In the SGC Carter is delivering a report on the planet SG1 just visited (PX7941 - known to its inhabitants as Madrona). Apparently, the people on this planet can control their weather, for example calling up rain or dispersing clouds on demand. Hammond has learned to be skeptical by this point and asks "You sure you weren’t under the local voodoo?" Carter claimed she was at her Scullyest but the Madronans convinced her. "We may have stumbled upon the most important piece off technology the SGC mission has discovered to date." Hammond wants to know how it works. Daniel says the planet was terraformed 900 years ago by an unknown alien race who left behind the weather control gizmo (called a Touchstone by the newer, primitive human inhabitants) when they disappeared. Carter turns on a slide of a vaguely Greco-Roman goddess figure holding the Touchstone in her right hand. The TS looks like a complex gyroscope on a pedestal. According to Carter, "the high priest turns a series of calibrated rings which seem to determine meteorological conditions over the entire planet’s surface." Hammond asks how it actually works.

Jack: "That’s why we’d like to go back sir. Carter wants to get a closer look with some of her specialized doohickeys."
Hammond "Doohickeys?"
Jack: "I believe that’s the technical term sir."

He and Carter share a LOOK.

Hammond wonders if they couldn’t just borrow it for a few days to backwards engineer it and allow Carter to play with it to her heart’s content. Carter shoots that one down. "You have to understand, General, the Touchstone maintains the weather on this planet." Hammond okays Carter’s field trip and off they go.

SG1 pop through the gate and it looks like the high priest’s kids have been mucking with the Touchstone. The sky is black, a loud wind is blowing and lighting is flashing and striking everywhere. SG1 don’t seem to notice anything wrong, and Daniel does a funny squat and bow to the people assembled in front of the gate. "Greetings, Rohan, Princess Lamoor," he says. Princess Lamoor says for the benefit of the visually-impaired audience, "It’s the visitors, uncle." She sounds pretty pissed off. Uncle Rohan isn’t wasting time with pleasantries. "We demand you return the Touchstone at once!" he quavers. Seriously, he has this weird, wavering way of talking that makes him sound slightly senile. Anyway, SG1 are all "Sorry? What?" and Rohan leads the way into the temple to show them the complete and utter lack of Touchstone. Rohan says without the TS his people "will soon be overtaken by the elements." When the team insist they didn’t take it, Lamoor says there were witnesses who saw a group dressed and armed like SG1 come in the dead of night, swipe the gizmo and depart via the Stargate. Jack asks why the Touchstone wasn’t guarded and Lamoor tells him it was because they trusted SG1. Rohan orders the guards to seize them, so Jack pull his 9mm and points it at the nearest guard. "We came in peace and we expect to go in one . . . piece" he says. Rohan says they should explain themselves and they had better make it good. Much discussion ensues about SG1’s innocence and the necessity of returning through the gate if they are going to investigate the theft versus the Madronans’ inability to trust their visitors anymore. Suddenly, a violent wind gust blows open the temple doors and the fight goes out of Rohan. "Let them go," he murmurs, "Help us, please?"

Back in the SGC Hammond wants to know why the team is back so soon. Jack asks if they can talk in Hammond’s office. Once there, Jack explains about the theft, and the thieves that looked like they were SGC. Hammond is all "What? Well, who was it?" "Everyone involved here would like to know that, sir." Jack replies slowly, looking uncomfortable "I don’t appreciate your implication, Colonel. Why would I send your team to study the thing if I knew it wasn’t there?" Hammond snaps. Jack backs off, and wonders whether any other SG team could have taken it upon themselves to go through the gate and swipe the TS. "Not without my knowing about it, " Hammond replies instantly - which you’ll notice, is not actually an answer. Jack notices this too, and looking even more unhappy, asks if it’s all right if Carter checks the dialing computer to see if anyone snuck through behind the General’s back. Hammond sounds quiet and confused as he says "Nothing happens regarding that gate without my knowing about it. If a person sneezes near it I get a report." Jack receives this second non-answer impassively, says "I understand," and starts to leave. As Jack reaches the door Hammond suddenly says "Colonel, have Carter check it anyway." Jack hesitates for a moment, the smiles slightly and says "Thank you, very much sir." A great scene, very quiet but loaded with unspoken emotion.

