The first thing Daniel noticed as he entered the gateroom was that the beta gate now stood where the old stargate had been. The blank wall had ceased to be an uncompromising dead end and had regained is rightful role as a backdrop to the giant ring. Just the sight of the gate was comforting, Daniel thought. It looked reassuringly normal; as though at any moment the unstable vortex that Sam called the 'kawoosh' would burst out, linking them to another world. With the stargate there, the SGC felt connected.
Beside the gate, two men were debating, or - more accurately - squabbling. Daniel was too far away to hear what they were saying, but the gestures and body language made the tension between them quite clear. Daniel felt compelled to watch them in the way that a naturalist might observe wild animals in their natural habitat.
At the foot of the stargate knelt a man who, to Daniel's amusement, looked like a stereotypical scientist. He had untidy light brown hair and the quick nervous movements of someone with an excitable disposition. He held a small device connected to the stargate by a spaghetti of leads and appeared to be taking some sort of measurements whilst muttering in a language that didn't sound familiar to Daniel. He said something abrupt which, from the intonation, might have been a swear word and then waved his arms in an exasperated manner in the general direction of the ramp. The other man, (who Daniel surmised must be Dr McKay as he seemed to be in charge), stood with a laptop balanced on his forearm, frowning as he typed away one-handed and occasionally glaring at his colleague.
"Hey - er…how's it going?" Daniel asked politely, walking over to them.
The lap-top carrying scientist glanced up with a scowl. "It would go a lot better without all these interruptions" he responded sarcastically. He looked Daniel up and down. "Do I know you?"
"Daniel Jackson, SG-1." Daniel replied, holding out his hand. After a moment he withdrew it as it became apparent that McKay had no intention of introducing himself.
"SG-1, the great heroes of the moment" McKay said with a disparaging laugh "always there to save the day – until the technology goes wrong and they need a scientist to solve the problems so complex that they cannot even begin to understand them."
"Dr Daniel Jackson" Daniel amended pointedly, quelling a rising sense of irritation and forbearing to point out that it was down to him that Earth even had a stargate programme. He gestured to the stargate. "You've er, got it all in place then?"
McKay gave him a condescending look; "If by 'in place' you mean connected to the DHD' then yes it is in place."
"So…" Daniel encouraged, still determined not allow himself to be riled by McKay's abrasive rudeness. He was pretty sure that avoiding arguments would have been on Janet's list of things not to do, had she thought of it.
"Look, it's not like a toaster – you don't just plug it in, fire it up and away you go." McKay snapped in irritation. "The gate is over 50 million years old – it's hardly surprising that it might have an issue or two. There are over four hundred individual streams of feedback from an active gate. If any one of those reports an anomaly the results could be catastrophic."
"But even so" Daniel persisted, "When the original gate was installed…"
"Do you know how the gate actually works?" MacKay cut in. "As you step though the event horizon the outgoing gate demolecularises you into teeny-tiny pieces. When the little parts of ex-you arrive at the other end like a subatomic-jigsaw puzzle you sure as hell want to be confident that the incoming gate has the correct information to put you back together again."
The man kneeling by the gate stood up and with the briefest of nods introduced himself as Dr Zalenka. "Dr McKay is right" he said and Daniel noted that his accent was Eastern European. Slovak? Czech? He launched into a rapid explanation. "You see a stargate is designed to transmit objects in discrete units" (he gestured wildly with his hands to illustrate his point). "That is to say, the outgoing gate will not start to transmit a demolecularised form until it can transmit it in one go, as er, one 'packet'. However, our concern is that if not set up right then this gate may potentially scramble the data on arrival." He paused for breath before adding apologetically. "We'd get the sum total of SG-1 back, but not as O'Neill, Carter and Teal'c."
"Ah…" Daniel said with a troubled frown (vaguely wondering whether his own explanations were delivered in such a rapid fire manner). "That would …um be different." He briefly tried to imagine what that might possibly look like then hastily stopped.
"Extremely different" MacKay repeated scathingly "Which is why we are obviously ever-so-very anxious to ensure that it doesn't happen. It will take days before we can be sure that the gate is operating properly and even then the only way to be 100% sure will be to send people through it and see how many pieces they arrive in."
'Days!' Daniel's heart sank. "How many days?"
"Oh, I don't know!" McKay gave a wild shrug. "A week? Maybe more."
"Not necessarily." Dr Zalenka countered "That estimate is based on the most pessimistic assessment of the amount of time it will take to run each diagnostic test." He pushed his glasses - which had slid part way down his nose - back into place. "It could be significantly less time if we…"
Apparently reading his mind and without waiting for him to finish McKay burst in; "Only by ignoring half of the output signals!" He glowered darkly. "And by doing so, seriously undermining the safety of the gate's operations."
"That is not entirely true" Zalenka argued, "we have good reason to believe that only a third or so of that feedback measures factors relating to the safety of the wormhole. There is a significant amount of redundancy built into the gate's design and…"
"Another claim we have absolutely no justification for making" McKay shot back. "Based on wild assumptions about the nature of stargate physics that we have no means of testing."
Zalenka threw up his hands in frustration and was clearly about to reply when Daniel urgently interjected "But you can make it work?"
"Eventually yes" Zalenka replied with a decisive nod.
"Probably." McKay qualified.
"Because SG-1 are out there" Daniel continued carefully "and they are counting on us to make it possible for them to gate home." A sudden thought occurred to him. "Sam wouldn't have agreed to beam up the alpha gate unless she knew that it would be possible to connect the beta gate. She wouldn't have taken the risk of leaving us without a means of communicating off-world."
"Ah, Major Carter!" McKay began with a sardonic smile and a sudden distant look in his eye, "she does, I'll admit, have a reasonable grasp of the stargate but she can be over-confident and cocky in the extreme. It would be just like her to …er" He caught a glimpse of Daniel's face and tailed off nervously.
Daniel took a purposeful step towards him and paused, choosing his words with care. "Sam. Does. Not. Take. Risks." he spelled out, inches from McKay's nose. "And she doesn't make mistakes either. Beaming up the gate must have been her plan. She knew it would work and I assume that she had faith that you would be able to do whatever it is you need to do to get the beta gate up and running." He paused for breath and his eyes flashed angrily. "I suggest that you have as much faith in yourself as she apparently had in you and figure out how to get the damn thing to work!"
There was a brief moment of silence as Zalenka and McKay stared at him in surprise. Then Daniel turned with as much dignity as he could muster and stalked out of the gateroom. Once around the corner and out of sight he paused and lent against the wall to try to stop the room spinning. He shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Despite his show of confidence to McKay a cold shadow of fear swept over him. What if Sam had made a mistake?
'Major Carter would not do such a thing' said Teal'c's voice in his head.
"Thanks Teal'c" Daniel muttered. "I could use some reassurance."
Again with the talking to himself! Either the meds or the stress were playing with his mind. He had a sudden flash back to the last time he had heard voices and shivered as he thought of the padded cell.