypothesizing?"

"I think I've gone all the way down to guessing."

"Yeah, well, your guess is better than most people's solid facts."

Teal'c stood up from his bed and moved to the place by the window Sam had vacated. He looked out over the ocean and towards the coming storm. "If you are correct, Colonel Carter, then it would seem that the Touchstone device is still here."

"That's what I'm starting to believe. I don't believe it's broken completely, or we would the conditions here would be virtually unlivable, but it could be damaged enough to upset the calibration."

"Then we must help these people find their Touchstone."

"Not now, Teal'c," Cam said, turning on to his lift side and cursing from the pain in his ribs. The window shutters rattled as a strong wind blew in from across the ocean, cold and crisp. "Now we sleep and hope that Jackson and Vala are doing the same."

~o0o~

"That's it, Daniel. One foot in front of the other, just like I'm sure you parents taught you."

"Whatever happened to not mocking the injured?" Daniel tightened his grip around Vala's shoulders just as she did the same with the arm she had around his waist. Getting out of the boat had been one obstacle overcome, not without a lot of swearing and a bout of what Vala called manly fainting, but trying to walk across a muddy and debris-strewn beach was proving to be something completely different.

"Pretty sure that only applies to the elderly. In any case, and I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we are about to be rained upon!"

"We need shelter."

"My idea of turning our little boat upside down and hiding underneath wasn't appealing enough for you?"

"Yes to the boat. No to the getting down on the ground and hiding bit."

Vala tightened her grip again as if to urge him on. "If it's any consolation, I didn't fancy waiting out the storm by sitting in the mud either."

There was barely any daylight left. The setting suns, one of which had already dropped below the horizon, gave them hardly enough light left to navigate their way across the debris-strewn beach. Most of the trees were gone and those that were left looked like something ghostly swaying in the building breeze.

"Ruins," Daniel wheezed, and dropped his head to his chest to squeeze out a pain-filled cough.

"Brilliant plan! And about as useful as an upturned boat in a storm. I could add it to our growing list of options, right along with pitching the tent we no longer have on the beach and climbing in to our one and only sleeping bag to share body heat."

"Let's call it Plan B."

"And Plan A is?"

"Me walking one foot in front of the other and getting off this beach."

"That we can do." Vala pointed their one and only surviving flashlight to a point ahead of her. "Not many trees and definitely no curly little flowers, but I'm fairly sure this is where the forest started, which means the ruins have to be... "

"You don't know?"

"Not exactly. I saw what I thought was left of the ruins when we were bobbing about in the ocean, but not so much from standing right here. I am, however, lamenting our lack of an actual map and before and after shots from Mother Nature's attempt at geological renovations! And don't ask me to try and visualize the forest because I may have to hit you."

"Seven hundred and twenty paces from where the guide left us to the outer edges of the ruins."

"You counted?"

"No, I guessed. Of course I counted. Lack of map, remember?"

"Counting steps isn't the same as knowing the way." Strange that trying to validate an answer should be given an instant boost when a streak of lightning shot across the evening sky, followed a few seconds later by a massive clap of thunder. Vala ducked instinctively and almost brought Daniel down with her. "Well," she said, straightening up and smiling nervously, "that was close."

"Too close."

"Seven hundred and twenty paces straight ahead?"

"Give or take." Daniel followed the beam of her flashlight and nodded forward. "Probably give."

The 'give' was considerably more than the amount of paces Daniel had predicted. By about the time they had reached eight hundred, Vala was ready to lower Daniel down to the ground and wrap them both up in the sleeping bag, but the coming storm was building in intensity and pushing them forward.

"There," Vala said ten minutes later as the beam of her flashlight hit the large rock she had found earlier that day. "Ever so humble, but it'll have to be home."

"No." One hand still wrapped around his chest, Daniel reached for Vala's flashlight and shone it in the direction of the temple ruins. "That way."

"That way to where, Daniel? What I could see in daylight, and from a considerable distance, was nothing more than a few rocks. Probably what was left of one of your walls. It's all gone."

"Not like you to give up so easily," he huffed around a half-smile. "The lower levels should still be there."

"Under how much water? I much prefer Plan C, which was actually Plan A but minus the boat. Daniel, we are about to be rained on! We have one pack, missing half its contents, and one sleeping bag. It's dark, I'm cold, you're injured and bleeding, and-"

"Vala."

"Oh, I know, darling." She sighed theatrically and slipped her right arm back around his waist. "Nothing to be lost by looking, right?"

Vala was right about there not being much left to find. Night had taken over the island, and the light from the rising moon was shrouded by clouds from the coming storm. The sky was angry.

The light from her flashlight cut through the darkness and settled upon an outcropping of uniformly shaped rocks. Earlier in the day they had been mostly moss-covered and camouflaged behind a veil of tropical plants and exotic flowers, but now they were laid bare and very exposed in the flattened forest.

"If this is it, then there's not much left to speak of."

Daniel nodded slowly and was prepared to agree with her, but instead reached for her flashlight and shone it off to the right of the rock pile. "There," he said, when the beam settled on a dip in the ground and then appeared to dissolve into the darkness. "The wave must have washed away the sediment around the lower ground floor."

"I thought you said it was gone? Squashed."

"No. Come on." He pushed her forward until they were standing on the edge of where the beam had disappeared.

And that was where Vala took one step more than Daniel did... and vanished.

"Vala!" yelled Daniel as he tried to follow her descent through the darkness. "Vala!"

"Ow," came Vala's muffled reply. Daniel grabbed his injured side with his left hand and waved the flashlight around with his right hand until he found her sprawled at the bottom of a ditch, just a few feet down.

"You okay?"

"No, Daniel. I landed on my..."

"Butt?"

"It's not funny!"

"No," he conceded with a smile, "but at least it cushioned the blow."

"You do realize it is impolite to remark on a lady's behind!"

Laughing hurt too much, so Daniel settled for distracting himself by getting a wider view of where Vala had fallen. Where the ruins had once stood there was now a decent sized but not too deep hole in the ground that was shored up at one end by an ancient wall. Directly opposite the wall, the wave had gouged a trough that led straight to the ocean. Daniel suspected at some point in the temple's history the trough had most likely been a paved walkway, which was why soil had been so easily carried away. Some of the massive stones that had once constituted the framework of the upper levels of the temple were now scattered about the floor of the hole, and others had probably been dragged out to sea.

"You knew?" Vala called out from below, gingerly picking herself up and following the beam of light as Daniel circled it around the hole and back to the wall.

"I suspected there might have been a lower floor and possibly more than one room, simply because most civilizations that reach a period in their construction history where they develop the tools to work stone tended to get more grandiose in their designs."

"Well, that was a mouthful. You couldn't have just said yes?"

"Without qualifying my answer?"

"No. Without confusing me. I don't suppose you can get down here?"

To Daniel's right, the lip of the trough started to slope downwards. "Yeah. Just give me a minute."

TBC