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Part the First
In which Teal'c is mostly silent, Carter is mostly interrupted and Daniel and Jack argue crustaceans.
There was a tremendous amount of water on this planet. The MALP had made sure that it was actually water. Before SG-1 had ever geared up for their mission, the probe had run a series of chemical tests to ensure that the water consisted of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, and would thus not be responsible for any unexpected possessions or odd hostage scenarios. Never let it be said that the USAF did not learn from its mistakes.
According to Teal’c, the planet had been abandoned by the Goa’uld after a climatic experiment went awry. He wasn’t quite sure what the System Lords had been planning the result of their tampering to be, but he knew that it had failed spectacularly. The ice caps had melted and the oceans had overrun the shoreline. Since there was more water, and the temperature had increased, the evapouration rate had also increased. This, in turn, meant that the amount of precipitation had also gone up. It rained a lot on P9X 171.
According to Sam, there was still a great deal of naquadah on this planet, but most of the mines had been in the coastal regions and they were flooded out. Still, there were some higher regions she was eager to check out, so she followed Teal’c along the rocky beach. Besides, one never knew what technological goodies the Goa’uld might have left behind.
According to Daniel, most of the life on P9X 171 was in the oceans. This came as a surprise to absolutely no one. Since the risen sea level had covered most of the habitation sites, SG-1’s archaeologist had resigned himself to a mission wherein he would not find too many artefacts. Still, the Goa’uld had been there, and Daniel had a tendency of being lucky.
According to Jack, this planet was very wet.
The sky of P9X 171 was uniformly gray in colour. Since it had been raining more or less continually since SG-1’s arrival, this was not unusual. Daniel thought it was depressing, and told Jack as much, but Jack liked the variation. Most skies were blue. He’d asked why, completely rhetorically of course, only to spend the next ten minutes trying to shut Sam, who was a good ten paces in front of him and completely oblivious of his wind stolen voice, up.
The ocean was also gray. This made sense to Jack, as water is pretty much a reflexion of the sky. Teal’c, who had a great eye for detail, pointed out that the sea was almost the exact colour as the watery illusion produced by the Stargate’s active wormhole. It was a bit more choppy.
The rock was gray as well. Some form of granite, Daniel had informed them, with just enough slate to make it more than a little oppressive. Centuries of constant water erosion had produced some truly amazing formations. Daniel placated himself by taking photographs of them in the absence of a material record. For the first few minutes, Jack had taken every opportunity he could to call the rocks “rocks”, because they were. Daniel had quickened his pace. There was a lichen growing on the rocks (though Sam said it was actually closer to algae), and off in the distance, Jack thought he saw trees, but that was pretty much it for plant life.
The sand, what little of it there was on this planet, was brown. This helped immensely.
As they made their way down the windswept beach, soaked to the bone in spite of the tax dollars spent on designing their raingear, Sam’s naquada detector picked up only the faintest traces of the mineral. She reluctantly informed her CO that P9X 171 would not be a viable naquadah source. Jack’s face, which had taken on a resigned appearance when Teal’c informed him there was no trace of Goa’uld technology left, turned downright bleak. Sighing in frustration, he looked up at the weeping sky, and then shook his head in an attempt to get the water out of his ears. Teal’c wondered why O’Neill, whom he knew to be an avid fisherman, would refuse to wear the practical headgear Sam called a fisherman’s hat and Daniel declared a sou’ester like the rest of his water free eared team.
P9X 171 had three moons. Jack did not know what this meant, and after the blue sky fiasco, he was reluctant to put the matter to his 2IC. He was vaguely aware that on Earth the moon controlled the tides, and some small part of his brain rationalized that three times the moon could mean three times the tide, but he figured Carter would warn them if they were in danger. Assuming, of course, she could pry her attention away from the detector long enough to notice anything.
Daniel had wandered slightly away from the others, passing both Sam and Teal’c as he strove to get a better angle on the various outcroppings he was interested in. He had gone a fair bit ahead, when he stopped walking, and switched his camera for his binoculars. With absolutely no warning at all, Daniel took off down the windswept beach, and carefully edged himself out on to a rocky ledge that stuck out about fifteen feet into the water. Heedless of the treacherously slippery rock, Daniel went to his knees and began pawing at something on the ground.
