Chapter 4

By the end of the day, Major Carter, Teal'c, Col. O'Neill, and Doctor Fraiser had received the go-ahead from Hammond, gathered supplies, and were standing in front of the Stargate in preparation for another mission. There was an unusual tension in the air, and silence from the group as each member of the team worried for their missing teammate.

As they all waited impatiently through the countdown, Carter glanced aside at O'Neill and asked under her breath, "How was Daniel doing when you left him?"

Without taking his eyes off the Stargate, the colonel answered with his customary flippancy, "Fine. To tell the truth, I don't really see much difference between this and the way he usually talks."

Carter suppressed an anxious smile and dropped her eyes. "I'm worried about him, too, sir."

"Chevron 4, encoded..."

Meanwhile, in his office, Daniel was trying his best to get some work done. Most people would have said he should be resting...

But I just can't stand the pity on everyone's faces, he fumed to himself. I'm not useless. I can still work on these translations.

He had been working since he'd been released from the infirmary, in fact, making notes in his characteristic cramped scrawl. Something was bugging him, niggling at the back of his brain, but he just couldn't figure out what it was. If only he could think straight...

It wasn't until he turned back to his notes, glancing over his earlier writing, that he realized the notes were completely useless.

Might as well be written in Jabberywocky, he thought with a snarl of disgust as he flipped through pages of notes written in gibberish. He dropped the stack of paper in the trash a bit more forcefully than necessary, and sat back heavily in his chair, feeling defeated.

As he sat, trying to think of something useful to do, his attention was slowly drawn to the box of artifacts brought back from the planet.

A small box amongst the various objects caught his interest. It was the same small, sand-colored cube he had found near the building that had started this whole business. Something about the runes carved over its surface caught his eye, and he couldn't look away.

A faint crease of concentration appeared on his brow, until suddenly he turned to his bookshelf and searched through the stacks of reference material until he had retrieved an old, dusty, and little used dictionary from the back of his bookshelf. Carefully, he dusted a thin film of grime from the cover, and pulled it open, barely suppressing a sneeze.

He flipped through the pages, his intelligent eyes roaming from the cube to his book, and occasionally turning the cube over for a new perspective. After awhile, he shut the dictionary, and turned the cube over in his hands a few times. He wondered at the purpose of the object, and this curiosity demanded experimentation.

Without any obvious aim, he poked and prodded. Maybe it opens... he mused, trying to find a seam or hinges to indicate a lid of some sort. Suddenly, his fingers hit what seemed to be the proper combination, and a brilliant light spilled forth, nearly blinding him in its intensity.

In the gate room, the countdown continued. Colonel O'Neill would swear that the countdown got slower with each trip through the gate.

"Chevron seven; locked!"

As the familiar blue event horizon of the Stargate exploded into being, O'Neill resisted an urge to let out a relieved sigh. Instead, he strode forward. "Okay, let's go, kids."

Suddenly, alarm klaxons sounded, and the main doors of the gate room slowly opened. Shocked, and tensed for some sort of trouble, the colonel turned toward the doors. However, beyond the yawning entryway, he saw only Daniel, who was not looking happy at all. "Daniel? What the…"

He was soon interrupted by Major Carter at his shoulder, hissing worriedly, "I thought you said he was 'fine'?"

By this time, Daniel had moved to stand in front of them, blocking the ramp. O'Neill reacted on instinct to the usually frustrating archeologist, every muscle in his body tensing with anxiety, "Daniel...? Now's not the time to be playing games..."

When Daniel failed to get out of the way, the colonel reached out to catch his arm. Rather than allow himself to be pulled away, Daniel grabbed O'Neill's shoulder. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and O'Neill was pierced to the core by the look of terror in his friend's eyes.

O'Neill kept holding Daniel's arm, and sent a significant look to the other team members. Both Teal'c and Sam were tensed and anxious, and Doctor Fraiser looked extremely worried. "Sir," the doctor murmured, "I think we should get him back to the infirmary."

"Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up, with a significant glance toward the observation deck. "The Stargate should have disengaged by now."

Suddenly, as though cued by Teal'c's observation, several guards ran into the room, flashing weapons that were instantly trained on Daniel. "Don't shoot!" O'Neill shouted at the guards, throwing up a hand defensively. "Look, let's just...everyone calm down here."

