SUMMARY: Disappearing dreidels, reappearing dreidels, strange blue powder with unidentified genetic material, plus a good looking Rabbi - sounds like a job for Torchwood!

8 short chapters so you can enjoy all of Chanukah with the Torchwood Team.

Comments? Where are all my lovely readers - I know you're out there, don't be shy!

Jack and Owen drove over to the synagogue and arrived just as the bomb squad was pulling into their parking lot. They looked around for P.C. Andy, but saw he was occupied with getting the parking lot cleared. "We need to look at those dreidels before they blow them up," Jack growled. The two men jumped out of the SUV and raced over to where the bomb squad was setting up.

"Torchwood," Jack yelled, flashing them his ID. "We'd like to take a quick look at the crime scene before anything gets moved." The head of the squad gave his OK, but warned them not to touch anything. "If they are not dangerous, we'll give you some of them, but we don't know that yet, so please don't touch them."

Owen and Jack nodded their understanding. As they went to enter the synagogue, they were stopped by a man about Jack's age. He was medium height, with salt and pepper hair and a trim beard and mustache. He was dressed in slacks, a wool vest and a suit jacket.

"I'm Rabbi Katz," he introduced himself, shaking their hands, "may I help you?" When Jack explained that they were from Torchwood, the Rabbi looked surprised. As they went inside they saw the dreidels lying in a neat pile. "This wasn't here when we came in this morning. No one noticed anything until almost 10 o'clock. Fortunately, the teacher who discovered them knew better than to touch them. We called the police and evacuated the building immediately."

"Do you think all the missing dreidels are there?" Jack queried.

"Hard to say, I think 50 were stolen from the SUV, so most of them are here anyway. I suppose if they don't have to be blown up, we can count them and see."

At that moment, the police and bomb squad came in with a bomb sniffing dog. Jack, Owen and the Rabbi were asked to evacuate the building so they could inspect the entire facility for danger. The Rabbi refused. "If you are taking that dog through the sanctuary, I'll need to be present. I'm sorry, but I have to be certain that nothing is accidentally desecrated."

There was a little hemming and hawing with the police insisting that it was too dangerous. Jack smiled, "I think it's actually a good idea for the Rabbi to be present, he'll notice if anything is out of place. And I'm coming with as well."

Jack was surprised when the Rabbi looked at him, and said to him smiling, "You really think this might be part of an alien plot? We don't have enough enemies right here on earth, now we have to deal with aliens?"

Jack didn't know what to say. "We don't know what's going on anymore than you do. But some suspicious blue residue was noticed at some of the robbery sites, so we were called in just in case."

They looked carefully at the dreidels and Owen noticed some blue power just to the side of the pile. Owen went to sample some of it, but the bomb squad held him back. "Let's let the dog sniff it first, before we do anything else." A handler brought the bomb dog in who sniffed all over the entry area, but showed no particular interest in the dreidels. The handler then brought the dog over to the dreidels. He sniffed around the pile sneezing when he sniffed the blue powder. "Doesn't look too dangerous."

Jack asked Owen to wait for them outside while they finished the search. As the dog handler, Jack and Rabbi Katz began their search, he heard the rabbi ask, "Please, let's just keep this to ourselves, gentlemen. If the Sisterhood hears about me letting a dog with dirty paws in the sanctuary, I'm never going to hear the end of it." Jack and the handler chuckled. They walked through the rest of the building, including the classrooms, sanctuary, and administrative offices. The dog gave no sign of detecting anything.

The police indicated that they had one more step to take before the building could be declared safe. As they exited the building, a man in a hazmat suit came and carefully placed one of the dreidels in a sealed container. They took the container into the middle of the now empty parking lot and exploded it. It wasn't much of an explosion, just the charge they had attached to the container going off. So obviously there wasn't any incendiary device in the dreidel. They counted the remaining dreidels and determined that all 50 had been returned.

"We're going to take the rest of these for analysis, make sure there isn't any Ricin or other toxins on them that could be transferred by touch." At Jack's request they put two of the dreidels in a container for Owen to analyze back at the lab. Owen also scraped up a bit of the blue powder with a swab and sealed it in a plastic bag. The man in the hazmat suit treated the floor where the dreidels had sat to make sure that any possible contamination had been neutralized.

At the end of the search, the Rabbi sighed. "Well, I'm obviously glad that you didn't find anything, and all 50 dreidels have been accounted for, but this is so strange. To say that my congregation is a little shook up by this would be a bit of an understatement."

"Let's see if the lab analyses tell us anything," Jack advised. "We'll be in touch Rabbi, and thank you for your cooperation." The men shook hands and Owen and Jack made their way back to the SUV.

"So what do you think," Owen asked.

"Got me, but that blue powder is familiar…I just can't seem to think of where I've seen it before."

"Before, meaning here on earth?"

Jack shook his head 'no.'