Carter reports finding nothing on the dialing computer, but Daniel and Teal’c are fascinated by the Weather Channel. Jack confesses he’s more of a C-SPAN guy (somehow I doubt that) so they show him footage describing freak storms across North America. The report is accompanied by pictures of terrible flooding in Arizona. Jack is dubious but Daniel speculates that the Touchstone is probably "keyed to the atmospheric conditions on Madrona. Somebody steals it, brings it back to Earth, starts fiddling around with it with no idea what they’re doing and who knows?" Jack continues to play Devil’s Advocate but now Carter’s found something. At the same time the TS was stolen, SG2 was returning through the gate from a mission to a planet in a different galaxy. At the same time, there was a huge energy spike. "You remember what happened the last time the gate’s energy supply was overloaded." "It jumped to the second gate in the Antarctic." Daniel replies as Jack grumbles "Yeah, thanks for the memories." Sam thinks someone used the second gate to steal the TS, timing it so the SGC gate was in operation so as to hide Gate2’s energy spike. She checks the computer logs, and while the primary and backup logs have been erased, the tertiary one shows a perfect match for the energy reading from the last time "the gate jumped its tracks." Daniel remarks that he thought the second gate was "officially decommissioned." "Yeah," Jack replies grimly, "Officially."

Hammond is on the red phone in his office when Jack comes in to tell him what Carter found. Hammond says he was assured Gate2 had been sealed "A case of the left hand not knowing what the right foot is doing, sir " Jack says, horribly mangling his cliche. Hammond snarls at the hapless aide on the other end of the phone and hangs up. Apparently, the president is unavailable every time Hammond calls. Hammond tells Jack that when the SGC was being formed, there was a disagreement about its mission. ‘Some people’ felt that any nifty stuff the SG teams found should be brought back, regardless of how the people who actually possessed the stuff felt about it. Hammond never found out who was floating the grab and run policy but he’s trying to find out. Jack reminds him of how much damage the Touchstone could do on Earth.

Carter has "figured out a way to measure the Doppler Shift for gravitational and radiation emissions," from a "NOAA satellite" Sam has roughly triangulated the TS’s position to the Nevada desert, which according to Hammond is where the second gate is stored, at Nellis Air Force Base.

Hammond: "You’re going to love this Colonel. Guess who just got himself assigned to Nellis?"
Jack: "Do tell."
Hammond: "Colonel Maybourne."
Jack: "Oh well, there’s good news."

Daniel recalls that Nellis AFB, near Groom Lake is where the SGC sends all the technology they bring back. Jack says "Area 51" and Daniel looks horrified.

In the control room Hammond and SG1 are looking at MALP telemetry of Madrona, showing a ferocious blizzard and "winds gusting up to 80 mph. If it gets any more intense then the whole planet’s a write-off." Sam concludes "We’re looking at 48 hours, maybe 72, before all the terraforming is kaput." Jack requests permission to visit Nevada and Hammond says he’ll phone ahead to the CO at Nellis for clearance. Jack gets his uncomfortable look again and asks if Hammond knows who they can trust. Hammond looks thoughtful for a moment, then -

Hammond: "Colonel, I need some documents hand-delivered to the Groom Lake facility.
Jack: "Are those documents sensitive enough to warrant a three-man team with a Jaffa escort, sir?"
Hammond: "Absolutely."

Everyone looks evilly satisfied.

The team, in a Chevy Suburban, pulls up to the front of the main building at Nellis and gets out. Major Reynolds of NID welcomes them and gushes about what an honour it is to meet them. Jack returns his salute and asks to see Maybourne. A brief aside. They shot this scene outdoors somewhere during terrific weather, it’s really sunny and bright, but because all the actors are standing underneath an overhang everyone is a black silhouette against the brilliant horizon. You can’t see any eyes or even faces. Was this some sort of symbolism at work or a filming screw up? Just wondering.

Reynolds takes the team on a tour of the facility, still gushing about how cool it is that they bring back all this cool stuff from all those really cool worlds. At one point they all stop as a pair of scientists go through a pair of huge, probably bomb-proof doors. On the other side is one of the Death gliders that SG1 came home in the SEASON ONE FINALE, with technicians crawling all over it. Everybody looks very grim, though whether it’s at their near brush with death and the total destruction of Earth or the destructive power available to the creeps running Area 51 isn’t made clear. Finally he leads them into "the bioresearch lab." "This where you’re keeping the little green men?" Jack quips. "There are no alien life forms at Area 51" Reynolds replies curtly, sounding as if he learned that answer by rote. "Present company excluded, of course." Jack says, nodding politely to Teal’c, who bows back. Reynolds does not find this little exchange amusing but just then Maybourne arrives. He and Jack greet each other, nearly civilly, and Maybourne dismisses Reynolds.

Maybourne: "Teal’c. It’s good to see you well"
Teal’c: (moves menacingly into Maybourne’s personal space) "In my culture, I would be well within my rights to dismember you."

