STARGATE

BY DEAN DEVIN AND ROLAND EMMERICH

Synopsis:

Novelization of the movie.  The world looks at most of this group as

crack pots and losers, but they work well together and manage to make a

wonderous discovery in Egypt.  It is a device which seems to be a gate

into another time or space.  What will they find on the other side? Will

they get the chance?  The military is moving in, looking at the gate as

a potential weapon and all hell is about to break lose.

8000 B.C.

AH that remained was the eye of the beast, and when that was done, it

would see him, it would live.  The animal's hide was painted orange and

black, the hooves and horns scratched onto the wall with chalk.  The

image was crude, but it captured the gazelle's panic-the terror of being

hunted.  The mouth screaming, the torso twisted in flight, the legs

clattering for a way to escape.

The boy had camouflaged his dark skin with stripes and odd symbols,

using the same paint he had used to conjure the gazelle.  In the cave's

murky light, he dipped the hollow end of a long stick into a bowl of

ink, then approached the wall.  He looked up and into another eye, a

white human eye, painted like a religious icon, high on the wail of the

cave.  He began the hunt by speaking the name of the animal he was about

to stalk, "Khet."

With that signal, the old man standing at the mouth of the cave sat down

in the scratch gravel and began to chant.  The old one, clad in animal

skins and wearing a long beard, was the leader of his clan and the boy's

teacher.  His chanting was a slow rhythmic hunter's song spoken in the

language of the gazelle, the song the tribe always murmur-sang while

hunting.  The boy ground the hollow stick into the empty eye socket of

the animal, then put his lips to the end and blew the ink out of the

stick to create the animal's eye.

Under the spell of the old one's soft chanting, the boy felt the animal

slowly coming to life.  Soon he and the gazelle would see one another.

The hunter could move no faster than the stone walls of the cave that

surrounded him, or he risked alarming the animal and ruining that part

of the hunt happening at the same moment out in the valley.  The boy

never felt himself move, but by continuous force of concentration, found

himself advancing upon his prey.  This same technique was being used by

the hunters in the field.  The best of them were called Those Who Walk

Without Being Seen, and they formed an elite group within the tribe.

Their symbol was the white disembodied eye, painted like a religious

icon high above the gazelle.  These elite hunters were amazed and

intimidated by this ten-year-old boy's incredible patience during the

hunt and his ability to control the minds of the animals.  It was just

one more strange thing about this remarkable child, one more reason to

fear him.

On the surface, the boy appeared catatonic, asleep on his feet.  There

was no indication of the intense mental struggle being waged.  The

painted animal was constantly on the verge of flight.  It felt the boy

coming too close, almost close enough to grab him.  The boy could feel

the animal's every impulse, every thought, but he showed her nothing,

remaining absolutely calm.  The hunters of the tribe spent their whole

fives learninghow to conceal their fear and excitement from the animals

at close range.  When this "magic" came naturally to the boy, both in

the field and up in the cave, the people said that he must have been

born without a heart.  In fact, the child had rarely displayed any

emotion at aB: no anger, no fear, no love.

When he crept within arm's reach of the gazelle, he heard the old one's

chant slow even further, becoming a hallucinatory drone.  Steadily, the

boy inched his wiry black arms above his head.  In one hand he held a

chisel, in the other a heavy hammering stone.  Then, without any visible

signal, the old one and the boy suddenly shouted the name of the animal

at the same time, "Khet!" In a lightning fast attack, the boy brought

the chisel to the wall, then crushed down with the stone to cut a deep

gash into the painted wall.  The fresh scar ran straight into the heart

of the gazelle.

A moment later, the old man stood up and entered the cave to inspect the

young one's work.  He could see that the hunt in the field would be

successful.  Pleased and excited, he looked into the boy's unique eyes,

a mixture of brown and amber yellow, then raised his staff above his

head in salute, speaking the boy's name-"Ra!"

At the mouth of the cave, the boy sat in the sun watching the old one

pick his way down the rocky trad, then out across the desert floor to

where the tribe had established its camp.  An afternoon fire had been

made, and he watched the plume of smoke rise into the breeze where it

shredded and disappeared.  Soon the hunter's horns were heard in the

distance, and he watched the children of the camp sprint out to meet the

returning heroes.  When they came to the top of the last dune, he saw

they were cam ying a pair of gazelles tied at the feet to two long

poles, which the men carried on their shoulders.

When the old one saw what they had brought, he raised his staff high

above his head and shouted his praise.  The hunters returned the

gesture, and then the entire tribe turned to face the cave dug into the

side of the hill.  As one, they saluted the odd young hunter with the

brown-amber eyes.

The boy coolly returned their signal.

That night, after their tribe had feasted, the hunters began their dance

around the central fire.  They wore hollowedout wooden masks, eerie

helmets, painted to resemble the animals of their world: the

hippopotamus, the jackal, the bull, the hawk, the gazelle.  As always,

the boy kept his distance from the others.  He found a large smooth rock

well away from the fire and sat there observing the ritual

dispassionately.  He noted how frightened everyone became when

confronted by one of the animal masks.  Each time one of the dancers

broke away from the fire and shook his head at the onlookers, everyone,

not only the children, jumped backward and shrieked with real fear.

At one point, the jackal-headed dancer broke through the ring of

spectators, sending them squealing in all directions .

He danced out to the rock where the boy was sitting, planning to bring

him into the celebration by giving 11/2im a

good scare.  The dancer shook his head and made a series of grunting

noises, but nothing made the boy so much as flinch .

Looking through the open mouth of the mask, the man looked into the

boy's eyes.  A moment later, it was the adult hunter and not the child

who became frightened.  Stumbling backward, he retreated to the fire and

the ring of other dancers.  Although everyone witnessed the incident, no

one regarded it as particularly strange.  In their turn, all the members

of the tribe had gone to the boy, attempting to coax him into the

group's common life.  Many of them had come away from the encounter in

fear.

For his part, the boy felt no particular malice toward these people.  He

occasionally felt something like gratitude, even though he knew they had

discussed killing him more than once in order to put the mothers at

ease.  He regarded them as a simpler species, and although he didn't

know where he would go, he knew that he was destined to become one of

those rare people the tribe encountered from time to time, individuals

who fived apart from any group.

While the heat and noise of their fire-dance continued, a mysterious

event took place, unnoticed by any member of the tribe.  The moon was

full that night, turning yellow and dying into the horizon.  On a

quieter night in the camp, someone would have seen the large triangular

shape gliding through the sky, casting a weird, straight-edged shadow

across the top half of the full moon.  It hung there for a moment

blotting out the moonlight before sliding away into the blackened night

sky.  Sensing the disturbance, the boy turned to look behind him, but by

then the shadow had gone.

Hours later, as the camp slept, this same silent shadow circled past the

moon once more.  Something was hovering over the camp, watching,

waiting.  Only a pack of jackals, always alert to being hunted, noticed.

They haved and turned to run.  The boy's eyes opened and fixed on the

swaying bird-skull fetish strung like a wind chime to the edge of his

tent-an animal hide tied to a series of sticks that provided shade

during the long hot hours of the afternoon.  An abnormal breeze rustled

through the camp then suddenly died.  Curious, the boy sat up.  Soon

another gust rolled through, only this one didn't die.  It became a

steady

wind that slowly increased in strength.  Within seconds, it had become a

gale, waking everyone in the camp.  Stronger still, first one tent and

then another collapsed or was lifted away in the wind.  Now the Old One

was on his feet, moving through the camp and shouting above the storm,

ordering a retreat to the cave on the hill.

A dazzling light appeared from above.  A square beam as radiant as the

sun shone down on the desert floor just north of the camp.  As it slowly

plowed toward them, the tribe's people scattered, terrified, away from,

the light.  The Old One, a commanding presence, stood his ground and

ushered all those he could find away from the light, toward the

mountain.

The boy's first impulse was to obey the man and go with the others, but

then, curiously, he calmly turned and began to walk directly toward the

light.  It was as though he had no will of his own.  The Old One ordered

him to safety, but the boy marched on, through the chaos of wind and

light, out to the rim of the camp.  He was inextricably drawn toward it,

called by an irresistible force.  He looked directly into the blinding

white light glaring down from above.  And as he reached a hand up into

the light, something touched his hand.  Soft and warm, this bright

presence quickly wrapped itself around him, engulfing the boy in its

brilliance, submerging into his skin, into his soul.  He felt, perhaps

for the first time, an emotion he could neither hide nor control.  It

was excitement.  The excitement that comes with a sense of deliverance.

The excitement it is only natural to feel when your destiny is

announcing itself.

KAIRO 1928

Un the ramshackle outskirts of Cairo, from the minaret of the Jebba

al-Sa'laam mosque, the muezzin's afternoon prayer call pealed otit over

the last rooftops of a city that had changed little in the last two

centuries.  A freshly polished 1924 Rolls Royce Imperial Touring Sedan,

property of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, whizzed past the last

buildings and out into the long hard sand of the desert .

Moving south along the highway to Giza, the car swerved around the

occasional lorry full of workers or farm produce.

Taylor's message, as welcome as it was, couldn't have been delivered at

a worse moment.  Professor Langford was midway through a meeting with

the Egyptian Interior Minister.  His Excellency was going on and on

about the changing political climate and how it would be a terrible

personal risk for him to extend Langi'ord's Bfitish-sponsoied excavating

permit.  Langford, a Swede, had been in the country long enough to read

between the lines of the minister's speech.  He wanted cash, enough to

compensate him foi- the "grave personal risk" he would be taking .

Langford, who had become fairly adept in Arab negotiating technique,

counterattacked immediately.  Making certain to act angrier than he

actually was, he shouted about an the money he had spent and all the

jobs lie and his team had created.  He stood up and pounded on the

minister's giant

cedar desk, reminding his plump, mustachioed friend of all the snags and

broken promises he had endured in this most frustrating of countries.

Ilat's when the door opened and the note was delivered to Langford.  The

handwritten dispatch ended the meeting.

Langford, Sitting down?  We've got something.  Probably a Tomb .

Too soon to tell.  Excavation continuing.  Very exciting .

I suggest you get your aristocratic hind-end out here AT ONCE.  And

don't bring any of those pudding heads from the ministry.  Let's keep

this quiet for as long as we can.

Taylor.

Refolding the letter, Langford cringed at his foreman's undiplomatic

language.  He knew that the note, which Taylor had neglected to seal,

must have been read by at least ten pairs of eyes before reaching him

and that the minister, at whom he was now smiling politely, would learn

it's entire contents within ten minutes.  He had to hurry.  The way

rumors spread in Cairo, if he wasn't quick, there would be a souvenir

shop built at the edge of the dig site by evening .

Excusing himself, he hustled downstairs and found the driver assigned to

take him home.  In his broken Arabic, he explained the new itinerary and

that there would be a sizable tip for speedy driving.  Within minutes,

they had swung by the swank Sheppard's Hotel, picked up his brainy,

nineyear-old daughter, Catherine, and were careening through the

congested downtown toward the zoological gardens, scattering pedestrians

as they went.  Langford dug his fingers into the vehicle's velvet

armrest, and didn't breathe normaily until they were well out of town on

the southbound highway.

Catherine, already a daredevfl in pigtails, leaned through the sliding

glass partition into the driver's compartment, practicing her Arabic

with the driver and squealing at every near-collision.  She had arrived

in Cairo twelve weeks before, called to join her father when an

important discovery had seemed imminent.  A prodigious learner, she had

become something of an expert on hieroglyphs in that time,

visiting the Egyptian Museum almost daily, annoying and charming the

staff with hundreds of questions.  In her braided hair and thick

glasses, she looked destined to become a matronly bookworm.  Once they

were cruising along the highway, she settled back and cracked opened a

thick book entitled Ancient Egypt.

In the backseat, suppressing his excitement with all the strength of his

Victorian upbringing, Professor C.  P.  Langford, member of The Egypt

Exploration Society and The British Royal Museum, looked every inch the

gentleman archaeologist dressed, as he was, in puttees, khaki jodhpurs,

and field jacket.  Normally, he would never dress like this for actual

fieldwork, and wished he could change before meeting Taylor and the

others.  He had only worn this costume to impress the Egyptian

officials.

Langford and Taylor met in Luxor in 1920 when both men were visiting

Egypt for the first time.  Langford, the aristocratic family man from

posh London, and Taylor, the rough-and-tumble graduate student from the

University of Pennsylvania who had dropped out of school and volunteered

to fight in the World War.  After the armistice, he'd wired home for

money, then spent some time touring Greece and Palestine before ending

up in Egypt.  In Luxor, Langford had naturally stayed at the luxurious

Winter Palace.  Taylor, constrained to a more modest budget, came there

every afternoon pretending to be a guest because the hotel had flush

toilets and the International Herald Tribune.  The two men spent several

afternoons exploring Beban el Malook (the Valley of the Kings), with

Taylor doing most of the talking.  But it was their visit to the Temple

of Ti, farther north, that cemented the partnership.

Not far from the Great Pyramids, adjacent to the famous Steps Pyramid,

stands the Temple of Ti, the only monument of grand scale erected in

honor of a nonroyal pers ...  dgr, .

Overseer of the pyramids, scribe of the court, chief astronomer, and

special adviser to a number of pharaohs, Ti was also known as "Lord of

the Secrets." They spent an entire week probing the tomb, discussing the

many well-preserved reliefs and friezes that adorn the burial site. When

Langford slipped the tomb's caretaker a little baksheesh, they

wri,awarded access to a little-known collection of papyrus frag is

ments unearthed by Mariette, the Frenchman who had excavated the tomb

forty-five years earlier.  From these fragments, already ancient by the

time Ti took custody of them, the men developed their present theory:

that something was buried halfway between the Steps Pyramid and one of

the Great Pyramids of Giza, probably Khufu's.  The papyri referred to a

"plague" or "pestilence" or "demon" that was stolen and "ferried away."

The clues were sparse, and the chances for success weren't good.  If the

Good Citizens of Stockholm, as enthralled as they were with the recent

Tutankhamen discoveries, had realized what an incredibly long shot this

excavation was, they never would have funded it.

But fund it they did.  When Langford returned to Cairo the previous

March, he brought with him guarantees of nearly one nflion Swedish

krona.  After only six weeks of fieldwork, they discovered a small

burial chamber.  Langford, supposedly the "diplomatic half' of the team,

mished into town and invited all the foreign newspaper coffespondents

and several government dignitaries to witness the opening of the tomb.

