He must have fallen again, and this time into the creek because water splashed into his face. He choked and coughed, wondering if it might not just be better to lie here and drown.

Survival instincts kicked in, and Daniel Jackson crawled back onto his feet, swaying unsteadily and dripping fat droplets of cold mountain spring water. People pay good money to drink this wove crazily through his soaked brains.

The stitch in his side pinched at him, and he clutched at a sapling. It bent but gave him just enough stability to keep from pitching over onto his face again. Daniel shuffled forward through the water. He was far enough away from Fiedler, he reasoned, that he could afford to try to lose his pursuers. If they hadn't found the kid by now, chances were that they weren't going to. Which was a good thing, because the parting instructions he gave Fiedler were to crawl blindly up to the road and go for help. With luck, Fiedler's vision would have returned. With even more luck, Fiedler would do as he was told.

He heard rustling several hundred yards away, and peered through the midnight blackness. Daniel snorted silently. It didn't matter whether or not Fiedler could see. There was enough cloud cover to make perfect eyesight useless.

The Jaffa held up his hand to halt his followers. "There."

All six stopped, and Teal'c was morosely pleased that not one bumped into the man in front of him in the fashion of The Three Stooges, a Tau're entertainment group that elicited laughter from its audience by treating each other in a fashion that would get them killed in short order should they attempt such antics on Chulak. Teal'c had persuaded ColonelO'Neill to obtain several disks of these 'movies' and was studying them diligently in an attempt to understand this adopted home world of his. It was discouraging, and he made frequent mistakes. For example, Teal'c had learned that poking a team member in the eye was unacceptable behavior but emulating the nonverbal noises such as 'nyuck, nyuck, nyuck' was. And when he had requested an explanation from DanielJackson, the archeologist had launched into a lecture that even MajorCarter would have found difficult to fathom.

Nevertheless, now was not the time to explore those customs, not for him and neither for the group behind him. He listened carefully, his own hearing demonstrably more acute than that of the Tau're. There was a single being stumbling through the undergrowth, stopping frequently as if to listen. The being did not move purposefully but in random fits and starts. Teal'c was uncertain; evidence at the crash site showed that both DanielJackson and the federal agent had left together. Teal'c could only hear one.

The sounds did not suggest a being in any great control of his actions, and Teal'c elected to take a chance. He raised his voice. "DanielJackson?"

A sudden hush, then—"Help!"

"Fiedler?" Micaletti pushed past Teal'c. "Fiedler, that you?"

"Agent Micaletti!" The relief in the agent's voice was palpable. "I thought you'd never find me! Help me; I can't see!"

Micaletti grabbed Fiedler by the shoulders, easing the man down to the ground. Even in the pallid moonlight Teal'c could tell that the young agent was pale, blood painting his face. His clothes were torn and leaves dotted the holes. Micaletti settled him on the cold ground. "What happened? Where are the terrorists?"

"Where is DanielJackson?" Teal'c added.

The shakes had started. The forensics specialist eased into the group, shining a pencil flash at Fiedler's face, dabbing at the encrusted blood while Fiedler babbled out an account of what happened. Teal'c listened in stony silence, his features giving away nothing in the dark night.

"He left me there, and drew the terrorists off," Fiedler finished. "I never saw them. I heard them speak as they passed me by—it was Farsi. Dr. Jackson was right. I don't understand it myself, but I recognized some of the words."

"Was he injured?" Teal'c demanded.

"I don't think so. If he was, I couldn't tell. He helped get me out of the car when I was stuck, and then he ran off into the night to lead them away. They would have killed me like Turner and Lee if I had been left in the car." To his credit, the translator kept the statement from turning into a whine with a tearful nose snuffle.

The forensics specialist butted in. "I need to get this man out of here so that I can properly treat him. Somebody give me a hand."

Had this been one of the Three Stooges movies, Teal'c reflected, someone would have clapped, and the audience would have roared with laughter. Instead, Micaletti gestured to another agent who helped hoist Fiedler to his feet and guided him up the slope to the cars above. Teal'c could hear all three of them stumble their way through the dark, and gave fervent thanks that his own team did not contain any as clumsy as these federal agents. He struck out onto the trail once more, leading the remainder toward DanielJackson. There was little time.

I really don't feel good, Daniel reflected. Is this where the phrase 'spilling your guts' came from? It was a good thing that it was so dark; from the taste of it he suspected that what had just been ejected from his stomach contained a large quantity of blood. No matter; the mess was rapidly being washed away downstream where he could ignore it and pretend that the delay never happened. He rinsed his mouth out, now grateful that the water was so cold, and staggered back to his feet. His pursuers were close behind.

He had to keep moving, he reminded himself. Far from losing them, the terrorists instead were catching up. It was difficult to gauge from the sounds but they could be as close as a few hundred yards away or less. Maybe it was time to find a hiding spot? That sounded like an excellent idea: no more running, just crawl into a hole somewhere, wake me up when it's over. The dark night would help cover his tracks and let the men pursuing him pass on by.

There were no good places to hide, so he settled for a copse of bushes that had grown up and around a fallen tree trunk. He crawled underneath the tree, biting back a curse as no less than three branches struck him across the face, and pulled the rest of the shrubbery in after him.

In bare seconds the terrorists were there, and Daniel blessed his luck. Had he tried to stumble on, they would have been on him by now and he would be a dead man. He breathed through his mouth, trying to keep silent, keeping inside the little whimper that wanted to escape as the stitch in his side escalated into a full-blown jack hammer. The pair moved on.