Maybourne looks ill. Jack looks amused. Jack asks about the Touchstone but Maybourne claims "there’s nothing even remotely like that here." Oh sure, he’s heard of Madrona and its nifty gizmo, but got it? Him? No way. He asks that SG1 be "a little less cryptic with [their] questions," and Jack and Daniel are happy to oblige. "Where’s the damn Touchstone?" "Has the second Stargate been activated?" Maybourne claims Gate2 is dormant, but Sam asks if they can take a look anyway. Cornered, Maybourne agrees and leads the way. Jack and Sam pause to give each other a Look, Sam looks pleased with herself, Jack (he of the waggling eyebrows) just looks like he’s having fun. Couples succeed when there are common interests, you know - and if one of theirs happens to be bugging Maybourne, so be it. As they follow the spud, Teal’c looks as though he’s fighting off a severe case of the giggles. A motorized warehouse door ponderously opens and as it reaches head height Maybourne snits, "There it is. Happy, Colonel?" Jack orders Sam to take a closer look and they all flip open the giant crate and start digging through the packing material inside. Once again, this scene is incredibly underlit, but Teal’c seems to have a very worried expression on his face. Sam clears off a segment of the gate and Maybourne snarls "Satisfied?" He and Jack start in again until they’re interrupted by Carter. "Colonel, this gate, " she raps on it with her fist - it makes a hollow thunk, "is plastic." Maybourne actually looks surprised as he goes "What? That’s ridiculous!" It’s also true. Maybourne sounds on the verge of hysterics as he insists that this is the gate that was brought to Nevada from Antarctica. It was always locked up. Sam gets to ask the $64 000 question: "If this gate’s plastic, where’s the real one?" Jack rephrases "What the hell happened to the Stargate?" "It’s obviously been moved," Maybourne says defensively. Jack points out that if Maybourne lost a Stargate he is toast. Maybourne replies "That presumes there was no authorization to move the Stargate." Daniel wants to know who gave the authorization, but that’s classified - surprise! Jack insists SG1’s got highest level clearance. "Within the military," Maybourne corrects him. Jack broad jumps to a conclusion and demands to know if there is a civilian operation behind all of this. Maybourne decides he’s had enough fun for one day and orders the guards to escort the gang back to their vehicle. Jack looks like he is considering several possible scenarios, but finally just shoots Maybourne a disgusted look and stalks out. Sam, Daniel and Teal’c each get a good glare in, and follow.

Back at the SGC Hammond says "someone’s clamped down on the communications channels." Nobody is answering any questions. Carter reports that while they were playing in the desert, all the emissions she was detecting vanished and the weather anomalies abated, so it looks like whoever is behing it all is no longer using the Touchstone, presumably because it was attracting too much attention. Sam does have an idea for finding Gate2. "Oh sure. Let’s just put out an APB for a huge, honkin’ 2 story metal ring with 39 little pictures all nicely engraved on it" Jack snarks. Sam smiles at this and says "Actually I had another thought." Jack gives her a totally charming ‘what a surprise’ smile but Hammond’s had enough flirting and tells her to get on with it. After some discussion, they decide to send Jack, Daniel and the MALP through their gate to Madrona, then intentionally overpower the gate and send the MALP back to Earth. The MALP should end up through the second gate, and the MALP’s GPS will tell the SGC exactly where on Earth it has shown up. Hammond likes it and they’re on their way. When Jack and Daniel arrive Madrona’s locked in a howling blizzard. Lamoor tells her uncle "They’re back" and he demands to know if they’ve got the Touchstone. Jack says they’re working on it, which Rohan takes as his cue to point out the blatantly obvious that the planet is in a riproaring Ice Age and all his people are goners. Daniel tries to explain the plan with the MALP but Rohan decides Daniel’s lying and the whole lot of Madronans all troop back inside, leaving Jack and Daniel at the DHD in the snow. Jack hooks a portable generator to the gate as Daniel dials up Earth and off goes the MALP. At the SGC Sam ascertains that the MALP is on Earth and calls up the video link. The screen show the MALP is in a dim warehouse-like building. As the camera pans around a shadowy form crosses the image. Sam tries to triangulate the GPS signal to pinpoint the MALP’s location, but just then a hand holding a 9mm appears on the screen, it fires twice and the signal and picture are gone.

Jack and Daniel are back and Sam tells Jack what happened to the MALP. She didn’t have time to finish the triangulation, but she narrowed it down to southern Utah. Hammond has one last marker to call in, so he’s going to see what he can find out. A man is sitting on a pack bench seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Hammond, in civvies, walks up and greets him as Whitlow, and claims he doesn’t "really have time for all this cloak and dagger stuff." He says he has "two things. Who’s got the Stargate? Who’s got the weather device?" Whitlow has never heard of a weather device and didn’t know the Stargate was missing. Hammond clarifies he means the second one, but Whitlow still has no idea. He has contacts in military intelligence, CIA and NSA and hasn’t heard anything, which he thinks means civilians are behind it. Hammond asks about southern Utah. Whitlow just approved a requisition for a C5 to do a pickup at an NID base in Utah, just south of the Black Mountains. Whitlow doesn’t know what the pick up is, but "a C5’s a big airplane, big enough to hold a Stargate and transport it anywhere in the world."