Even Howard Carter, the world's most famous archaeologist took time off

and made the trip from Luxor, where he was in his third year of

cataloging the contents of Tutankhamen's small tomb.  So, on a beautiful

May morning, the entrance was cleared and the two men crawled through

the opening.  It would be very interesting to have a record of their

conversation inside.  When they emerged, grinning and embarrassed, they

carried with them the only artifact of any interest: a mummilied cat

still in it's crude wooden coffin.  The international press had a field

day.  Long, satirical articles appeared on the discovery of "The

Kitty-cat Tut," etc.  It was a humbling, humiliating experience for

Langford, who had imagined himself on the verge of lasting fame for his

contributions to science.

Cruising southbound with the green ribbon of the Nile on one side and

the vast Sahara on the other, Langford couldn't help contemplating

immortality once more.  One never knew what one might find.  But then

the Great Pyramids, the only remaining wonders of the ancient world,

came into view, and the gentleman archaeologist quickly regained his

perspective.  The overwhelming size of these structures on the

Giza Plateau, the pyramids of Mycerinus and Chefron and especially that

of Khufu made Langford laugh at himself .

How pitifully insignificant his little project seemed in the shadows

cast by these magnificent, eternal works.

But that was before he saw what he'd found.

Before the tires stopped rolling, Langford's boots were crunching across

the gravel.  With Catherine fluttering behind, he climbed to the edge of

a silt and stone plateau many thousands of years old.  But the plateau

had been transformed, hollowed out by one bucket of earth at a time by

the hundreds of Arab laborers the team had employed over the past few

months.  Now it was a small shallow valley littered with digging

equipment and divided into nicely measured parcels by surveyor's stakes.

Nearly three hundred laborers, fellahin, were working that day.  The

great majority of them were local men dressed in haiks-long white cotton

robes-and makeshift turbans.

The bulk of activity was taking place at the far end of the site.  Long

fingers of dust spiraled into the breeze where the fellahin were dumping

the excess sand and broken rock.  As soon as these men emptied their

baskets, they turned and headed back to a larger than normal "hot pit."

A pair of wooden hoisting cranes had been moved into place at the edge

of this pit, and ropes were being strung through the pulleys.  They were

preparing to lift something out of the ground.  Something heavy.

"Daddy, the treasure's over there," Catherine informed him in Swedish,

pointing toward the cranes and the crowd of workers.

"We'll go see Ed Taylor first." Langford spotted Taylor and a group of

other men bent over a worktable outside the ,,office tent." They seemed

to be studying something.

Langford, notorious for telling unfunny jokes in several languages, had

been polishing a witticism for the last several minutes.  When he came

within shouting distance of the group, he tried his luck.

"Ed, if we found a pet cemetery, I quit."

Just as he feared, no one laughed.  In fact, no one gave him even the

faintest sort of courtesy chuckle.  But what really struck Langford as

odd was that none of the men even

noticed his ridiculous "gentleman explorer" outfit.  The group's intense

concentration told Langford that this was no ordinary find.  Both he and

Catherine were immediately caught up in the drama.

" We can't decipher his writing.  Take a look.

Taylor made room for Langford to step up and look at the large sheet of

paper spread across the table.  It was covered with a series of strange

markings, charcoal rubbings taken from an etched stone surface.  It only

took Langford a few seconds to understand why the group was so

perplexed.  But to everyone's surprise, Catherine said it first.

"Those aren't real hieroglyphics," she said in English.

"At least not the kind we're used to."

"Taylor," Langford said, suddenly edgy, "where did these symbols come

from?"

"I'll show you." The foreman strode off toward the dig site.  Thirty

yards short of the pit, which was crowded with workers, all of them

shouting instructions at one another, Taylor stopped at what appeared to

be a gigantic stone tabletop.  It was three feet tall and twenty feet

across.  The massive slab was the same chalky gray as the gravel it sat

in.

"It's a cover stone," Taylor explained ." The largest one I've ever

seen.  When you bury something with a rock this size, you mean to keep

it buried."

Langford excitedly walked around the perimeter of the stone, inspecting

it's engraved surface.  This was truly a world-class find.  Not only was

the stone striking for its sheer size, but the sculpted surface was a

stellar example of the ancient Egyptian stone carver's art.  The face of

the monolith was organized, like a target, into a series of concentric

rings.  The outermost ring contained thirty-nine characters written in

the strange language Taylor had showed him.  Inside the next band, there

were symbols that were clearly related to ancient Egyptian writing. They

seemed to be an extremely early, extremely crude version of the later

hierogylphs.  Next was a ring of strange arched lines crossing the

surface of the stone in different directions.  Some of the points where

these lines intersected were marked while others where not.  It looked

like some ancient form of geometry.  But it was the engraving at the

very center that defined the stone as a masterpiece.

Langford hopped up onto the stone for a better look at the centerpiece.

Over a background of the precisely cut arching geometrical lines, there

were symmetrical etchings of the goddess Nut.  Arching her back to hold

up the sky, she fed the children of Earth from her breast while they

sailed beneath her in the Boat of a Million Years.  Between these

beautiful pictures, at the very center of the stone, was a cartouche in

the classical style.  Inside the oblong cartouche, a frame around a

sacred name or word, were six of the strange hieroglyphs from the

outermost ring.  Did these characters spell the name of some prehistoric

pharash?  Was it some sort of message?

"Very queer," muttered Langford, an accomplished student of Egyptian

writing.  He shook his head and came back out to the periphery of the

ring, where he studied the second rin, for a few moments before speaking

to Taylor and the others.

"This inside band is somewhat legible: this one here could be the symbol

for years .  .  .  a thousand years .  .  .  heaven, the stars or

something like that .  .  .  lives Ra, sun god.  But what in the world

do you make of these outer symbols?"

As Langford bent down to study the signs, he asked himself the same

question Taylor and the others had been pondering all afternoon.  Have

we found an undiscovered language?  And if so, who were its authors?

"What are these things over here?" caned Catherine, rummaging through

the neatly stacked collection of "incidental finds"ach one tagged,

bagged, and cataloged.

Taylor explained ." Those are little pieces of the tools and cups and

things that the workmen used when they buried this stone.  But look at

this one," he said, holding up a gold medallion embossed with an udjat,

a symbol that was half bird and half human eye.  He handed it to

Catherine ." This was wrapped in a piece of cloth and left on the center

of the stone."

"At last you've found something lovely," Catherine said, dazzled.

"The Eye of Ra," Langf6rd said, stepping down off the cover stone for a

closer look at the design on the medallion .

He turned it over in Catherine's hand before speaking to Taylor.

"Very, very rare to find this motif on a piece of jewelry .

Perhaps it belonged to a priest."

Catherine held the find up to the light, admiring it until the men fell

back into their conversation.  She then unclasped her own necklace and

slipped the medallion onto her chain.

"Taylor, if this is a cover stone, what did you find buried underneath?"

Just then a shout went up from the pit, and two hundred workers began to

pull the dozens of thick ropes strung through the pulleys.  Langford

wanted to move closer, but Taylor grabbed him by the sleeve and led him

to the top of a small hiflock to one side of the pit.

"Trust me, we're in the best spot."

Everyone in the dusty valley, from the most highly educated scientist to

the poorest of day laborers, understood they were watching a singularly

remarkable event: the excavation of Earth's strangest-ever

archaeological find.  Responding to the foreman's rhythmic command, the

fellahin slowly pulled the ropes taut, lifting a giant quartz ring, more

than flteen feet tail, up from its centuries-long sleep .

Perfectly round and the lustrous color of pearls, it was an oversize,

meticulously wrought jewel.  The entire surface was etched and decorated

in intricate detail, as complex as an electronic circuit board, as

beautiful as a sultan's amulet.

"It's one of God's bracelets," Catherine said excitedly to her father.

In his decades of investigation and research, Langford had never seen

anything like this.  In spite of its design similarity to certain first

dynasty finds, it seemed impossible that ancient Egypt could have

produced anything so technically advanced.  Seven fist-size quartz

jewels were set into the ring at even distances, each one surrounded by

a golden shroud.  These shrouds were replicas of the striped pharash's

headdress, or nemes, like the one on Tutankhamen's famous death mask.

Running along the inner edge of the ring were the same indecipherable

hieroglyphs found on the cover stone.

When the workmen had the ring standing at a ninetydeg-ee angle, they

began to prop it up with a series of padded wooden poles.  Taylor pulled

the dumbstruck Langfords a few paces to the right.  As the sun passed

behind the ring, they were surprised to find that the material was

semitranslucent.

" What's it made of?" Langford asked.

Taylor shrugged ." Beats me.  It's harder than steel, but there's no

oxidation or corrosion.  Some type of quartz, but not one that I can

identify."

Langford turned back to the ring and stood there calmly for a moment

before suddenly erupting in a giant roar of celebration ." We did it!"

Catherine watched as her father, usually so stiff and formal, wrapped

his surprised American partner, Taylor, in an exhilarated bear hug.  The

two of them broke into a wild, shouting celebration dance.  Then

something went wrong in the pit.

The fellahin were shouting and pointing at something .

Then they began to abandon their work before the support poles were

securely in place.  The huge ring tottered dangerously, threatening to

fall over and crush the crowd.  Taylor ran toward the pit shouting in

Arabic.

Langford turned to Catherine and commanded her sternly in Swedish, "You

are not to move from this spot."

She waited as long as she could, about five seconds, before chasing

after him to investigate.  The situation in the pit worsened to utter

chaos within a matter of seconds .

While scores of people were leaping in to man the ropes, scores more

were fighting to get out.  Everyone, it seemed, was shouting at the top

of their lungs.

A moment later, Catherine could see the problem.  A section of the

bedrock had split open leaving a deep gash where one of the supporting

poles had been anchored.  She watched as Taylor and her father led the

effort to resecure the beam.  Whatever was at the bottom of the freshly

opened hole was sending a panic through all the Arabs who looked down at

it.

Catherine couldn't stand it any longer, she had to see .

She hurried around to the far end of the pit and slithered down one of

the watts.  Her father and the other men were down in the dirt working

right beside the mysterious cavity .

She climbed over the ring itself and came into the crowded

circle of workmen at it's center.  She pushed her way between the men

and peeked down into the hole.

"Fossils!"

"Catherine!"

She heard the anger in her father's voice, but couldn't take her eyes

off the freakishly twisted figures the Earth had opened to reveal.

Partially buried in the stone, the bones sphtitered as if crushed with

great force, was a very humanlooking hand.  But next to it, flattened to

sharp angles was what looked like a large exoskeletal head-definitely

not human.  The chilling thing was, the shiny black almondshaped eye

staring out of the head.  It could have been rotten biological tissue

that had petrified, or a thick sliver of onyx set into a statue.  Or

perhaps the feflahin were right: over and over they used an Arabic word

she recognized, the word for devil.

Hypnotized by this mangled preview of hell, Catherine felt herself being

lifted into the air, floating toward the edge of the pit.  Her father

plunked the girl down, gave her a long hard stare that meant his

patience was exhausted, then ordered one of his assistants, a rotund

young man from Liverpool, to,keep an eye on her.

For several minutes, as the men worked to steady the ring in its upright

position, she sat watching the last light of afternoon deepen into

violet evening.  She stared up at the ring, strange desert jewel, and

came to an irreversible decision.  She promised herself no matter how

long it took, no matter how hard the liob was, she was going to solve

the mystery of where the ring had come from.  She got to work

immediately, running to her tubby escort and making an announcement.

"I'm going back to the car."

Sensing he had no choice in the matter, he io!lowed her back to the

limousine where she set to work thumbing through her copy of Ancient

Egypt.  Soon she found what she was looking for: a picture of the god

Anubis, the jackalheaded deilily responsible for shepherding the

deceased down to the Land of the Dead.

"Look at this," she said, passing him the open tome .

"That smashed-up thing down there is Anubis.  We've got to show this to

my father."

Her companion, who'd gotten only a quick glimpse at the carnage before

he was conscripted into the role of babysitter, took the book and laid

it across the hood of the car .

As he was squinting at the page, another chauffeur-driven motorcar

pulled up.  Out stepped the Egyptian Under-Secretary of the Ministry of

Antiquities himself, come to pay a routine" visit.

As the foppishly dressed, mustachioed bureaucrat strolled past,

surrounded by his entourage of flatterers, he tipped his hat to the

little girl.

"Good evening, Miss Langford.  Has anything interesting happened today?"

LOS ANGELES,, PRESENT DAY

Soaked from head to toe, toting an overstuffed book sack and muttering

to himself, Daniel Jackson slogged north along Gower toward Sunset

Boulevard.  He was a clean-cut man with sandy brown hair and a fair

complexion, just shy of thirty years old.  He had forgotten his umbrella

and didn't have enough money for the bus.  His shoes looked like

hand-me-downs, but the long cashmere trench coat he was wearing gave him

an air of respectability.  As he walked, he seemed to be lashing out at

some invisible enemies.

In fact, Daniel had to ask himself whether he was really going over the

edge this time.  What was supposed to have been his day of renewal, his

reacceptance into the academic community," felt instead like his

entombment day.  Turning west on Sunset, he entered the little grocery

near the corner hoping Mr.  Arzumanian would let him put a bottle of

wine on his tab.  He figured that if it was his burial day, he n-tight

as well get embalmed.

"Mr.  Dan, my friend, what's happen'?" boomed Arzumanian, burly and

habitually enthusiastic.

"Amen ench shat ahavor ar.  Nrank char hasskanum yes enchkar khalatse

em." Daniel summarized the nightmare in fluent Armenian ." So, I was

hoping to get a bottle of wine, but I don't know when I'll be able to

pay you back."

" I got idea.  Yes kpokhem, " replied the shopkeeper, offering a trade.

He needed Daniel to translate a negotiation between himself and one of

his suppliers who spoke only Greek.  He wanted to make the call right

away, but when he saw the pain on Daniel's face, he suggested they put

it off untU the next day instead.

With the bottle of booze completing his "look," Daniel stepped back into

the rain and headed for home, wondering how he'd ended up like this.

Wasn't he the boy who had won the scholarships in high school for his

translations of Phoenician poetry, then had been accepted at UCLA when

he was only sixteen?  The young wizard with the triple major in

languages, philology, and ancient history?  How had he let so much

promise slip through his fingers to end up a scorned, dead-broke,

friendless, lonely, unemployed, and very wet ex-professor?  He

remembered that disturbing statistic about the percentage of

boy-genius-types surieing from early insanity.  Daniel knew he was in a

bad way.