Unfortunately, this was just the opening Daniel seemed to be waiting for. When the guards entered, O'Neill's hand loosened on Daniel's arm, and with a sudden jerk he pulled free and darted for the rippling blue of the Stargate.

"Daniel!" Colonel O'Neill shouted, but he needn't have wasted his breath. Before the guards could fire a shot, Teal'c had fired his zat gun, hitting Daniel in the back and felling him just short of the event horizon. As Daniel went down, his glasses clattered off his face and through the Stargate, just in time for the gate to shut down.

O'Neill wasted one moment for a worried look at the archeologist, then sent a significant look to his Jaffa team member. "Teal'c, help the doctor get him to the infirmary. Hold him down if you have to, but I want an explanation."

From there, Fraiser took over, already kneeling beside the semi-conscious form of SG-1's linguist. "Okay, I want him in isolation until we figure out what was going through his head," she announced, with her usual no-nonsense, business-like tones.

With Daniel taken care of for the moment, O'Neill gestured toward Carter. "Come with me. I want to know why it took them so long to get the gate down."

As O'Neill and Carter ran up the spiral staircase leading up to the observation deck, they were greeted with a shocking view. Where there should have been a panicked bustle of activity, there was simply a powdery, almost greasy smell on the air. On the floor lay the bodies of the crew who should have been shutting down the gate.

While O'Neill looked on with a scowl, Carter ran to the closest body for a quick examination. When she looked up, her wide blue eyes were full of worry. "Sir, they're unconscious... What did he do to them?"

O'Neill stubborn gaze met Carter's. "I don't know. But I intend to find out."

"Look, I care about Daniel as much as any of us, but I'm sorry. The mission's scrubbed."

Hammond's words hung over the heads of SG-1 like a pronouncement of doom.

O'Neill glared icily, but to everyone's surprise it was Sam who spoke up. "Sir, we can't do that."

Hammond's brows rose over his narrow forehead in surprise. "And why not?"

Sam gave a nervous look to her commanding officer, but O'Neill had momentarily forgotten his anger as he looked with equal shock at Sam. Her blue eyes flicked back to Hammond, but she was determined. "Because Dr. Fraiser says that Daniel's getting worse. Clearly he's being influenced by something...other."

Neither of the men looked convinced, so she shook her head and resolved to break it down even further. "If Daniel stays here, in the state he's in, who's to say what will happen? If he's too far gone, we might not be able to contain him..."

By the thoughtful look on Hammond's face, and the suddenly interested look in O'Neill's eye, she could tell that she was getting through to them. "For that matter, think of how many times we've been affected by an alien artifact, only to get sick as soon as we got home."

Hammond's thoughtful look devolved into a frown, and Sam's heart sank. "But wasn't he already affected on the planet? You said in your report that he was talking gibberish before you ever came back, is that correct?"

Sam gave a weak smile, unable to even convince herself that she wasn't grasping at straws. "Yes, sir."

The general gave a heavy sigh. "I want to see Daniel get better, really I do. But he was obviously trying to get to the Stargate. The fact remains that we have no way of knowing what his intentions were."

Finally, O'Neill could not hold himself back any longer. "He wasn't trying to hurt anyone," the colonel stated, with disgust at the very idea. "I got a good look at him. He was terrified. Whatever's going on in that cr...brilliant head of his, it isn't visions of mass murder." A beat passed, before he managed to tack on with barely contained sarcasm, "Sir."

Teal'c chose this moment to put his word in, and every head in the room turned toward him. His words fell in a gentle bass into the sudden silence, "I also believe that Daniel did not intend harm."

Carter glanced around the table then back to Hammond, with a determined passion in her eyes. "With all due respect sir," her voice held the slight strain of forced calm, "If Daniel does turn into some sort of...alien-controlled sociopath like you're suggesting, don't you think it would be in our best interest for it to happen on an uninhabited alien planet than here on Earth?"

Silence fell in the wake of that cold stroke of logic, as the remaining members of SG-1 waited with baited breath for Hammond to make a decision.

"Alright," Hammond said finally, and ignored the faint noise of triumph from O'Neill. "You have a go. On the condition!" He had to raise his voice and lift a hand to recapture their attention. "On the condition that Dr. Fraiser approves."