Major Luke Palmer grinned tiredly at the pretty nurse, Lt. Ortiz, taking his blood. He was glad to get home. Five days of babysitting a bunch of nerdy scientists had been like babysitting his own kids. Except his own kids obeyed him. And they didn't squabble over every damn chicken scratch they found. And they were cleaner, too.

Well, maybe that was going a bit far. The diarrhea that had cut the trip short by a few hours had taken down half of his men in addition to five out of six of the archeologists. He glanced over at Kelly. Who would have thought that the 98-pound weakling in a bunch of lightweights would be the only one of them not to get sick?

The guy was making up for not being actually ill by hyperventilating at the thought that he might become ill. The rest of them were whining like a touch of the squirts was the end of the world. Palmer was hard put not to let the whole bunch of them know what he really thought of them. Fortunately for them, he was a professional, and he kept his thoughts to himself, and his expression bland.

He looked up at the approach of footsteps, and unconsciously straightened when Colonel O'Neill entered the infirmary, the Jaffa Teal'c a step behind. The man's eyes slid over him and fastened on Jonas Quinn a few beds away. Palmer had heard stories of things that had happened to mission commanders who had not taken what O'Neill considered proper care of the SG1 team members loaned to them.

Palmer wasn't concerned. Yes, the Kelownan had come down with the diarrhea, but he could hardly be blamed for that. And, he'd heard the rumors that O'Neill had only allowed him on the team because the brass were pressuring O'Neill to accept a Russian.

Palmer could believe the rumors. Quinn had done nothing to impress him over the last five days. He wasn't a whiner like the rest, but he didn't have any 'Daniel Jackson Eureka' moments either.

He glanced over at the Kelownan who chose that moment to go dead white, and stumble off the bed in desperate search of a bathroom. He should have expected what happened next.

"Palmer! What the HELL did you do to my geek?" O'Neill was up in his face, murder in his eye.

The major resisted the temptation to swallow hard, and keeping the fear out of his voice replied, "Nothing, sir. They all got sick. Couple of my men, too. We think it may have been a bad batch of MRE's."

O'Neill backed off a step and looked around, seeing the series of pale faces for the first time. Palmer held his breath, but the colonel eventually nodded and rolled his eyes by way of apology. "Sorry." O'Neill muttered.

"Not a problem, sir."

With a wave encompassing the indisposed archeologists, O'Neill asked softly, "So, did they find anything?"

"Other than new ways to aggravate me? No, sir, nothing." Palmer's reply was just has soft, knowing that if the scientists heard him, they'd all leap from their sick beds to screech out their pet theories.

O'Neill looked at him with something akin to sympathy and nodded. He turned away to Quinn who had hobbled out of the bathroom, and Palmer headed out the door to a debriefing with General Hammond.