He splashed his way across the parking lot of Tkenchenko's Tires, a

seedy garage in a crumbling brick building.  He saw the owner, Vladimir

Tkenchenko, shaking his baking bead in disgust from under a Lexus he had

up on the hydraulic lift.  Daniel lived in the converted office space

above the garage and, several months behind in his rent, had already

been served his eviction notice.  Unless his luck changed pretty soon,

he would have to start calling everyone he knew, asking if he could

sleep on their floor for a few nights.  He walked right past Vladimir

and up to the shop's grimy business counter.

"Any mail for me?"

Sitting at the desk laughing into the telephone was the prettiest girl

Daniel knew, Svetlana.  When she saw who was asking, aB the joy went out

of her expression.  Without interrupting her conversation, she stood up

and dropped two pieces of mail on the counter.  A few months earlier,

before his grant money was gone, things had been different between them.

They had joked and flirted and even gone around the corner for Thai food

a couple of times.  But just when things were starting to warm up

between them, he'd run out of funds and had turned into "the problem

tenant."

He inspected that day's correspondence.  A "Final Warn ing" from the

phone company and another missing children card, which Daniel studied,

just in case.

Daniel, even more deflated than he was before, walked out of the garage

and sat down in the drizzling rain on a stack of spent radials, staring

into space.  Across the street, a filthy homeless man was lecturing a

cat about not digging in the garbage only ten feet from where a

tough-looking chauffeur was guarding his sleek limousine.  What a

messedup city.

His mind began replaying the conference and the disastrous speech he had

given that afternoon to the nation's top archaeologists.  Most of them

knew him by reputation and thought he was slightly demented, a victim of

too many I , t

science fiction novels.  Unfortunate y oday's events had only reinforced

their opinions.  The articles he had published over the last year or so

had been greeted with universal scorn by the academic "community." Even

though his research methods and the depth of his information were still

admired, the conclusions he was drawing from the evidence were

increasingly "different." He was rocking the boat, and his colleagues

attacked him savagely in the professional journals.

"Ignores long established facts," was a typical comment .

Some of them went beyond criticism into personal attacks: "Jackson is

either misguided and incompetent or he is engaging in substance abuse."

Or, the one he had clipped out and taped to the kitchen wall, "This is

the sort of archaeology we expect to find in The National Enquirer ...

his work has no place in the world of respectable science."

Daniel was fully aware of how unconventional his conclusions were.

That's why he had hedged at first, publishing a very watered-down

version of what he reefly believed.  But he was convinced that his

theories conformed to the facts better than the time-honored

explanations of early Egyptian civilization.

When he had walked into the giant Scottish Rite Temple on Wilshire

Boulevard that morning, he knew he would be facing a skeptical audience.

But he hadn't expected them to be hostile and downright insulting.

Dr.  Ajami, his department chair when he taught at Columbia, had flown

out to participate in the conference.  When

none of the event's organizers wanted to introduce Daniel, Ajami stepped

forward and gave Daniel a glowing introduction:

"He graduated with his Master's at the age of twenty, speaks eleven

different languages, and I fully expect his dissertation to become the

standard reference of the early development of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

He has written several seminal articles on the comparative linguistics

of the Afro-Asiatic language groups, and, of course, on the development

of the Egyptian language from the Archaic Period to the Old Kingdom,

which will be his topic today.  Please welcome one of Egyptology's most

promising young scholars, Daniel Jackson."

As he was making his way to the podium during the introduction, he

overheard a pair of aging professors enjoying the following

conversation.  Daniel recognized them as two of the dinosaurs of

American archaeology.

"Ah, another wunderkind," blustered the pudgy Professor Rauschenberg.

"I own socks older than this kid," chortled the lanky Dr.  Tubman.

They gave Daniel a skeptical once-over as he made his way past them.

When they assumed he was out of earshot, they continued:

"Not quite up to Sir Allen Gardiner," the one snickered.

"But let's hope he's not another Wallace Budge!" the other guffawed.

Although Daniel didn't think it was funny, he understood the obscure

joke.  Budge was a maddeningly dull lecturer, known for putting huge

roomftils of his colleagues to sleep with an avalanche of details.

Once Daniel was settled at the podium, the air in the room was thick

with tension.  He was an unpredictable scholar, something his profession

wasn't used to.  He glanced at the ceiling for a second, just long

enough for everyone to wonder what he was doing, then he suddenly turned

and shot a question to Professor Rauschenberg: "Sir, what kind of car do

you drive?"

Confused, the old fellow answered, " A Ford."

"A Model T?" Daniel's question got a laugh.

"I'm not quite that old.  I drive an Escort."

"I see." Daniel scratched his chin ." Power steering and power brakes?"

he asked.

"Don't forget power windows!" he old fellow said, trying to play along.

"So, in the unlikely event that a long-dormant volcano erupts in Santa

Monica this afternoon and we're all exhumed hundreds of years later by

wunderkind archaeologists, there's really no chance of them mistakenly

dating you and your car to the early part of this century."

"What are you driving at?" asked Rauschenberg's companion, Dr.  Tubman.

Indeed, no one in the audience had the slightest idea where Daniel was

leading them.

"Henry Ford starts out modestly, almost primitively, with the old Tin

Lizzy, the Model A.  Then he slowly develops his product into the

sophisticated technology we enjoy today.

"Which leads to my central question about the ancient Egyptians: why

didn't their culture 'develop?" I believe the evidence shows that their

arts, sciences, mathematics, technology, techniques of warfare are all

there, complete from the beginning!"

Daniel gave them a minute to mull and murmur, then went back on the

attack.

"What I want to argue here today is that the Egyptians of the pre-Old

Kingdom era somehow 'inherited' all of these arts and sciences.  Then,

after a short 'getting acquainted' period, we see the full flowering of

what we call ancient Egypt ."

There was an audible, clucking reaction in the audience .

He pressed on.

"Their writing, for example.  The hieroglyphic system of the first two

dynasties is notoriously difficult to interpret .

The common wisdom holds that it is a crude version of the more complex

writing we find later, at the time of the Old Kingdom.  But, what I have

tried to demonstrate in a series of articles, is that this early

language is already a fully developed system, a combination of phonetic

and ideogrammatic elements.  If this is true, they were able to move

from crude cave paintings to a complicated system for describing the

world and themselves in virtually no time at all, a few generations."

Daniel paused and watched quietly as the first group of scientists made

their way to the exits.  He wanted to argue that the old system was even

more elegant than the later hieroglyphs, but since he was the only

person who could read them fluently, he knew he'd be talking to the air.

He changed the subject.

"Let's take another example.  The theme of today's conference is Khufu's

Pyramid," he began.

Dr.  Ajami coughed politely to catch Daniel's attention then nodded, as

if to say that is indeed the theme, please stick to it.

"The same argument applies to Khufu's Pyramid.  Most scientists believe

that this masterpiece of engineering must have been the result of

generations of practice.  According to this theory, Djoser's Step

Pyramid at Saqqara, the socalled "flat pyramid" and the large tombs at

Abydos are seen as warm-ups, learning exercises that lead to the

infinitely more complex and precise Khufu's Pyramid.

"As many of you know, I don't subscribe to that theory .

In my view, Khufti's Pyramid must have come first, to be followed by the

lesser structures just mentioned.  The evidence supporting the

traditional sequence of construction is based on folklore and written

records that were made hundreds of years after the fact.  The scant

evidence we do have suggests, in my view, that the people living along

the Nile were slowly forgetting how to build these structures, getting

worse and worse at it with each passing generation."

Another contingent of conferees stood up and walked out .

Others were giggling audibly, but Daniel pressed on.  He didn't have any

other choice.

"Unfortunately, the many attempts to determine the construction dates

(,f the pyramids using carbon C,, tests haven't given us conclusive

results.  Enough conflicting data exists to justify just about any

theoretical position.

"But ask yourselves this question: All the lesser pyramids are hean!ily

inscribed with the names of the pharaohs who ordered their construction.

The mastabas surrounding the pyramids are blanketed with cartouches

announcing the names and titles of their owners, lists of offerings,

construction dates, which gods they worshiped, the musical instruments

they played, etc.  Typically, we find painted histories

in these tombs, extolling the many godlike qualities of the person

buried there.  The pharaohs were the greatest egoists in the history of

the world.  And yet, the greatest pyramid of them all, Khufu's, has no

writings whatsoever.  Not a mark anywhere, inside or out.  Does that

make any sense?"

An imposing older gentleman, Professor Romney of U.  C.

Berkeley, got to his feet and interrupted.

"It's an interesting theory, Dr.  Jackson, one that most of us are

familiar with."

Someone in the crowd began humming the Twilight Zone theme, which

cracked up some people and left others confused.

Romney, a tall gaunt man, was not distracted.  He stared at Daniel and

continued.

"You suggest the pyramid wasn't built for a pharaoh because there wasn't

a name on it.  But what about Vyse's discovery of the quarryman's

inscription of Khufu's name written inside the relieving chamber, sealed

since its construction?"

Daniel rolled his eyes ." Oh, rome on!  That discovery was a joke, a big

fraud perpetrated by Vyse himself."

Not only was that the wrong thing to say in front of this conservative

crowd, it was definitely the wrong way to say it.  The audience erupted

into angry, vehement dissent.  A few of the more boisterous even began

to boo.  Another score of professors stood up and left.

Professor Romney made his voice heard over the shouting: "That's too

easy, Dr.  Jackson.  If you had done your homework, you wouldn't have to

defame the good reputation of dead men to support your ideas," he

thundered.

Up to that point, Daniel had maintained a certain ironic amusement with

how badly things were going.  That changed to a hostile, lethal

precision in the bat of an eyelash.

"Before leaving for Egypt," he began, "Vyse bragged that he would make

an important discovery that would make him world famous.  Using his

father's money, he hired an elite team of experts and brought them to

the Giza Pyramids.  But after several very expensive months, they had

nothing to show for their troubles.  So Vyse fired the lot of them and

imported a gang of gold miners from his father's South American mining

operation.  Less than three weeks

later, they 'discovered' what forty centuries of explorers, grave

robbers and scientists could not find-the secret room, 'sealed since

construction." In this otherwise empty room, they found the thing that

made Vyse's reputation: the long-sought-after cartouche with the name of

Khufti.  The cartouche appears on three walls of the chamber, but,

strangely, not on the wail Vyse sledgehammered into rubble to enter the

room.  The nwne is written in a red ink that appears nowhere else in

ancient Egypt.  It is astonishingly well preserved and, incredibly, it

is misspelled."

"Well, what can you expect from an illiterate quarryman?" Romney asked.

By this point, Daniel had abandoned the podium and was stalking up and

down the stage like a hungry circus tiger .

He walked to a chalkboard and, with surprising speed, wrote out a series

of hieroglyphs.

"This is the symbol Vyse claims to have found in the relieving chamber.

Now we all know, if we've done our homework"-he stared bullets at

Romney-"that Vyse carried with him the 1906 edition of Wilkenson's

Materia Hieroglyphica published in Amsterdam by Heynis Books .

Diligent students such as yourself, Professor, will not have failed to

notice that in the very next edition the publishers include a loose-leaf

apology listing the errata in the previous edition.  This fist includes

the hieroglyphic for the name , KHUFU." They'd misprinted the first

consonant of Khufu's name.  It should have looked like this .  .  ."

Daniel drew an almost identical set of symbols vertically down the

chalkboard.

"What an exceedingly strange coincidence that the cartouche Vyse

discovered is misspelled in the exact same way!

If a quarryman had misspelled the name of the pharaoh, especially on his

burial chamber, he would have been put to death and the wail would have

been torn down and rebuilt."

Daniel paused and gave the professor an ugly look, adding, "But I'm sure

you knew all of this already because you look like a man who takes his

homework seriously."

These last words were delivered just as Professor Romney stormed from

the conference hall.  Before he left, he turned for one parting shot.

"You sound lik e a bad television show or that Chariots Of

the Gods book." That brought a few chuckles and scattered applause, but

Daniel could feel he had won back some of the audience.  A few of the

important names were still in the room, and now he hoped they were ready

to listen.

"Now if we could get back for a moment.  Perhaps the real origins of

their civilization lay buried in the wadis of the Western Sahara-"

"Professor, if I may." At the very back of the room, in a smart,

expensive dress and oversize glasses, stood a woman who looked to be

about sixty years of age.  In fact, she was much older.

"Let me say first," she said with a faint accent, "that your connnand of

the facts is impressive.  I have just one question: Who do you think

built the pyramids?"

This was the question Daniel had hoped to avoid.  No matter what his

answer, ridicule would surely follow.  Daniel had learned over and over

again that when it came to matters of Egyptian history, the academic

community behaved like religious zealots.  It was as though all

previously accepted theories were sacrosanct, written in stone by the

great Almighty.  All those who challenged these findings, condemned as

heretic.  Daniel had hoped that he could stimulate a diatribe with his

colleagues in the audience and reexamine this period with an open mind,

acknowledging that there are still so many unanswered questions about

the very nature of the origins of Egyptian culture.  But the moment the

question was asked, Daniel knew it was only a matter of time before this

symposium would disintegrate into another humiliating experience.

Reluctantly Daniel stammered an answer.

"That's, er, the whole point," he told her, "I have no idea who built

them or why."

A collective groan of disappointment went up in the lecture hall.  The

stylish elderly woman nodded briskly, as if she were satisfied with that

answer before she turned and left.

A heavyset bearded man in a tight shirt called out a suggestion in a

mock English accent ." The lost people of Atlantis?"

Those people still in the audience laughed and then began gathering up

their belongings.

"Or Martians, perhaps!"

"I didn't say that," Daniel defended himself.

"No, but you were about to," the bearded man retorted.

"You're missing the point entirely," he said into his notes.  The

atmosphere in the room was about as intellectual as a school cafeteria

during a mass food fight.  More than half the audience was gone and more

were leaving.  Fishing through his pile of documents, Daniel found the

report he wanted and vainly attempted to continue, speaking into the

microphone without looking up.

"New geological evidence dates the Sphinx back to a much earlier period.

Knowing this to be true, we must begin to reevaluate everything we've

coiyie to accept about the origins of Egyptian culture.  We simply have

to start from scratch ...

When the door closed behind the last laughing group of conferees, Dr.

