Chapter 7

The team awoke the next morning as the sun shown through the entrance of the tunnel. It had been a long and quiet night, and though each member had taken their fair share of guard duty with the exception of Daniel, who had held out several extra hours out of undue guilt, everyone felt well rested for what they were sure was going to be a long and uneventful walk. They ate breakfast, melted snow from the tunnel entrance to refill their water canteens for the trip, and then started on their way.

The going was much easier inside the tunnel than it had been outside. There was no snow to trudge through here, and the ground was level and primarily made up of gravel that had eroded off of the mountain side.

"So, Carter," Jack said, in much better spirits than the previous night now that he was no longer in danger of dying from the cold, "how far is it now?"

"I'm not sure, sir. The pass looked pretty straight from the U.A.V.'s scans, but this tunnel could twist and turn any number of ways before we find the end."

"Yeah, well just so long as we get there and find what we need to find the gate and get home."

"I don't think it's going to be that simple, Jack," Daniel said hesitantly.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

Count on Jack O'Neill to expect the most complicated things to be simple . . . Daniel pursed his lips a moment and then let the comment go unsaid."Chances are we're going to find more of the same writing in the ruins as what we saw on the device. If that's true, I have no way to translate it…"

"You'll find a way. You already know it has something to do with history."

"With the history of the planet, yes, and thank you for the vote of confidence, but…"

"Aht!" Jack said, cutting Daniel off with a violent wave of his hands. "I don't wanna hear it! You'll figure it out!"

Daniel let it go at that. He knew Jack had confidence in him, though he wasn't one to mention it often. Daniel also had confidence in Jack. It was something that had grown between them over the past four years through their friendship and the very nature of their job. It was just very rare when they agreed about anything. Yet Daniel also knew that part of Jack's insistence that he would figure out the translation came from Jack's refusal to be stuck on a frozen and barren planet for the rest of his life, and that refusal alone could not get them home.

The team walked at a good pace, trying to keep up a light conversation as they walked while still remaining cautiously aware of their surroundings. It was soon discovered that the tunnel did indeed weave from right to left, but it always headed in the general direction of the city. Since they sometimes came to bends where there was no way to tell what they would find around the corner, Jack often had to halt the conversation and have the team creep forward silently for a time, weapons drawn in case of danger. Each time, all they found was more tunnel, brightly lit and indistinguishable from what they had already passed through.

By the tenth or so time he called for silence only to find more tunnel ahead, Jack began to get impatient.

"Are we sure we're not going in circles here?"

"Without the U.A.V. to indicate our position relative to the end of the pass, no sir." Sam said, checking for the U,A.V.'s signal. "It has probably run out of fuel and crashed somewhere within the ruins by now. I'm not receiving a signal, but then again, there hasn't been once since…"

"Since it snowed?" Jack grumbled irritably.

"Yes sir."

"Nice."

"It seems unlikely that this path is leading us in circles, O'Neill," Teal'c said as his deep voice echoed around them. "We have yet to reach any kind of crossroad where we would have to choose one direction over the other."

"Teal'c's right, Jack. Besides, if there was a right and a wrong way, I'm sure there would've been some kind of sign by now." Daniel said as he ran his hand gently along the wall, making it glow brighter beneath his hand. "Of course, it looks like it's not possible to put a mark on these walls anyway… "

"Oh, we'll just see about that," Jack muttered as he pulled out his swiss army knife.

Uh oh.

"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Putting a mark on the wall. I'll be damned if we're going around in a circle for the next twenty years!" Jack raised the knife in his hand and made to hack the wall with a downward swing.

Yet instead of the distinctive chopping sound Jack wanted, all he got was silence and a bright glow from where his blade had hit the wall. Looking at his knife, Jack discovered that it had been bent in a perfect ninety degree angle at the handle.

Sam and Daniel tried to muffle their chuckles while Teal's eyebrow rose in amusement.

"Fine," Jack barked, slightly embarrassed that some piece of alien technology had messed up his plans again. "I'll just do it this way!" He placed the tip of the bent blade in the dirt of the floor and stepped on it, pressing it deep into place. The red handle was impossible to miss lying in the dark gravel. "I dare some bird to try and eat that!" With that, the Colonel spun on his heals and began marching again.

Daniel and Sam broke into a suppressed fit of silent laughter while Teal'c stood watching them, perplexed.

"It's a reference to an old fairytale called Hansel and Gretel," Daniel tried to explain, still smiling broadly. When Teal'c's eyebrow continued to climb up his forehead, Daniel just said, "I'll loan you the book when we get home. Come on. We'd better catch up."