Only to double back as they realized that they'd lost the trail. Daniel's heart sank.

O'Neill paused before getting into Frauhoffer's car to leave the terrorist camp, spotting something glittery on the ground. There was something familiar about the shape. It caught his eye, triggered an unpleasant memory.

Naw. It couldn't be. This was good ol' Earth. He was seeing things. O'Neill really didn't recognize it, he just thought that he did. All he saw was an idle piece of scrap metal. He was on vacation, and things like this didn't happen on vacation. It was why he was on vacation in the first place, so that things like this would stop happening to him at work.

But it nagged at him. Red flags were running up the flagpole, screaming out alarm klaxons. And if he didn't take the two seconds to pick up that supposed piece of metallic trash, he'd be thinking about it the rest of the trip back to haul Daniel out of the mess he'd gotten himself into, and that would interfere with O'Neill's flawless driving technique and then wouldn't Daniel be sorry if O'Neill got there too late to save him? And after that O'Neill would have to drive all the way back over here to the terrorists' camp after the whole affair was over just to satisfy his curiosity. Better just to bend down and get it over with, and then he could get on with this business of saving Daniel from himself. Damn linguist, always listening when he ought to have been on vacation from everything associated with work. This was all Daniel's fault.

Nestling the car keys in his hand he darted over to pick up the offending piece of trivia—and froze. He wasn't wrong. Colonel Jack O'Neill wasn't seeing things. He wasn't merely jumping at shadows.

What the hell was a Goa'uld arm band doing in a terrorist compound? Even an arm band as badly mangled as this one?

Things suddenly got a whole lot more serious, and they were serious enough already. O'Neill considered; he was certain that the Goa'uld wasn't present here in this compound. O'Neill was good, but a Goa'uld symbiote was a lot stronger than it looked, and the thing in human form would have gotten up and made mincemeat of O'Neill and Frauhoffer and then calmly finished its tea and crumpets. Therefore the Goa'uld had left the camp. Which meant that it was on its way somewhere else, say to a train depot to plant a bomb. That sounded like a Goa'uld modus operandi: cause chaos and strife, then step in to rule the world.

If the Goa'uld wasn't present, then Frauhoffer was safe enough for the time being. There was still the option of containment, of not letting this information leak out to the general public. But in order to contain it, they needed to find the damn snake. There were four empty bunks, therefore four missing terrorists. Two were waiting for Carter at the airport, therefore two were hunting Daniel. This whole scenario was starting to make a little more sense. Terrorists wouldn't care about tracking down one of the elite few humans on this planet who could read Goa'uld, but a Goa'uld sure would. And if there was a mole or two among the Federal agents as Teal'c suspected, then information about a certain civilian specialist would have flowed like water down hill. The Goa'uld would be on Daniel's tail before he could bark, "Kree!"

Goa'uld liked to hunt humans. O'Neill was betting on Daniel. He had to bet on Daniel. Any other gamble was unacceptable.

He pulled out his cell. Call number one went to General Hammond. Despite it being nearly two AM he got the general, groggy and tired. Within seconds the general was no longer groggy, and a crack team was on its way to Minnesota, twelve hours be damned, armed and ready for anything that a Goa'uld could dish out. Call number two went to Carter through a federal agent's cell phone.

"Colonel? Have you found Daniel yet?"

"Not yet, Carter. I'm on my way there now. But we've got problems with eyes glowing in the dark." He filled her in, keeping the details sufficiently vague so that anyone listening in wouldn't understand. "I don't think they're on your end, Carter, but keep your eyes peeled. One of your boys might be more than he seems. How soon before you get to the airport?"

"Another half an hour."

"Stall as much as you can. Don't take chances. General Hammond is sending back up; I want you to wait until some of that firepower is at your disposal. We can always send 'em back for a Frasier special to check 'em out. O'Neill out."

Never could get used to cell phones, O'Neill mused, punching in the speed dial. 'O'Neill out' was what he used on radio communications. This was a cell phone; he should have simply said 'good-bye' or 'dismissed' or some such military crap. Amazing the foolish thoughts that went through the mind under stress. He dialed again, this time to Carter's cell that she had loaned to Teal'c. The cell jingled electronically in his ear, and O'Neill waited, cursing, for Teal'c to answer.

The Jaffa didn't. The call switched over into the voicemail after four rings, with Carter's chirpy voice inviting the caller to leave a message. O'Neill declined. This didn't sound good. O'Neill hated being left out of the loop.

He put his foot on the gas pedal, pushing the fed's car as fast as it would go over pock-marked dirt roads.

Daniel held his breath, willing the terrorists to move on. I've gone downstream, he thought as hard as he could, wishing that telepathy was a reality here and now, that's why you can't find any tracks. Go!

Reverse telepathy in action. They saw where he'd fallen to his knees in the creek, playing a pencil flash over the sight and noting the disturbed branches and underbrush. They circled closer and closer, looking over the area, eliminating any open spot. They tore apart the first grouping of bushes that Daniel had seen and bypassed as too sparse. They approached the second where he lay hidden and pulled back the branches.

Daniel briefly considering springing to his feet and dashing away. His legs vetoed the idea in no uncertain terms.

It was over. They had found him.

And, to his horror, one set of eyes glowed inhumanly with mocking satisfaction.