Ajami, who was still sitting patiently on the podium, approached Daniel.

His mood was plain.

"I'm very, very disappointed with you, Daniel.  I thought we had an

understanding that you wouldn't discuss this nonsense here today.  I

took a risk presenting you here today, tried to do you a favor, but now

I'm afraid you've killed your career.  Good-bye ." Then Ajami joined the

others in the lobby.

Daniel, his hands beginning to tremble, his face hot with humiliation,

stared out at the vacant auditorium before quietly closing his notebook

and leaning to the microphone.

"Are there any questions?"

As Daniel sat in the rain watching the ink on his phone bill start to

run, he thought about the old woman at the back of the auditorium again.

How he'd like to chat with her over a nice cup of tea and then strangle

her to death.  She had breezed into the room just when he'd turned the

tide, and had asked him the exact question he was trying to avoid.

At length, he stood and made his way upstairs to his apartment where he

met with yet another unwelcome surprise: His front door was standing

wide-open.

"Burglars," he whispered.

Normally he would have run away and let them take whatever they wanted,

but not today.  Sopping wet, he slipped in the door and found the

umbrella he had set by the

door so he wouldn't forget it.  Normally a real peacenik, Daniel stalked

down the entry hall, poised for a fight.

Edging around the corner, he could see one of them going through his

desk.  Leaping into his front room, umbrella at attack position, Daniel

found himself face-to-face with the same elderly woman from the

conference.  She looked up for a moment, then went back about her

business, nonchalantly leafing through the papers on his disorganized

desk.

"Come in," she said with the trace of an accent.  Her voice was calm,

professional ." Your cleaning lady must be taking the year off," she

said without much of a grin.

For the second time today, this woman was confusing him to the point of

semi-speecwessness.  Gathering his wits, and relaxing his death grip on

the parasol, he formulated his question.

"Uh ...  Is there some ...  What the hell are you doing in my

apartment?"

"Now this is a truly beautiful piece of art," she said, picking up the

graceful sculpture of an Egyptian woman that Daniel kept above his desk.

The marble bust, with traces of its original paint, showed the delicate

and very beautiful face of a young woman ." I'd guess fourteenth century

B.C.

probably from the area around Edfu." She glanced around at the

secondhand and thirdhand furniture before asking, "How did you ever

manage to afford it?"

"Please be very careftil with that," he said nervously .

Daniel didn't want to discuss how the treasure had come into his

possession.  Yes, it was his only expensive possession, but it was far

more valuable to him than any price it could fetch in dollars.  His

visitor, sensing how concerned he was, set it back carefully on the

special shelf above the cluttered desk.

Daniel finally placed her accent.  It was Swedish, but was now so slight

that he guessed she'd been living in the States for most of her life.

Everything about this woman spoke of power, privilege, and complete

self-confidence.  Only the inch-thick lenses of her glasses, which

magnified her eyes to the size of half-dollars, disrupted the effect.

She peered through them now at Daniel.

"I've come to offer you a job."

Jo

"Job?" His mind started to race ." What kind of' b?"

Strolling over to a framed snapshot on the wall, she changed the subject

once again ." Your parents?"

"Foster ."

"Oh, that's right.  Your parents died in that plane crash back in ...

what was it, T3?"

"Ah yes, let me think," Daniel broke into a savage imitation of the old

woman, "yes, I believe it was T3.  An excellent year for a fiery death,

wouldn't you say?"

The woman realized she'd made a hurtful mistake and apologized, but

Daniel didn't let her off that easily.

"No, really, if it would amuse you, let's definitely have a chitchat

about the way my parents died."

When Daniel was finished, he walked past her into his small kitchen for

something to drink.  He stared into the wasteland of his refrigerator

until the woman continued.

"My name is Catherine Langford.  And I have some very early

hieroglyphics I'd like you to work on."

"Since when is the military interested in hieroglyphs?"

Catherine stopped talking and feigned confusion ." Mifitary?  What makes

you think this has anything to do with the military?"

Daniel was guessing.  He figured she must've flashed some sort of badge

or credential to get his suspicious landlord Vladimir to open the

apartment.  And that chauffeur across the street was sporting a

military-style crew cut, an oddity on the streets of Hollywood.  The way

she avoided his question answered it for him.

"I think I'm too old to run off and join the Army," Daniel told her.

Catherine was delighted with how quick an observant he was ." Very

impressive, Doctor.  Look, I wish I could explain everything to you, but

there's a certain amount of secrecy involved with this project."

"Well maybe you can divulge this much: why should I take ajob I know

nothing about?"

Catherine had her answer ready to go.

"You have no family or friends here in the city.  Your landlord

mentioned that he'd served you an eviction notice because of your rent

being overdue, and there's a stack of unpaid bills on your desk.  Now,

it looks to me like young

Dr.  Jackson needs ajob.  And after your speech this afternoon, I

wouldn't sit home waiting for the phone to ring."

Daniel didn't know what to say.  Those were pretty good reasons to take

whateverjob she was offering.

"But there's an even better reason you should come to work for me,

Daniel."

This woman had a lot of nerve ." And what might that be?" he asked.

"To prove that your theories are fight."

She unclasped her smart little handbag and took out a set ?f old

black-and-white photos, holding them out for him to inspect.  The

pictures offered glimpses of the large cover stone the Langford

Expedition had found near Giza.  There was no indication of the large

ring they'd found beneath, or the fossils.  As Daniel flipped through

the pictures, all the muscles in his face went slack.  The expression,

which Catherine had seen before, told her that she'd just hired the

newest member of her team.

"Enough!" She snatched the faded exposures away from him, handing him

another envelope in return.

" What's this?"

"Your travel plans," Catherine explained preparing to go.

Daniel opened the envelope, took one look at the plane ticket, and

sneezed ." Denver?  Look, as you can imagine, I'm not real big on

flying."

"Get over it," she said deadpan.  Then, with a smile, she pulled the

door closed behind her.

YUMA,, AR-I-Z -ONA

The unmarked sedan coasted to a stop in front of a modestly landscaped

two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Yuma, Arizona.  Although it was

almost winter, the noon sun made the street an oven, forcing the souls

who lived there to hide in their air-conditioned interiors.  Even the

dogs, lolling, tongues out in the shade, were too hot to come and bark.

The old joke applied that day, the one about the guy from Yuma who dies

and goes to hell.  When he gets there, he goes home for his blanket.

Doors clicked open and two officers from the nearby Marine Corps Air

Station stepped into the heat.  Their crisp uniforms announced they were

both commissioned officers out on official business.

While the first officer stepped onto the porch and knocked at the door,

the other, carrying a thick black folder, surveyed the garage.  Evidence

of happier times: a basketball rim above the open garage door, bikes

parked at attention.

The front door opened, but the door chain was still latched.  Through

the crack an attractive woman about forty years old peered out at the

men.  She knew this moment would come, she'd spent the last two years

fearing this moment and wishing it would come at the same time.  Now

they were here, and she hated them.  It meant she had lost the battle

for her husband's life.

"Mrs.  O'Neil?" asked the first officer.

The door slammed closed.  The officers looked at one another and were

about to knock again, when it swung back open.  Sarah O'Nefl, still in

her housecoat, her hair matted from sleep, scrutinized the officers

coldly.  Years of working as a schoolteacher had taught her how to

freeze boys in their tracks no matter how old or how innocent they might

be.  But a moment later, her fierce expression began to melt into one of

pain.

"Wipe your feet," she said, then disappeared around the corner into the

kitchen.  The soldiers obeyed her orders, then came into the house.  The

living room, decorated almost exclusively in white, was a shrine to

tidiness.  Unfortunately, it did not contain what the men were looking

for.

"Mrs.  O'Ned, is your husband at home?" asked the first officer.

From the kitchen, the sound of something being sliced on a chopping

block could be heard ." Yes he is," she answered.

After another uncomfortable moment, he asked the empty room, "Ma'am, do

you think we might be able to speak with him?"

" You can try.  Last door, end of the hall," she said, and continued her

cutting.

Moving through the living room, they passed a mantel full of carefully

arranged photos, each one in a frame .

The younger officer picked one of them up: a dozen people at a backyard

pool party making goofy faces into the camera.  The stark contrast

between the explosion of life in the picture and the absence of it in

the room was spooky.  The soldier carefully replaced the frame and went

on.

At the end of the hall, the pair found an open door leading into another

orderly room.  This one belonged to a teenage boy judging from the

sports trophies and the big pool skating poster.  Here the officers

found what they were looking for.  Sitting in an armchair, staring

through the window at his own backyard, was a barefoot, shirtless,

unshaven man wearing only a pair of blue jeans.  His greasy hair was

down to his collar.  A few moments

earlier, he had been holding a pistol, rolling it over in his hands,

practicing pointing it at his head, wishing he could pull the trigger.

The moment he heard their voices in the living room, he'd leaned forward

and stashed the gun in the top drawer of the desk.

Walking into the room, the younger officer smirked before he could stop

himself-during the drive from the base, his partner had recited a dozen

or so stories about how deadly and skillful O'Neifl had been before aB

the trouble, but then this.  This long-haired, out-of-shape, watery-eyed

dude who looked like he was strung out on drugs.  What sort of

classified military communique could possibly be going to this

burned-out budding of a man?

The officer with the folder quickly stepped forward.

"Pardon us, Colonel O'Neil.  We're from General West's office ."

After a long pause, the man in the chair turned his head to look at

them.  His eyes were so lifeless, he didn't seem to understand who had

entered the room.

The older officer thought it best to repeat himself ." General West sent

us here, sir."

With a slow, empty gesture he motioned for them to sit down and get on

with it.

Sarah walked into the hallway and noticed that they hadn't closed the

door.  She took a deep breath and moved to the hall closet, pretending

to look for something.  She heard her husband talking.

Years old so you aren't even sure if this threat still exists."

"As I told you, sir, everything we know about it is included in this

briefing statement."

O'Nefl was getting increasingly annoyed with these two.  They were from

the same office that had run him out of the service in the first place

." Aren't you guys still worried that I'm junstable'?  Haven't you read

my discharge papers?"

The older officer hesitated for a moment before deciding to put his

cards on the table.  He leaned forward to emphasize how serious he was.

He wasn't sure how O'Nefl would react to what he was going to say next

." I don't think you

understand, sir.  We don't want you for this project in spite of your

condition.  We want you because of it."

That stopped O'Nefl in his tracks.  He couldn't believe the incredible

arrogance it took to walk into his home, knowing the shape he was in,

then inform him, almost matter-of-factly, that they wanted to take

advantage of his weakness.  He was stunned.

He looked up toward the doorway and saw Sarah standing there, trying to

act as if she weren't listening.  But she was listening, and now she was

suddenly very afraid.  She turned her head just enough to make eye

contact with her husband.  But as quickly as she did, the younger

officer was on his feet and pushed the door closed with a sharp click.

As soon as she was alone in the hallway, everything came

flooding in at once.  She wu sure the two men had come to offer Jack

some sort of kamikaze mission.  The more dangerous the mission, she

knew, the more likely he was to accept it.  And because of his skiff at

creating "accidents," she would never see him again.  She began

imagining the last horrible chapter of their marriage: her sitting at

home waiting for the phone to ring so some junior officer with a

soothing voice could tell her that Jack had been killed.

She closed the closet, then wandered back into the living room, pausing

to straighten the picture on the mantle.  She sat on the couch and

looked cabuly around the room, allowing herself to wonder for the first

time whether it wouldn't be better if he went.  She knew that's what he

wanted.  She'd put up a good fight to save him, but perhaps it was time

to admit defeat and let go.  The familiar dull ache rose up in her

chest, the feering her heart gave her when it was about to break again.

Twenty minutes later, Sarah spied out her kitchen curtains as the

officers returned to their car minus the folder she'd seen them bring

in.  When they had driven away, she walked through the living room to

the back of the house where she heard the shower running.

She opened the bedroom door and saw something that brought tears to her

eyes almost instantly.  Laid across the bedspread was her husband's

neatly pressed uniform.  Next to it was the black folder the men had

delivered.

DECODING CREEK

MOUNTAIN

Swerving along a twisting two-lane highway deep in the Colorado Rockies,

Daniel, never a very good driver, felt it was necessary to check his

road map every time he was headed into a turn.  As if this weren't

dangerous enough, he was sneezing constantly.  Over his right shoulder,

the backseat was awash with moist tissue paper.

Then, at long last, after four full days on the road for a trip that

should have taken thirty-six hours, he saw the sign: CREEK MOUNTAIN,

U.S.  GOVERNMENT SPECIAL ZONE."

He turned the oil-burning, steam-hissing muscle car, a black '68 Dodge

Charger with a tape of Elvis's Greatest Hits permanently lodged in the

8-track player, off the highway and up the steep, tree-lined entrance

road.  When he saw the soldiers at the gate, he was so relieved he

honked his horn and waved.

Pulling up to the checkpoint, he encountered a pair of not-very-amused

Marines, hands on holsters.  One of them stepped out of the kiosk and

approached the car.

"I'm Daniel Jackson," he said, as if the men at the gate should have

been expecting him ." I didn't think I was going to make it.

"Your credentials?"

Daniel made a violent grab for something on the seat, and before the

Marines could draw their weapons, he sneezed

into it, then tossed it over his shoulder.  He handed the stack of

papers Catherine had given him over to the guard, who studied them

carefully.  Daniel sneezed again.

"You got quite a cold there, Doctor Jackson," observed the soldier,

inspecting the vehicle's littered interior.

"Uh-huh.  Allergies," Daniel told him ." Always happens when I travel."

When they rinsed the gate and waved him through, Daniel coaxed the Dodge

up one last hill and then out into the clearing where he expected to

find aB the Quonset huts, jeeps, and heavy artillery he associated with

the words "military base." Instead, he found two dozen civilian

automobiles parked near the mouth of a large cave cut into the side of

the mountain.  The only indication that this was indeed a military

installation was a group of Marines doing calisthenics in a clearing

between the pine trees.  Daniel found a parking spot and turned off the

key.  The engine continued to chug as he got out of the car and opened

the trunk.  It finally died with a loud backfire.

The big soldier who had been leading the exercise drill jogged up behind

Daniel as he was struggling to lift his enormous book bag out of the

trunk.

"Daniel Jackson?" the sweaty soillier inquired.  But before the

road-weary archaeologist could answer, this muscular soldier had grabbed

his hand and was shaking it eagerly.