Jack spotted the dilemma almost immediately. The tide was definitely coming in, and it was encroaching inch by inch on the ledge Daniel was perched on. Worse, the tide would cut off the access point in fairly short order. Jack always had trouble extricating Daniel from archaeological situations, and something told him this time would be no different. The first order of business, therefore, was to figure out what Daniel was doing on the ledge in the first place.
“Daniel?” Jack called out deceptively lightly as soon as they were within voice range. “Whatcha doing?”
“There are inscriptions here, Jack!” Daniel called out excitedly. Jack cursed inwardly. “This planet was abandoned by the Goa’uld and they never come here! This might be Kheb!”
“I don’t think it would be wise to bring a baby here, do you?” Jack couldn’t resist saying it, but as soon as he had he knew he’d made a mistake. Now Daniel was ignoring him. He gestured for Sam to take over.
“Can’t you just take pictures Daniel? That tide is coming in pretty fast.” She called out.
“No,” came the muffled yell back as Daniel sucked his thumb after injuring it on something Jack couldn’t see.
“Why not?”
“There’s some kind of. . .shellfish.”
Sam looked at her CO, her eyebrows almost to her hairline, and shrugged. The water had now reduced the ledge to about ten feet in length and had completely engulfed the access way. Daniel hadn’t noticed because he had pulled out his pocket knife and was carefully prying the crustaceans off of the carved rocks. It was time for the Voice of Reason.
“Daniel Jackson!” Teal’c did not yell, but his voice had great resonance somehow, “You have placed yourself in a precarious position. You must come back now before the water becomes too deep.”
“Just a few more moments.” Daniel punctuated every syllable by removing a shellfish. He was uncovering the inscription from left to right, and every rightward shift took him farther from his teammates and closer to the algae covered incline on the seaward side of the ledge.
Finally, Jack could take it no longer. Wet as he was, he had no desire at all to compound his drenched state with a dip in an alien ocean. Jokes hadn’t worked, common sense had not been enough, and even reason had not prevailed. It was time for orders.
“Daniel! Stop!” barked Jack in a tone that brought Carter reflexively to attention and had absolutely no effect at all on the errant archaeologist. “Don’t move a muscle!”
“Actually Jack, I’m pretty sure these are oysters.”
Daniel prised the last of the taxonomically contested members of the crustacean family off of the rock face. He finally sheathed his knife, drew his camera, and began taking pictures, but he was too late. The next wave broke over the promontory and was just strong enough to pull him towards the algae, which was just slippery enough to foment his already legendary inability to balance, and he went careening into the sea.
Jack said a number of things that cannot be repeated in polite company as he handed his gun and gear off to Sam, tossed one end of a long rope to Teal’c, secured the other to his waist, and waded out to the ledge. Taking care to scuff his heals every so lightly on the offending tablets, he set himself on the unalgaeed rock, and tossed a second rope to the merrily water treading Daniel. Daniel pulled himself in and then used Jack as a counter-weight to steady his crawl up the rock face. His grin did not fade in the face of Jack’s wrath.
“This isn’t Kheb,” he announced cheerfully as he and Jack waded back to ‘dry’ land. “The Goa’uld were trying to create a tropical environment. They, uh, missed.”
Jack said nothing, merely took his gear back from Sam and started walking back towards the Stargate.
“You might be interested in the pictures, Sam.” Daniel continued. “I think it’s some sort of manual. There’s a lot of technical jargon. I mean, it didn’t work, but you might be able to get something out of it.”
While Daniel and Sam chattered happily back and forth about the potential to create tropical paradise and the psychological ramifications thereof, Jack stalked over to the DHD and began to dial home. Pausing only long enough to stick his finger in his ear in a vain attempt to relocate some of the water contained therein, Jack entered the SG-1 IDC.
Teal’c waited a few seconds, then strode up the ramp and stepped through. Daniel followed him and, in a move that Jack was pretty sure defied at least one of the laws of physics, turned to face Jack and tossed him something just as he crossed the event horizon. Off Carter’s questioning glance, Jack looked down at the small, round object in his hand.
It was a pearl.
“For cryin’ out loud!”
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AN: I’ve been waiting to end a story that way! I finally broke down and added “cryin’” to my spell checker.
The “Why is the sky blue” gag is one of my favourites. I’ve discovered that if you ask a question enough times, eventually you get an answer. I am not sure how climatically correct this was, but I would think that having three moons (provided they were all on the same side of the planet) would effect the tidal bulge. Think Bay of Fundy-ish.