Daniel paused outside the door to Jack's quarters and, without thinking, tried the handle. To his surprise it swung open easily. He hesitated for a moment and then stepped forward peering in to the gloom. Suddenly he gasped out loud and opened his eyes wide in amazement.

Jack, midway through doing up his belt, looked round in similar surprise and tilted his head enquiringly.

"Daniel?"

Daniel swallowed hard, almost frozen to the spot. He raised his hand in automatic wave and his fingers twitched slowly. This could not be real.

"Urm… hi?"

Jack looked at Daniel, back to the door and then back to Daniel.

"Most people knock." He said mildly.

"I er…I …didn't expect you to be here." Daniel replied slowly, a bemused frown replacing wide-eyed shock.

Jack's eyebrows arched sardonically.

"Okay. So why'd ya come in?"

"Um" said Daniel, unable to think of a good response. He shifted sideways slightly, trying to surreptitiously look around his friend. "Erm, Jack…" (God this was awkward) "Um..are you dead?"

Jack squinted down at his torso, pouting with the effort and then poked himself hard in the chest.

"Nope."

"Uh.. are you sure?"

"Daniel!?"

Those layers of impatient frustration certainly sounded like Jack.

"Right...right….okay" (Jack was looking at him weirdly). "I'll… I'm… I'll be back in a minute."

Daniel backed out of the door and pulled it tightly shut behind him. He twisted round and, still holding the door knob tightly, flopped his shoulders against the cold metal and looked up helplessly as though silently invoking a god he didn't believe in to his aid. There had to be a rational explanation. The fact that he couldn't think of one immediately was neither here nor there. There was one. He took a deep breath, turned back to face the room and knocked firmly.

No answer.

He listened hard.

Still nothing.

Gingerly he opened the door a crack.

The room rolled, everything went dark and Daniel lurched forward with his head spinning. He put out a hand to steady himself and found himself enveloped in swathes of material. Disorientated, he flailed wildly, finding yet more material and banging his knuckles hard against something solid and unyielding. Failing to catch himself, he sprawled onto the floor, banging his head on the corner of the table and landing heavily on his stomach. God, that hurt! The shockwave of pain that sliced through his abdomen almost made him cry out and he instinctively curled up tightly on his side concentrating on not passing out.

After a minute the urge to vomit receded and, as the disorientation cleared, he suddenly realised that he was lying amid a tangled heap of clothing in front of a closet. His closet. In his room.

Another dream. And sleep-walking to boot. Great! He'd never actually done that before. At least, not as an adult.

Grunting painfully he got to his knees and then stayed there for a moment before easing himself upright, cradling his stomach. He fumbled for the light and flicked it on. 5 am! He had been asleep for precisely one hour fifteen minutes.

Dizzy with pain and tiredness,Daniel lurched across the room and sat down cautiously on the edge of the bed. Carefully he peeled back the surgical dressing anxious to inspect the damage. Please don't let it be bad. The tape pulled painfully at his healing skin but to his enormous relief the stitches were not broken; Thank god! Janet would have been seriously unimpressed if she had had to re-stitch him. As far as he could tell he hadn't triggered any internal bleeding either; he'd got away with it. As the throbbing gradually subsided back towards something more like background discomfort that he had gotten used to Daniel hugged his arms around himself and hunched forward, trying both to soothe the ache and get warm. He shivered, thoroughly unsettled by the experience and wondering how much stock he should set by it. He didn't believe in ghosts, so that ruled that out. On the other hand, if going through the gate had taught him anything, then it had shown him that supposedly impossible things could be achieved with advanced technology. What would be magic to one society was just science to another.

Of course, there was also the ever-attractive option that he was going mad. A sudden flash-back to padded cells, restraints and sedatives triggered another shiver. He was still hurt that everyone had been so willing to assume psychosis before and even though he was pretty sure that people (especially Janet who had felt very guilty afterwards) would be less quick to jump to conclusions now, it would probably be best not to say too much about voices or dreams.

Daniel sighed. He didn't feel mad. Rationally he still thought it was a combination of tiredness, worry and meds but in the early hours of the morning fear tended to come out on top if it went one on one with reason.

He was half-tempted to get up and go back to the gateroom but McKay had shoed him out less than two hours ago threatening bodily violence if he didn't stop breathing down his neck. Reluctantly he shuffled awkwardly down the bed, pulled the covers up high and tried to focus on optimistic thoughts. 1) They had worked out the problem. 2) Rodney was fixing it. 3) Tomorrow the gate would be online. 4) He would get his friends back.

But lurking in the dark recesses of his mind another thought kept bobbing to the surface. What if they got the gate online but there was no one alive to dial home?