"I'm Kawalsky.  Lieutenant Colonel Adam Kawalsky .

Where've you been?  Dr.  Langford thought you changed your mind ."

"I decided to drive.  Took me longer than I expected."

The man was six foot, four inches, dripping with sweat and being

entirely too friendly for Daniel's taste ." So, is this an army base?"

"I'm not authorized to discuss that," the soldier read him the textbook

response.

Daniel had to grin ." No, seriously.  Is this like a camp for army

scholars, a think tank or something?"

"I don't know what kind of security clearance you have, sir, and until I

do, I can't discuss that subject."

Giving the soldier a "whatever" look, Daniel returned to the project of

extracting his books from the trunk, now with the additional problem of

somebody watching him.

"Help you with that?" volunteered Kawalsky, stepping in.

Daniel tried to warn him: "Careful.  They're books, and they're

reafly"-Kawalsky hoisted the bag with one hand, and slammed the trunk

shut with the other-"heavy.

Daniel, no wimp, was somewhat alarmed by the ease that Kawalsky was able

to rift the literary load.  Following the soldier toward the tunnel

entrance, he thought he must be one of the strongest men in the world.

They walked through a pair of giant concrete doors and into a dark

cavernous hail.  When his eyes adjusted to the fight, Daniel saw they

were in a very large room with a polished concrete floor.  Strangely,

the only things in the room were a small drab shack made of corrugated

tin and a guard's kiosk next to it.  Kawalsky signaled to the guard

without breaking stride, and the doors of the little shack swung open

automatically.  Daniel followed him into the small stnicture.

"We all call this thing the telephone booth," Kawalsky explained, "like

on Get Smart."

Daniel had no idea what that meant, even when the room around them

shuddered and then began to sink.  The small room was actually an

elevator.  One that was descending at a brisk clip.  It seemed to Daniel

that it was a long way between floors.  He watched the numbers go by: 5,

6, 7 ...

Kawalsky, used to it, offered his guest a stick of gum .

"Equalizes your ear pressure."

Daniel took the gum and chewed nervously.  13, 14, 15 ...

"Uh, exactly what floor are we headed for?"

Kawalsky, stone-faced, "That's classified information, sir ."

This time Daniel knew it was a joke, but didn't think it was funny-21,

22, 23 ...  Daniel started to say something else, but the elevator

stopped in front of the number 28.  The doors opened onto a hallway as

sterile as you'd find in any hospital.  Daniel followed the lieutenant

through the buzz of neon lightbulbs, past closed office doors, and

around several corners moving deeper into the antiseptic subterranean

maze until Kawalsky suddenly stopped and knocked on one of the doors.

"Dr.  Meyers?  Are you in there, sir?"

The door cracked open and out came the shiny head of a middle-aged man

with bulging eyes.  He squinted at Daniel through his bifocals before

saying, "You must be the fresh meat." He came out into the hallway with

a dyspeptic expression on his face ." It's Jackson, isn't it?  I'm Dr.

Gary Meyers, Ph.D.  on loan from Harvard."

His pompous manner made it easy to dislike Dr.  Meyers, and Daniel

started getting the hang of it right away.  Daniel had heard of him, of

course-being a professor at a school like Harvard meant sitting on

powerful advisory boards, having your articles published in the most

respected journals, and enjoying all the benefits of being part of the

academic establishment.  On the one hand, Daniel could care less about

Meyers.  He was one of those elite ivory tower professors who hadn't

done a stitch of original thinking in years.  On the other hand, he knew

that without their help, he would never get the grant money and support

staff to move ahead with his own career.  Furthermore, although he would

never admit it, he longed for his approval.

"Where the hell am I?" Daniel wondered aloud.

"A goddamn nuclear missile silo," twanged a woman's voice behind them.

" Dr.  Shore"-Kawalsky turned on his heels-"until Dr. Jackson gets his

security classification, we are not-"

"Oh, shut up, Kawalsky, you overgrown testicle," she snapped, somehow

managing to make it sound flirtatious .

Coming out of her office on the other side of the hall, was a woman

about forty years old.  Short, stacked, and aggressively sexy, she was

the kind of creature you'd least expect to find working in an

underground military bunker.  Prowling straight toward Daniel, she

explained in a Texas drawl.

"Don't woer y, darlin'.  The place has been completely converted, but

technically it's still a military installation, so these jarheads get to

act like they own the place." Daniel smiled.  He knew he liked this

woman.

"Anyway, hi.  I'm Barbara Shore, the token astrophysicist on the team."

Her eye shadow matched the dark blue of her tight jumpsuit, making her

look like a daine you might meet in a bowling alley.  They shook hands

and made small talk for a n-dnute &fore she turned to Kawalsky.

"Lieutenant, let's show this nice man to his new office,

and you be nice to him or you can forget about that back rub I promised

you." In spite of her venomous tone, it was clear she liked the big

soldier.

Kawalsky, holding back a smile, turned and led the group down the hail

to a door marked 28-42.  He pushed the door open and said, "This is

where you'll be working."

Daniel couldn't believe his eyes.  The "office" was the size of a small

warehouse.  The walls, over twenty feet high, were covered with large

charcoal rubbings and photographic enlargements of hieroglyphics.  On

the long worktable, a slew of computer equipment was hooked up and

on-fine .

Thwo smaller tables held various artifacts, and the bookshelf was

stocked with every conceivable volume on the subject of hieroglyphic

interpretation (including photocopies of everything Daniel had published

on the subject).  There was even a portable stereo, a coffee machine,

and a small refrigerator.  But it was the wail directly.  across from

the worktable that caught and held Daniel's attention.  Something round

and huge was fixed to the wail, floor to ceiling, and covered with a

parachute-size sheet.  Daniel figured it must be the stone tablet, the

cover stone Catherine had showed him in the snapshots.  He pulled the

cloth to the floor revealing the strange treasure found at Giza all

those years ago.

This was the moment he'd driven all the way from L.A. for, and it did

not disappoint.  Amazed and delighted, he stood there gaping at the

ancient stone.

In the meantime, Catherine Langford came to the door, nodded hello to

the others, and entered the room.  In her own sweet time, she let Daniel

know she was there.

"Glad you could join us."

Daniel turned and looked at her.  His lips moved as if to speak, but

nothing came out.  He looked back at the giant monolith once more before

asking her the obvious question.

"Where did you find this thing?"

"The Giza Plateau in 1928," she explained, coming up behind him ." You

can see that there are two rings of hieroglyphs.  With Dr.  Meyers's

help, we've been able to translate the inner track of writing, which is

an extremely early form of hieroglyph.  But the outer one has been

giving us fits.  The symbols, as you c-an see, are unlike any ever

found." Catherine let him absorb the information and then dangled the

bait in front of him.

"Although we've showed these signs to a number of experts, including a

few of the people who walked out on your talk the other day, no one has

been able to make heads or tails of them.  Like Champoflion with the

Rosetta stone, we thought the two scripts might be parallel

translations; but if they are, we can't find the similarities.  It

doesn't help that it's written in a circle without any discernible

punctuation.

While Dr.  Meyers started into a long-winded explanation of the various

decoding programs they had used, Daniel's attention wandered to a

translation written on a portable blackboard near the stone.  He

listened with one ear for a while, but finally interrupted"This is all

wrong."

Moving to the blackboard, he wiped away the word TIME" and replaced it

with the word "YEARS."

"I beg your pardon!" puffed Meyers moving to protect his translation. He

looked to Catherine for support, but she gestured for him to back off,

which he reluctantly did.

Daniel was completely comfortable with the hieroglyphs .

Over the last three years, he had become virtually fluent in this dead

language, the precursor of the writing system used by the pharaohs.

Although many of the symbols remained the same, the grammar was

radically ditterent.  There were probably less than ten people in the

world who could read these early symbols.  Daniel mistakerity assumed

that Dr. Meyers was one of them, and spoke to his eminent colleague over

his shoulder as he worked.

"You used Budge, didn't you?  Why do they keep reprinting his books?"

Erasing and rewriting at incredible speed, Daniel fell into a hypnotic

rhythm as he flied to capture not only the literal meaning but the

felling sense of the script .

Then he stopped, puzzled.

"Now this is curious," he said to no one in particular .

"The word qebeh is followed by an adverbial sedjemen-ef with a cleft

subject." He turned slowly to Meyers and asked: "In his sarcophagus?"

Daniel scrunched up his face like the indelicacy of the translation was

causing him physical pain.

"I don't think so," he said condescendingly ." I think sealed and

buried' is a little more accurate."

As Daniel continued to work, the other people in the room exchanged

incredulous glances.  They'd all watched Meyers, whose degrees and

academic awards were conspicuously trained on his office walls, labor

for weeks to translate the message.  Daniel's speed was incredible.

Within minutes, he had finished and backed away from the board .

Moving to the stones, he offered his audience a play-by-play (or

glyph-by-glyph) reading of the ancient message.

"Begining here, it reads: 'A MILLION YEARS INTO THE SKY IS RA, SUN GOD.

SEALED AND BURIED FOR ALL TIME HIS.  .  ."' Moving back to the board, he

used the eraser like the sword of Zorro to dispatch the last word of

Meyers' translation .

".  .  .  Not 'DOOR TO HEAVEN." The proper translation is STARGATE." "

Then he read the message once more.

Everybody stared at Daniel, stunned by this awesome display of skill.

Dr.  Shore tiptoed up behind Meyers, whispered something in his ear, and

patted him on the fanny.

"AH light," Daniel wanted to maintain his momentum, will somebody please

tell me why the military has an astrophysicist working with an

archaeologist in a nuclear missile silo studying Egyptian tablets that

are five thousand years old?"

"My report says ten thousand."

In the doorway standing at attention was a split-and-polish soldier,

Colonel Jack O'Nefl.  Clean-shaven and sporting a boot-camp-style

haircut, he was a man who had undergone a complete and radical

transformation.  The expression in his eyes was no longer one of being

controlled by his ghosts; it was an expression of self-assurance and

command.

Kawalsky, spotting the silver eagle insignia on O'Ned's uniform, snapped

to attention, "Sir!"

"At ease."

Opening his black folder, O'Neit removed a document and handed it over

to Kawalsky for his inspection.  There was nothing outwardly unusual

about this man, but nonetheless he was frightening.  He conveyed

irreconcilable opposites to the scientists in the room.  At the same

time that he seemed as calm as the dead, he looked coiled and ready to

strike.  The mood in the office, even before Kawalsky

handed back the document, had turned black, like finding a rattlesnake

midway through an Easter egg hunt.

"Catherine Langford, my name is O'Neil.  Colonel Jack O'Neil from

General West's office.  I'll be taking over from this point forward ."

Catherine, not sure what to make of this, turned to Kawalsky, who looked

up from the document more stunned than anyone, and nodded.

Daniel hadn't heard anything after the words "ten thousand years." As

Catherine and the others began to pepper O'Neil with questions, he

interrupted them all.

"Wait a second.  Ten Thousand Years??  I'm soer y, but that's

impossible.  Egyptian civilization didn't even exist until-"

"Actually"-Dr.  Meyers saw his opportunity to tell Daniel something he

didn't know -" the sonic and radiocarbon C,, tests are conclusive."

Meyers pointed to the tables that held the Langford Expedition's

"incidental finds," a collection of tool fragments and pottery shards ."

These artifacts from associated and overlying strata have been tested to

the same era.  Besides"-and how he was getting downright snotty-"they're

clearly Epipaleolithic or Neolithic.  Probably related to the Natuflan

in Palestine, which makes them at least that old."

Daniel, milking them for information, tried a different approach ."

These are cover stones.  There must have been a tomb underneath ."

"Something more interesting than a bunch of bones, darlin'," Shore began

to explain before she was cut off by O'Neil, who stepped between them.

"Excuse me, Dr.  Shore, but that information has become classified."

"Oh, come on, Colonel," purred the astrophysicist, "he's part of the

team." O'Neil stared back at her like a thresher stares at wheat.  When

she saw that flirting was getting her nowhere, she appealed to her boss:

"Catherine, what in the hell is going on here?"

Catherine gestured for everyone to remain calm.  Over her many years on

the project, she'd weathered so many stomis and endured so many major

setbacks that she knew how to take this one in stride.  Besides, she had

developed the skill of compronsing her way to exactly what she wanted.

All the

same, she had a bad feeling about O'Ned and the way General West had

sent him here without warning.  She guessed it must have something to do

with Daniel being brought in.

"Effective immediately," O'Neil announced, "no information is to be

passed on to nonmilitary personnel without my written permission."

Daniel, nonmilitary personnel if ever there was such a creature, asked

the colonel if he was kidding ." I just drove here all the aay from L.A.

What exactly is it you want me to do here?"

O'Neil, as smooth as a razor blade answered, "You're a translator, so

translate." Then he turned to Kawalsky .

"Lieutenant, I want all information not directly pertaining to these

tablets to be removed from this work space and brought to my office

immediately.  Until that happens, you are the only individual authorized

to be in this room." With that he turned and started out of the office.

Kawalsky, not quite sure, called out to him ." Your ofrice, sir?"

O'Neil, already in the doorway, looked back over his shoulder ." And

I'll need an office."

"Yes, sir!"

Before he could get out of earshot, Shore called out, "Who was that

masked man?" She made sure to say it loud enough for O'Ned to hear.

Catherine was already on the move.  She took off out the door chasing

after O'Ned.  That left Kawalsky and the rest of the scientific team

staring at each other.  He was hoping they would cooperate with the

orders, because he was in no mood to enforce them.

Daniel still wanted to believe he had somehow misunderstood ." You guys

can't be serious about restricting me from information," he said to

Kawalsky ." I mean, if I'm going to have any chance of figuring out what

this stone says, I'm going to need information.  Otherwise, what the

hell am I doing here?"

Kawalsky didn't like this situation any more than Daniel did.  What more

could he add?  They'd all heard his orders delivered in no uncertain

terms.  Inwardly, he was dying .

West had taken command of the project away from him after almost three

years, just when they were getting close.

Adding salt to the wound, his replacement was this strange, O'Neil

character, who, the documents told him, had come out of retirement to

take the job.

"Your quarters are over there, directly across the hall.  If there's

anything you need, don't hesitate to ask."

"Didn't you hear what I just said?" Daniel was about to explode.  His

life was a big enough mess without this highhanded military bu!lshit ."

How am I supposed to decipher this thing without any information?!"