Back at the SGC Hammond tells SG1 what he found out, and says there’s a helicopter waiting to fly them to Utah. Everyone turns to go but Jack and Sam stop and wait as Hammond says "One other thing, Colonel. We don’t know if the people who took the Gate and Touchstone are friend or foe. Therefore under no condition are you to fire on them. Understood?" Jack thinks about this for a long moment and says slowly, "Under no conditions, fire." "That’s right." Jack gives Hammond a ‘are you out of your mind’ look and Sam jumps in with a tactful "What if they fire on us sir?" "Then you’re to take cover. Do not return fire unless it’s the only option remaining in order to defend yourself." "General I don’t think that’s gonna fly-" "Those are my orders, Colonel. We’re already going way out on a limb on this one. I don’t want my people mortally wounding another American who may just be following orders. Understood?" "Yes, sir," Jack sighs. Hammond leaves and Jack and Sam give each other, ‘Well, isn't this going to be fun’ looks as they walk out.

In Utah, Jack’s examining a fenced building with a nifty spying-round-the-corner telescope. The team slip through the (unlocked) gate in the fence and Jack uses his telescope to check out the interior of the building through a broken window. There are several soldiers about to load a really big crate into a truck. Jack rolls his eyes like ‘just once, could this be easy?’ and flashes Sam a series of hand signals. Sam signals back. Jack acknowledges and slides the warehouse’s side door open to sneak in for a look. Teal’c and Daniel follow, with Sam bringing up the rear.

The team advances across the warehouse floor, weapons ready. Teal’c looks determined, Daniel mildly freaked. Sam and Jack look like they are doing their jobs. The guys loading the truck are totally oblivious until Jack orders them to "Stand to, gentlemen." On O’Neill’s order the Oblivious Trio move away from the crates, looking confused and pissed off. Once again the bright exterior light is behind SG1 so from here on you can’t see their faces at all, they are completely in shadow. Jack advances slowly to the truck when the sounds of an activating DHD are heard. Inside the truck a fourth guy is activating the gate as it lies flat on the floor in its boxes. The forming wormhole evaporates the top to the crate containing the Gate, and the blast of air knocks everyone to the ground. Fourth Guy leaps out of the truck and dives for the road case lying beside the gate crates. Jack warns him off, and when he is ignored, fires his MP5 at and around the case, driving Fourth Guy away. FG jumps up on the crates and belly flops through the gate to escape. Two of the other guys make a break for it and flop through the gate as well. Jack fires his MP5 again to keep the last one away from the road case and wings the guy, who then bails through the gate. Daniel makes it to the DHD just in time for the symbols to go out, and yells in frustration. Carter pulls the top off the case to reveal the Touchstone and everyone looks relieved.

SG1 pop through the Gate into the howling blizzard that is Madrona. The Madronans are all gathered in front of the Gate, in the snow. Despite the fact they’ve been living in a nascent Ice Age for two days, all the Madronans still have bare feet. Lamoor announces, "They’ve come back uncle, just as I told you." Her uncle asks "Do they have the Touchstone?" They do, of course and Jack hands it to Rohan, who activates it. The blizzard starts to die down almost immediately. Rohan replaces the Touchstone in the statue’s right hand, and he and Lamoor allow that SG1 kept their promise and are good and trustworthy allies again. Everyone looks relieved (again) and Jack gently suggests that from now on the guards should be a little more vigilant. He hands Rohan his walking staff and Rohan takes it. Lamoor throws open the temple’s shutters and a beautiful Michael-Whelan- painting-like planet is revealed, with bright blue sky, giant moons and the Stargate gleaming in the sunshine.

Back at the SGC Carter says meteorologically Madrona and Earth should be back to normal within weeks. The team might even be allowed back to do the studies they originally wanted to perform. Jack asks, "Any idea what happened, sir?" Hammond says he doesn’t know, and the investigation was taken out of his hands by parties unknown. "So we may never know who those men were who went through the gate," Daniel says. "Not unless you can tell me where they went," Hammond says. Hammond continues, "Well until then, all SG units are to be on watch for four NID guys wandering around another planet." "Great. So all this could happen again," Jack grumps. Hammond say no way. The second gate is being stored with a permanent iris welded over it and an around-the-clock SGC guard watching over it. Reynolds, Maybourne, SG1 and General Hammond all stand in the warehouse watching welders attach the giant plate to the center to the second gate. Jack, unable to leave well enough alone, wanders over to Maybourne. "This put you out of a job Maybourne?" "Oh you’d be surprised. Strange things happen in high places, Colonel. People get reassigned, so does property. Artifacts get misplaced, orders change. Everyday’s a new day." Maybourne turns and walks away. Jack looks grim.

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