Kawalsky had no use for being yelled at.  He was the sort of guy who

would treat you just as well as you treated him .

And this was the wrong moment to jump on his case.

"I have my orders," he said in a monotone.  He pointed toward the door,

the expansion on his face giving Daniel and the others every incentive

to use it.

Daniel couldn't believe what he was hearing ." Do you always follow

orders?  Always?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Colonel, just a minute." Out in the hallway, Catherine caught up with

O'Nefl ." I think you owe me some kind of explanation.  I have been

personally assured by General West that I would have complete autonomy."

:'Plans change." He shrugged.

'Apparently," Catherine said patiently, "but I'd appreciate some

elaboration."

O'Neil tried to finesse her ." The way I understand it, the folks at

headquarters feel things have gotten a little too loose around here. And

now you've brought in another civilian."

"Colonel O'Neil"-her tone made it clear that she wasn't buying that

story-"Jackson was approved."

O'Neil didn't want to lie, so he kept quiet.

Catherine sensed as much and asked him point-blank, "This doesn't have

anything to do with him, does it?  What's this all about?  Why'd they

bring you in?"

The colonel thought about all the answers he could give her.  After West

had read the file on Daniel, he guessed this was their best shot and

decided it was time to roll in his heavy guns.  Something about

Catherine made O'Nefl decide to tell her the truth.

"I'm here in case you succeed." "BINGO!'*,*

Kawalsky, using both hands to balance a big tray of hot cafeteria food,

used his boot to reach out and turn the doorknob.  It took him a couple

of tries to get it open.  Inside, Verdi's Egyptian opera, Aida, was

screaming through Daniel's boom box at full volume.  Without spilling a

drop, he pushed backward into the room.  But when the door closed, he

knew he was in trouble.

The lights were out, and the room was pitch-black inside.

Over the last twelve days, Daniel had managed to make this vast office

just as cluttered and messy as his apartment in L.A.  had been.  The

more frustrated he got about not being able to translate the outer ring

of hieroglyphs, the worse the room became.  Kawalsky, really

concentrating now on not dropping the hot food, knew better than to try

stumbling around in the chaos.

"Jackson!  Hey, Jackson, dinner!  Turnon the lights, man ."

The music went dead in mid-crescendo.  A moment later, the lights

clicked on.  In front of where the cover stone was mounted to the wall,

the Marines on the staff had built Daniel a two-story scaffold, set on

wheels, so he could study the beast up close and personal.  On the upper

plank of the scaffold, all that was visible was Daniel's hand holding a

remote control.

" Good morning, Lieutenant" came the voice.

"It's almost eight P.m." Kawalsky growled.  Over the last several days,

he had come to consider Daniel a royal pain in the ass.  With more than

a little disgust, he asked, "Why don't you clean this place up a

little?"

" That information is classified."

"Ah, give it a rest, Professor." Kawalsky brushed away a pile of potato

chip bags and candy bar wrappers, creating a space to set down the tray.

He told Daniel that he was going into town and asked whether there was

anything he needed.

Daniel flipped onto his stomach and dangled his head over the side ."

Yeah.  Could you pick me up a point of reference .

Apd maybe some context.  No, seriously, Kawalsky, just give me ten

minutes along with the goddamn janitor.  I'm sure he knows more about

what was under this cover stone than I do."

Kawalsky sighed a here-we-go-again sigh ." That might be true," he said,

knowing that in fact it was, "but the janitorial staff has clearance."

"Look, Lieutenant"-Daniel's tone got nasty-"you people want me to solve

this puzzle for you.  You want me to decipher this stone that no one

else has been able to read .

But you won't give me enough information to do my job."

"Have you got a problem with the food around here?"

Kawalsky asked, picking up Daniel's untouched Sloppy Joe from lunch and

giving it a whiff.

"How about this." Daniel had another one of his bright ideas ." What if

someone anonymously slipped an unauthorized copy of a report under my

door?  They'd never know who it was.  They'd never even know I got it!

I'd just figure this thing out, and we could all go home happy."

"Jackson, do me a big favor and get off my back.  You know I'm under the

strictest kind of orders."

Daniel winced.  He was failing, again, to make even the slightest dent

in the armored plate he assumed Kawalsky had implanted in his forehead.

For him, the military mind was as impenetrable a mystery as the outer

ring of hieroglyphs.  And both were giving him fits.

He sat up on the scaffold ." So disobey orders!"

Disobey orders?  If Daniel were an enlisted man, Kawalsky would already

have him on his feet marching toward the

stockade for thirty days of solitary confinement.  But he was a

civilian, and Kawalsky had to take it.  The thing that really pissed him

off about Daniel wasn't a military issue, it was a human thing. Kawalsky

was clear in his own mind about the fact that the two of them were not

only worlds apart, but that they were working under difficult

circumstances .

Recognizing this, he had endeavored to conduct himself in a manner that

acknowledged and respected their differences .

But Daniel, less in control of himself, less grown-up, had treated

Kawalsky more and more condescendingly the more frustrated he became

about not being able to deciper the hieroglyphs.  Kawalsky, aware of his

own limitations, knew he was no brain surgeon.  But neither was he an

idiot, and he didn't appreciate being treated like one.

The big soldier shook his head in disgust ." It must be hard to always

be the smartest guy in the room." Then, after stealing the trench fries

off Daniels' dinner tray, he headed for the door.

The moment the door closed, Daniel started down the scaffold.  He had

decided that tonight was the night.  They weren't going to lock him in a

room with the world's greatest decipherment toys and the most

interesting archaeological problem of his generation, then deny him the

crucial information he needed to solve it.  He grabbed the empty

coffeepot and headed down the hallway.  From his desk post the night

guard, Higgens, glanced up at Daniel.

"What's up, Doc?"

"How's it hanging, Higgens?" Daniel faked a yawn and shuffled past the

guard toward the water supply.  But once he was around the corner,

Daniel broke into a jog.  He ran down the hall to Colonel O'Neil's

office.  From the pocket of his wrinkled blue oxford button-down, he

produced a fingernail clipper and went to work on the electronic keypad

guarding O'Neil's door.  After he'd jimmied the housing off, he turned

out the nail-me blade and laid it across the switching mechanism.

Short-circuiting, the contraption exploded with a small electric pop.

His heart pounding like a drum, Daniel reached for the knob, opened the

door, and stepped inside.  There, now he'd done it.  Destruction of

government property.  There was not turning back now.  He closed the

door behind him.

The office felt about as cozy as the vice-principal's office at Daniel's

junior high school.  There was an unpadded steel chair behind the

utilitarian steel desk.  On the desk, O'Neil's computer was in screen

saver, generating a lava-lamp-like psychedelic pattern.  Daniel opened

the tail filing cabinets in the corner, but, except for some local phone

books, they were completely empty.  Next to the cabinets, set into the

wall, was a heavy three-foot combination safe.  Daniel's nail clippers

were no match, so he moved to the desk and sat down.  A quick search of

the desk offered next to nothing .

There were neatly arranged office supplies, a picture of O'Neil-with his

wife and son in one of those unbreakable frames, and a Bible in the

bottom drawer that probably came with the desk.  Had O'Neil predicted

Daniel's break-in and systematicajly removed all clues from the office?

Or was he as uncomfortable and as empty with himself as he was with

others?  Down to his last hope, Daniel hit the space bar on the

computer, displaying the main menu.  He typed in the word "QUERY" and

the computer showed him a list of options.  He moved down to "

PERSONNEL" and told the

machine to search "O'NEIL, JACK COLONEL." The words

PLEASE WAIT" flashed up at him.

The computer in Daniel's room was a prototype 586 while O'Nefl's machine

was something the Flintstone's might have had around the house.

Impatiently, he scanned the malls for more clues.  There was a map of

the United States, a chart of the stars in the Northern and Southern

Hemispheres, and a poster called "The Metric System." Unfortunately for

the burglar, this was the most boring office he had ever set foot

inside.  That's when he saw the guard, or at least his silhouette as it

rippled over the corrugated pane of frosted glass .

Higgens stopped at the damaged keypad, and Daniel held his breath. After

a moment, the sentry continued on toward the bathrooms.  Daniel

estimated he had two minutes until he came back.

When he looked down, the screen was displaying the following: "O'NEIL,

J.  COLONEL-RETIRED, TWO YEAURETURNED ACTIVE DUTY, ONE MONTH."

Strange.  What was important enough about the cover stones to bring

O'Nefl out of retirement?  And why him?

What was it about O'Nea that made the brain trust at

General West's office think he was especially qualified for thejob?

Daniel queried the computer several more times, but each time the only

response was: "CLASSIFIED-ACCESS DENIED." For a mind like Daniel's, one

that thrived on the in-flow of fresh information, those were about the

most frustrating words he could imagine.  At last, he sunk back in the

chair and gave up.  Tomorrow they would come to his office and, at the

very least, fire him.  At worst, they'd-he didn't even want to think

about all the legal trouble he might get into.  But no matter what the

Air Force or.  Marines did to him, he knew that his reputation among his

peers, already in critical condition, had just been delivered to the

coroner.

Sliding the door open quietly, he peered outside.  The coast was clear,

but Daniel didn't move.  Something was wrong.  He closed the door again

and walked over to the wall.  What was O'Neil doing with a chart of the

consteflations, a star map?  ".  .  .  A million years into the sky .  .

."

He stared at the disgrain for a long minute, his mind slowly gaining

speed, then racing like an overheated engine until it smashed into the

idea.  He literally gasped.  Not knowing what else to do, he reached up

and tore the chart away from its thumbtacks, then hurried out of the

office.  He was halfway back to his computer before the last slice of

closingdoor-light glinted off the empty coffeepot on the desk.

The hot white glare of the computer scanner rolled across the hastily

cleared tabletop, and over the surface of O'Neil's chart, digitizing its

patterns and uploading them into the computer.  Chomping unconsciously

on a Fifth Avenue bar, Daniel was working like a six-armed demon-he was

in pure concentration mode.  Leaning over the keyboard, he isolated a

few of the major constellations, then went into "split screen" and began

comparing them, one by one, to the mystery-glyphs he'd already put on

disc.  He concentrated his search on Orlo because of its visibility from

both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.  Two of the cover stone's

symbols were close, but no cigar.  Daniel leaned back and glanced up at

his exquisite 1400 B.c.  statuette, which he'd set atop the computer,

his only witness.

"Are we on the right track?"

She said nothing audible, but Daniel bolted upright in the chair and

typed in new parameters, allowing him to turn the constellations like

three-dimensional objects.  Almost at once, he found a strong similarity

between Orion and one of the mysterious symbols from the outer ring.

This same symbol also appeared inside the elliptical cartouche at the

center of the stone.  But the fit wasn't perfect.  The lesser stars

connected to the star Betelgeuse to form "the hunter's bow" were absent.

And Rigel wasn't connected to Sirius in the traditional way.

Those words: "in the traditional way."

Daniel stood up, walked across the room to the bookcase, and did

something he hadn't done in years.  He consulted the work of Professor

Budge.  Opening to the Appendices at the back, he found another map of

the constellations, different from the first.  Grinning now, he sat back

down.  He looked once more at the screen, then down at the book, then

into the black eyes of his Egyptian companion.

'Bingo."

THE SEVENTH SCHOOL

Shortly after dawn on a chilly pine tree morning, a Cadillac limousine

from Lowry Air Force Base in Denver passed the checkpoint and, moments

later, slid to a stop outside the gaping mouth of an entrance that the

Army Corps of Engineers had cut into the mountain.  Several high-ranking

officers, hastily gathered from different parts of the country, stepped

out of the vehicle and marched across the pavement.  At the center of

the group, a pace ahead of the others, was a stern soldier about fifty

years old, the breast of his tight blue uniform jacket heavy with

medals.  It was General West.  Respected and feared by all who served

under him, West was famous for three things: for always making the right

decisions under pressure, for erupting into superhuman fits of rage when

his orders were not executed exactly as he wished, and for being the

best damn poker player in any branch of the armed forces.

The group strode through the giant concrete doors, the silo's first line

of defense, and into the chilly darkness of the mountain's interior;

their hard shoes clicking like hooves on the concrete.  They stepped

onto the waiting elevator platform and made the long trip down.

When the doors opened on the 28th floor, O'Neil was waiting for them.

"Jack O'Neil, how the heli've you been, soldier?"

O'Neil shook his hand and lied, "I've been good."

West nodded, but he knew it wasn't true.  After O'Neil's problems began,

he'd started reading every document the Army had with O'Neil's name on

it, especially the psychological status reports coming out of the

veteran's hospital .

For two years West had been waiting for just the right time to use him

again.  This was the perfect mission.

"How about Sarah?" the general asked ." My men said she acted a little

nervous."

O'Neil was cagey ." Some days are better than others, but she's getting

better." O'Neil, for his part, had no Wusions about why the general had

called him back.  The words the officer had said to him back at his home

still echoed in his mind.  He wasn't being asked back in spite of his

condition but because of it.

As the group continued their march toward the conference room, West

spoke under his breath to the colonel, "I've got a few things to tell

you that I couldn't put in the report.

Lieutenant Kawalsky, a reluctant chaperon, pushed open the door to the

conference room.  When Daniel stepped mside, charts, books, and

printouts threatening to spill from his arms, he got an ugly surprise.

"Goddamn it," he said to no one in particular.  He had been expecting a

one-on-one chat over doughnuts and coffee with the notorious General

West.  That had seemed forbidding enough.  This room, however, was

crammed with both military personnel and members of the scientific

staff, aB of them dressed to the gills.  Daniel was wearing the same

clothes he'd woken up in thirty minutes ago.  Bleary-eyed, he looked

around and recognized a few faces: doctors Meyers and Shore were there,

some of the technicians he wasn't allowed to talk to for security

reasons, and, of course, O'Neil.

The room was unlike the others in the silo.  It was simply but

tastefully decorated.  Most of the space was occupied by a large

circular mahogany table surrounded by two dozen straight-backed chairs.

Daniel wondered how they'd ever gotten the table, larger than the

elevator, down here.  An elegant floral arrangement had been imported

from somewhere, and the kitchen staff had set up a buffet table laden

with fare vastly superior to the gruel he'd been picking at for the last

two weeks.  The whole scene felt swank and polished, like he'd stumbled

into a cocktail party being held in the Officers Club at West Point.

This was not good.  If these people were anything like the

archaeologists he'd faced in L.A., they were going to think his theory

about the cover stones was more antiscientific mumbo jumbo.  What made

it worse was that they all knew what was buried underneath the stone

while he was shooting in the dark.

He spotted Catherine holding court with a cluster of uniformed soldiers.

She gave Daniel a wink, then paddled across the carpet toward him with

one of the men in tow.

"Daniel!" The old woman was glad to see him ." There's someone I'd like

you to meet.  This is General West."

Daniel, still loaded down with documents, did his best to extend a hand

for the older man to shake.

" Hi," said Daniel.

"Pleasure to finally meet you, Professor." West gave the appearance of

always knowing what he was going to say next ." I read a few of your

articles before I signed off on you participating here." He wasn't above

using flattery.

"Oh yeah?" Daniel was both surprised and suspicious .

"What did you think?"

There was an edge of challenge in his question, as if Daniel wanted West

to prove he'd understood.  The last thing Catherine wanted was any sort

of conflict between these two, so she tried to change the subject.  But

West gestured to her that he wanted to field the question.  He looked

Daniel dead in the eyes for a few seconds, a poker game habit, and then

he bluffed.

"I've only got one criticism.  Let me put it to you in military terms,"

West began ." You are so damned concerned with protecting your flanks

that you fail to push hard enough to take your objective.  The whole

time you're writing, you're looking over your shoulder, wondering what

other academics are gonna think of you."

"Well, the scientific method of my-"

"Screw scientific method, son.  There's only two explanations: you

either haven't got the balls to buck conventional wisdom.  Or"-and he

paused for drama-"the conventional wisdom is right, and you're just

plain old tucking crazy.  Let's find out which one it is."

The general turned to Catherine and apologized for his language, then he

yelled to the crowd.

"AH right everybody, we've come a long way to hear this.  Let's get down

to it and see what this young man has for us ."

Daniel went to the front of the room and stood with his back to a

wall-size chalkboard.  He looked around the room, smiling at everyone as

if this were the first morning of a new semester.

" Anytime you're ready," West said sourly.

"Oh, right.  Okay, I brought some stuff, some handouts .

I didn't know there were going to be so many people here, so you'll have

to share ." West took one of the rolled photocopies without taking his

eyes off Daniel.

When the room was quiet, his explanation began .

"Okay, obviously what we're looking at is a picture of the cover stones.

On the outer track are the symbols which we assumed were words to be

translated.  Uh, could you move that stuff?" Daniel unftirled the same

large star map he had " procured" two nights earlier, spreading it out

across the table.  While he was doing so, he stole a glance at O'Ned,

but received no reaction.  Circling one of the constellations, he went

on with his lecture.

"This is the star constellation Orion," he announced, and although drawn

slightly differently, it matches this symbol on the tablets, the cover

stone.  These symbols weren't fragments of an unknown language.  They

are, instead, a catalog of the constellations."

"Excuse me, Professor," began the irksome Dr.  Meyers, "but couldn't

that symbol just as well stand for the constellation Bootes?"

"Or Cepheus or even Puppis?" asked Dr.  Shore .

"They're all more or less the same shape."

Daniel smiled.  Their questions gave him a chance to show off a little.

Rummaging through his pile of documents, he found Budge's thick book,

and as he flipped through it, he explained.

"Of course the map I've put up shows the Greco-Roman

system of organizing the stars into constellations.  But the tablets we

want to understand were written much earlier, employing the ancient

Egyptians' astronomy." Holding the book open for everyone to see, he

answered his questioners .

"In the older system, the stars are connected in a slightly simpler way.

Look at Betelgeuse, the brightest star in Orion as it appears on this

older map," he said pointing to the book ." As you can see, it is

identical to the symbol from the tablets." Everyone sitting close enough

to see the smaller map had to agree, the two shapes were a perfect

match.

"Now, if I am right," Daniel went on, "the cartouche that runs down the

middleof the central cover stone organizes these constellation symbols

into a unique sequential order, forming an address."

"An address?" Catherine asked ." You mean coordinates?"

"Exactly.  The centerpiece of the tablets holds the key."

Taking a black marking pen out of his pocket, he drew the symbols from

the cartouche vertically down the board .

When he turned again, he was pleased to see that even Colonel O'Ned was

leaning forward, hanging on Daniel's next word.

"The cartouche is actually a map.  What it gives us are the seven points

necessary to chart the course to a given destination."

"Seven points?" Dr.  Shore asked.

Daniel drew a three-dimensinal cube on the board, then marked each wall

of the cube with a dot.

"Yes, to find a destination in any three-dimensional space, we need to

find two points in order to determine the exact height: two points for

the width, and two for the depth ." Each time, he drew a line between

the dots on the opposing faces of the cube, leaving him with three

intersecting lines ." The cartouche gives us those points of reference."

General West asked the obvious question ." You've got six dots, but you

said we need seven."

"Yeah, these six symbols pinpoint a destination, but in order to chart a

course to a position, we've got to have a point of oifigin."

"I hate to bring this up," sniggered the ever-obnoxious Dr.  Meyers,

obviously delighted to do just that, "but there are only six symbols in

the cartouche.  Where's the seventh one?" Daniel couldn't believe that

Meyers, of all people, didn't recognize the seventh sign.  It would have

been simple work to humiliate the vermicular pedant.  Instead, Daniel

made a game of it.

"What my esteemed colleague is saying is that to the layman it appears

that there are only six symbols.  It takes trained Egyptologists like

ourselves to recognize the seventh symbol.  Because the point of origin

is not inside the cartouche as we might expect, but down here, below it

."

Daniel completed his sketch by drawing in the ellipse that surrounded

the constellation symbols, and then, with two downward strokes, the

"upside-down Y" shape coming off the bottom of the cartouche.  The

finished drawing looked like a tail oval mirror standing on two legs.

"This symbol at the bottom is the point of origin.  It's a picture of

the place the tablet was found." Daniel began to draw the glyph on the

board ." You see, it's two, uh, two of these funny little guys on either

side of the pyramid with a sunbeam directly above it.  This is also an

ancient hieroglyph for 'EARTH." The sunbeam represents the god Ra ."

Daniel waited for a comment, a question, anything.  Was another audience

going to walk out on him in disgust?

Everyone stared at the drawing trying to comprehend the consequences of

what he had told them.  Since an of them knew what was buried under the

cover stone, they knew what the next logical move would be. Predictably,

it was Catherine who spoke up first.

"He did it," she proclaimed, and banged her fists down on the table.

"Did what?" Daniel asked.

Dr.  Meyers still had his doubts ." There's no symbol like that on the

device," he reminded everyone.

"Perhaps there's a hieroglyphic equivalent, or some other kind of

representation."

What had Daniel just heard?  "Device?" he asked nobody in particular ."

What device?"

Dr.  Shore winced.  She'd just violated the order about passing

information to Daniel.  She glanced over to Kawalsky, who was giving her

a dirty look, one that said: loose lips sink ships.

Catherine got to her feet.  She looked first to Colonel O'Nefl and then

to General West ." I imagine you'll have to show him.  He's the only one

who can identify it for us."

West looked at O'Nefl and pretended to think it over .

Actually, he'd made the decision during his chat with Daniel a few

minutes before.

" Show him."

O'Neil nodded to Kawalsky, who walked over to the back wall and, folding

back a panel, revealed a switch box .

He pushed a button, and the entire wall began to slide away, revealing

an enormous bay window that looked down and out into a much larger room

below.  Even before he came to the window to see the contents of the

room, Daniel suddenly understood how monstrously large a nuclear missile

sdo is, converted or not.  The whole maze of offices, complete with

cafeteria, that had seemed so extensive was only a small fraction of the

total space.

The floor of the sdo was jammed with sophisticated machinery of various

sorts, an extremely high-tech operation.  And at the center of this

steel landscape of computers and wiring and sensors and steel plank-ways

sat the giant ring itself.  The same mysterious contraption that

Catherine had seen resurrected over sixty years ago from a dusty grave

in the middle of nowhere.  Now it seemed to be the central component of

a single endless glistening machine.

"What the hell is it?" was Daniel's only question.

"It's your StarGate," Catherine told him.

Daniel felt his mind go white, like this rush of strange information was

triggering a mental seizure.  The thick ring, more than three times his

height, had been mounted on a raised steel platform.  A wide ramp ran

from the floor up to the platfo.-m and the mouth of the ring.  Now that

it was cleaned and polished, there was no mistaking the material for

metal.  It looked closer to opal, semitransparent but gently bending the

light around it into several colors at the same time.

"You found this thing in Egypt?" Daniel couldn't believe it.  He wanted

to ask more questions, but he heard General West barking an order.

"Take him downstairs and see if he can identify the seventh symbol." "

When O'Neil moved for the door, West added, "Not you, Colonel.  We have

to talk."

Catherine lead Daniel and a dozen curious spectators down a tightly

winding circular staircase and into the "Booth," where the handftil of

technicians who maintained an around-the-clock surveillance, became

visibly confused by the sudden intrusion of this large tour group into

their tranquil work space.

The darkened room struck Daniel as a miniature version of the Mission

Control room in Houston that he'd seen during space launches.  It

started to dawn on him what this whole project was leading toward.  Most

of the onlookers crowded around the thick Plexiglas observation window .

Daniel went to follow them, but Catherine pulled him over to a video

screen that showed him a close-up shot of the ring.  The camera out in

the silo was fixed on that section of the ring where the symbol for

Scorpio was engraved into the crystalline surface.

The camera brought Daniel close enough to appreciate the incredibly

detailed ornamental carving work that had gone into the ring's

construction.  He could also see one of the seven triangular shrouds

anchored to the rings outer edge.  Made of pounded gold, each of them

housed a large chunk of sculpted quartz.

In the greenish cast of the monitor, Catherine suddenly looked small and

gnarled, They both took seats in front of the screen as she explained.

"Even though we didn't realize the symbols on the cover stones were

constellations, we knew they matched those symbols you see etched into

the device, the StarGate.  Our problem was that we never knew about the

seventh symbol .

Now let's see if you can find it."

"Mitch!" Catherine called one of the technicians over, a sleepy-eyed guy

about Daniel's age.  His nameplate said he was Special Operator

Technician, M.  Storey.  Catherine explained what she wanted.

"No problem, let's give the wheel a spin," said the technician, who

typed a long series of commands into the computer.  A few seconds later,

Scorpio slid off the screen and was replaced by Norma and then Serpens

Caput.

Looking through the Plexiglas, Daniel could see the inner part of the

StarGate turning like a wheel inside the larger, stationary ring.  At

the base of the device, a special apparatus had been fitted like a clump

around the inner half of the ring.  It's motorized rubber wheels were

responsible for turning the ring.  One by one, the symbols moved across

the screen: Libra, Bootes, Virgo, Crater.

Slowly, the visitors in the booth gravitated toward the monitor to see

what was happening.  Daniel startled them an by suddenly yelling, "Hold

it!"

He learned forward and scrutinized the image on the screen for several

seconds.  A triangle with a circle perched on top.  Slowly, he lifted

his black marking pen, to Special Operator Technician Storey's dismay,

drew the symbol from the cartouche directly over the symbol isolated on

the monitor.  Clearly, they were the same symbol, just different enough

to miss the similarities if you didn't know what you are looking for.

"It's Earth!" exclaimed Dr.  Shore.

"Thalassa!" said Meyers.

"Eureka," Daniel translated.

"It's been here under our noses the whole time."

Storey arched an eyebrow at the visitors, thoroughly conrised.

For Catherine, however, everything was suddenly very clear.  She charged

to the back of the room, picked up the intercom phone, and spoke in

hushed tones to General West one floor above.  When she returned to the

group, she issued the order she'd waited her entire life to give.

"Let's run a test."

Like a magic incantation, those simple words transformed the booth into

a madhouse of noisy activity.  A uniformed soldier with a clipboard

shouted out role assignments; technicians scrambled to their stations

yening across the room for up-to-the-minute readings; a bank of large

printers spasmed to life and with much staccato squealing, began

spitting out data.

"Okay, Mitch, Ict's take it for a test-drive," said Cattierme, pulling

up a chair next to technician Storey's.  Sh.e nodded to Dr.  Shore, who

called out the first set of numencal coordinates.

Storey pecked at the keyboard with his two index fingers, somehow able

to keep the numbers straight in his head, and then his "ENTER." The very

next second, the sliding inner wheel of the StarGate turned until the

constellation "TAURUS" was at the top.  Like an overgrown combination

lock, the ring registered the motion with an audible click.  Immediately

the large shroud surrounding the topmost quartz jewel separated.  Like

the jaws of a clamp, its two halves slid apart.  How the fist-size brick

of quartz had a clear path to the center of the ring.

"Chevron One locked on," Storey caged out.

The wheel reversed direction until the second figure on the cartouche,

"SERPENS CAPUT," was at the top.  But this time, one of the clamp-like

chevrons near the bottom of the StarGate clicked open.  As it did, a low

frequently hum began to fill the room, growing with intensity as the

unlocking procedure continued.  Slowly, everything in the room began to

tremble slightly.

"Chevron Three locked on," Storey alerted the room .

Then he said to Daniel, "Do me a favor and grab that coffeecup,"

continuing to hunt and peck, without lifting his eyes from the keyboard.

Daniel reached over and snagged the mug that was vibrating its way off

the table.

"Gracias ."

"De nada ."

"Chevron Five is locked on."

As each piece of the "address" was steered up to the top of the StarGate

and the whining hum from the machine rose in pitch, the mood in the room

grew tense.  Daniel silently called the names of the constellations:

Serpens Caput, Capricomus, Monoceros, Sagittarius, Orion," and soon, the

seventh symbol, "Earth."

As the sixth symbol, Orion, locked into place, Catherine turned to

Daniel and whispered to him, "This is as far as we've ever been able to

get." By the thick tension in the room, Daniel could feel she was

telling the truth.  Everyone in the room held their collective breath

awaiting the locking in of the seventh symbol.

"How did you know what it could do?" Daniel asked .

"The ring itself.  It's made out of a quartz-like substance

unlike any found on Earth.  It has remarkable qualities."

Before Catherine could go on, Storey yelled out to the room.

"Chevron Seven is locked on!"

As soon as the seventh sign was in place, the shaking in the room

dropped away and became instead a rich deep tone.  It sounded almost

like the lowest possible note on an old pipe organ.  Daniel looked at

Catherine, his eyes asking if that was supposed to happen.

Before she had a chance to answer, a second "note," higher than the

first came pealing through the safety window, flfling the booth.  The

sound had a disturbing effect on Daniel, but he wanted to ask Catherine

a question.

"Shhhhh." Her finger to her lip, she closed her eyes, saying, "listed to

it."

Daniel listened as a third note sounded and a fourth, each one at a

slightly higher frequency.  The strange thing was that each note was so

distinct from the others even though they blended together.  Then he

understood.  And by the time the seventh and final tone sounded, he was

smiling .

The ring had built a single, self-harmonizing note far more complex than

Daniel, a classical music aficionado, had ever imagined possible.  It

wasn't music, but it was beautiful.

Then something much stranger began to happen.  Like watery snakes drawn

into the air by a charmer's song, seven streams of light came out of the

quartz gems stationed around the front of the StarGate.  Akin to lasers

but obviously obeying different laws of physics, the light came

pouring toward the center of the ring.  Literally pouring, as if someone

had turned on a series of garden hoses and liquid light came spouting

out of them.  The light pouring upward from the bottom gems behaved no

differently than the ones coming from the sides or the top.  Somewhat

like bright liquid ropes, they all dangled toward the center in a

random, twisting dance before dissipating into thin air."

"Tres cool," Story gasped.  Catherine and Daniel both looked at him in

agreement, then at each other, speechless.

As the tendrils of light grew in length, they grabbed onto each other

and quickly began to spread until they formed a thin pool, a solid

shimmering surface, like a thin sheet of mercury stretched over the

empty center of the ring.

The gentle beauty of the image along with the strange

harmony of the tone sent a wave of euphoria through the men and women in

the booth.  Everyone was turning to confirm the feeling, smiling at the

others.

But a second later, the mood changed dramatically.  The mirage gained

mass and started sloshing back and forth like a thick slab of turbulent

water.  Then it exploded out into the room like a giant wind sock

suddenly clawing for their faces.  Involuntarily, everyone jerked

backward, some turnbhng to the floor.  Someone started screaming to turn

it off, turn it off, but before anyone had time iQ react, the energy was

violently sucked back through the ring and shot out the other side with

astonishing, ungodly speed to create the illusion of a tunnel of rushing

light or a roaring circular waterfall pouring straight down to hell at

two million miles an hour.  Only this one wasn't pouring down.  It was

on its side, pointed at the far wall of the sdo, and it was plummeting

to a place much farther away than hell.

By now every computer in the booth was screaming its own version of

bloody murder, lights pulsing, printouts sputtering, and the technicians

attached to each machine were fighting to keep up with the inputs.

Catherine yelled at the people nearest the observation window, asking

whether the soldiers surrounding the StarGate were okay.  Fortunately,

they were ." It's guiding itself!" shouted a technician at the far end

of the room.  Dr. Shore, leaping over stray cable, ran back to see what

he had.  The man showed her a detailed schematic of the universe with a

blue dot pulsing on the screen to represent Earth.  A small red X, a

laser crosshair, began to trek across the monitor, leaving Earth and

traveling through the galaxy until it stopped at the far end of the

screen.  Shore, eyes wide, shouted to Catherine.

"It's locked onto a point in the Cirrian galaxy.  It's got mass.  Could

be a moon or something, maybe a large asteroid ."

"Did you say Cirrian galaxy?" Daniel was scratching his head ." Isn't

that ...  ?"

"On the other side of the known universe?  Yes, it is."

Catherine was nervous, but obviously enjoying the moment.

The phone rang, and Storey snapped it up quickly without missing a beat

on his keyboard.  It was General West calling

down from the room directly above them.  As the technician listened, the

expression on his face slowly became one of disbelief ." You what??" he

asked incredulously, but the next moment his tone of voice had changed

." Yes, sir.  Yes, sir, right away, sir."

"What is it?" Catherine asked over the noise.

"They want to send a probe through," Storey explained, his eyes wide

with skepticism.

"A probe?" Catherine had no idea what West was asking for.  She was

about to get back on the phone when through the observation window, she

saw a pair of soldiers wheel in a refrigerator-size device with a long

mechanical arm, a Mobile Analytical Laboratory Probe.  The M.A.L.P., or

Maple Unit as it was called, was pushed to the base of the ramp leading

to the StarGate.  It was a giant, awkward, onearmed steel monster

designed by Cal Tech in Los Angeles that looked like Santa's sleigh

redesigned for the twentythird century: miniature video cams,

atmospheric testing devices, an automated chemistry lab, paper-thin

radar dishes to scan for broadcast waves.  The clumsy contraption had

taken three years to build and was worth several mflhon dollars.

While the probe was being readied, a squad of eight or nine heavily

armed Marines jogged in and took up defensive positions around the

StarGate.  Daniel scoffed.  Who in the world were they expecting to

break in and disrupt their little test?  One more glaring instance of

military paranoia, he thought.

The phone rang again.  This time, Meyers was ready to pounce ." This is

Dr.  Gary Meyers.  Yes, General.  Yes, sir, we are prepared to monitor

any and all activity sent through the Gate.  Yes, sir, it should be able

to record that type of transmission, yes."

As soon as he hung up, Meyers immediately made his way to one of the

computer banks and began explaining something to the technicians.  Most

eyes in the room were still on Catherine, waiting for her instructions.

Although she resented being kept in the dark about the probe, she looked

around the room then yelled enthusiastically, "Let's send it through and

see what happens."

The technicians in the sdo hooked the probe to a tow

chain like the ones used to pull roller coaster cars to the top of that

first steep hill.  When they were finished, they turned and looked up to

the conference room above the booth .

General West nodded, approving the release of the probe.

The technicians rushed away from the ramp just as the towing chain

lurched into action.  While the probe trundled tanklike up the ramp

toward the turbulent light storm, Daniel asked Catherine an urgent

question.

"Isn't it just going to smash into the wall?"

" It shouldn't."

Daniel moved several steps toward the back of the booth just in case she

was wrong.  When the probe came to the top of the ramp and nosed into

the energy field, there was an audible power surge.  Just as the first

atoms of the machine were being visibly sucked into the tunnel, the body

of the machine was swallowed up by the energy field and a blinding white

light flared out into every corner of the room.

When they were able to turn and look again, the probe wasgone.

The high-ranking military personnel visiting the booth erupted into

cheers for a second until they realized the test wasn't over.  Daniel,

dumbstruck, astonished, dazzled, turned to Catherine for an explanation.

The old woman wiggled her eyebrows and said, "It's starting to get

exciting, isn't it?"

"What's happening now?" Daniel noticed the technicians were stiff glued

to their monitors.

"We're waiting to see if it can send data back through the Gate," Meyers

told him.  They waited for a n-dnute, but nothing happened.  Daniel

whispered a question to Catherine.

"How long have you guys been working on this?"

"My father found it near Giza when I was a child.  But the Egyptian

government didn't release it until T4.  Then we had to get it from the

British, and it took forever to get our financing ."

"From the Pentagon." Daniel's distaste was plain.

That hit a nerve.  Catherine snapped back, "I've been involved with this

project since I was nine years old.  It took me more than fifty years to

find the money, and without it

the whole project would have been scraped.  What would you have done?"

Just then Dr.  Shore shouted, "Something's coming in!"

Now it was the technicians' turn to raise a shout.  AH eyes turned to

Dr.  Shore, who was monitoring the inflow of data through the Gate.

After a few seconds, the signal started to die ." We're losing it. We're

down to thirty percent.  Down to five." When Shore pronounced the signal

dead, the inner ring of the StarGate turned on its own and shut down.

Catherine joined most of the other technicians crowded around Shore's

workstation.  Daniel leaned over to Storey and asked what was happening.

"The probe," he explained, "was sending us data, but it's aB digitally

encrypted and compressed.  It's gonna take a couple of minutes to unpack

and decode the transmission and see if we got anything worth sneezing

at."

While a cluster of technicians led by Meyers crowded around a bank of

computers at the back of the room, the mood of anticipation in the room

was so thick, the collective blood pressure of the room rose

precipitously.

Seconds later, Dr.  Meyers made the announcement ." We got it!"

Now the room went crazy.  Everyone began cheering and shaking their

fists in the air.  The entire science staff started hugging each other.

Suddenly, they were in control of significant, detailed data about a

piece on the far side of the universe.  After months of sweating it out

in these remote underground tunnels, the really exciting part-from a

scientific point of view-was must about to begin.  Complete strangers

exchanged high fives.  Meyers approached Daniel and in his excitement

went to give him a hug, but at the last minute settled for a handshake.

"Congratulations, reefly.  You did amazing work." And a moment later,

Dr.  Shore planted half a dozen kisses on his cheek, saying, "You're a

goddamn genius is what you are ."

Daniel smiled and returned aB the compliments.  He couldn't remember a

time when he'd seen a group of Ph.Ds anywhere near this happy.  As the

celebration continued, he found Catherine and pulled her aside.

"You're planning to go through that thing, aren't you,!"

"Yes.  That's exactly what this is all about." As she was

speaking these words, a group of soldiers entered the booth and took up

positions around the mainframe computer.  T\vo of the soldiers,

obviously familiar with the room, walked through pulling out removable

hard disks and gathering up notebooks.  They took all the information

recently downloaded from the Maple Unit.

At first, many of the celebrants didn't notice what was happening, and

those who did had no idea what the men were doing.  But the soldiers'

attitudes made it clear that they weren't sent to open champagne

bottles.  Dr.  Meyers walked over and got right in their faces, "What's

going on here?  What's the meaning of this?"

Just then the intercom phone rang again, and as the impromptu party

changed into a series of fierce arguments, Catherine dashed to pick it

up.  After a moment, she yelled at the top of her lungs:

"Quiet!  Everyone!" Then she v.,ent back to her conversation with

General West looking just as eager as a sixteenyear-old girl talking to

her proni date.  She must have said "I understand" ten times in twenty

seconds, her expression darkening each time she spoke the words.  Now

everyone was quiet, concerned.  She hung up and faced the room .

"The general says that he's very pleased and that we should all be proud

of the work we've done here.  He also said that we're all fired. They'll

be taking over from here."

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Daniel didn't stay to hear the screaming.  In a flash, he was upstairs

hunting the clean white corridors for General West.  Instead, he caught

O'Neil cofffing out of the conference room.

"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Daniel was ready for a fight ." Is that the Army's idea of loyalty?  You

pen these people up in the ground for months, and then just when it gets

exciting, you fire them?"

O'Nefl hardly heard what Daniel had said.  He had too much on his mind

after his meeting with General West, and besides, he didn't particularly

care one way or the other about the science staff.  AH he wanted to do

right now was get back to his office and think about tomorrow.

"Doctor Jackson," O'Nefl said, trying to calm him down, "thank you for

your contribution to the mission .

When there is more to report, we'll be in touch."

"You said 'mission." When are you going through?"

O'Neil fired a look at Daniel that said "back off" and growled, "All

pertinent information will be released at the appropriate time."

"And who's going to make that decision, the Pentagon?"

"Military intelligence," O'Neit said.

"Now there's a contradiction in terms."

"You don't know how right you are." And O'Ned continued down the hail.

"Do you reefly think you'D be able to keep this thing quiet?  I'll bet

the scientific community would want to know about this."

That wasn't something O'Nefl could ignore.  He wheeled around and moved

carefully back toward Daniel.  There was something incredibly menacing

about the man.  Daniel's throat was suddenly dry.  He gulped.

"Well, Professor, who's going to tell them?  Everyone else on the staff

has signed a secrecy oath except for you."

Coming toe-to-toe with Daniel, O'Ned asked with mock courtesy, "Are you

going to tell them, Professor Jackson?"

Inwardly, Daniel was on the verge of wetting his pants .

But he struggled to remain calm and dry on the outside .

Something about O'Nefl told you that he could kill you eight different

ways with his eyebrows.  Not only that he could, but in the right

circumstances that he definitely would .

Refusing to be intimidated, Daniel came right back at him.

" If I have to, yes, of course."

"Go ahead." O'Nefl's words were full of contempt .

"But do yourself a favor.  When you're on that bus back home tomorrow

and you stop off to pick up some of that crap junk food you're always

eating, grab the latest edition of The National Enquirer and read the

story about the space alien baby born with the head of a frog and the

body of a man.  And when you're done reading, ask yourself if you

believe it."

Daniel thought for a moment about how he could prove to the world that

the U.S.  military had an ancient Egyptian space-travel device buried

deep inside a Colorado mountain .

But even before O'Nefl had gotten to the point of his story, Daniel knew

how hopeless it would be for him.  No one would believe him.  Especially

coming from him.

" Is there anything else, Professor?"

Daniel thought a moment and realized he better try another tact ."

Please keep me on this mission.  I've spent the better part of my life

studying languages, ancient Egypt, archaeology, exactly the things this

project is all about."

"I appreciate that," O'Neifl replied ." But the decision has been made."

Well, if pleading wouldn't work, Daniel decided to get pissed ." I've

gambled my reputation and dedicated my life to this.  What have you

dedicated your life to, Colonel?!"

O'Neil started to answer, but then caught himself.  He gave Daniel a

cold, dismembering stare and said, "Pack your bags and get off this

base."

" Hold on, Jack.  I think we're going to need him."

Both O'Neil and Daniel spun to see General West leaning out the door of

the conference room.  He waved both men down the hall and into the room.

When Kawalsky hit the lights two minutes later, Daniel and O'Nefl were

sitting next to each other in the dark watching television.  West had

ordered them to sit down and study the decoded imagery the probe had

beamed back through the Gate.  The probe's camera panned across the

surface of a large interior stone wall and kept moving until it showed a

blightly illuminated circular form, another StarGate.

" Freeze and enhance," General West commanded.

The general's assistant, Lieutenant Amderman, was stationed at the disk

player.  A communications technology specialist, he digitally corrected

the image and then zoomed in on the details of the ring.  Fascinated,

Daniel stood and walked to the screen.

"These markings ...  they're different."

" That's why I wanted you to see this," said the general.

Lieutenant Anderman narrated over the image ." The readouts tell us it's

an atmospheric match.  Barometric pressure, temperature, and most

importantly, oxygen."

West walked over and stood in front of the screen.  He spoke directly to

Daniel.

"We're planning a short reconnaissance mission.  Nothing fancy.  Survey

the area inside a quarter-mile perimeter, gather as much information as

possible, and bring it back."

Amderman amplified, "Once you're on the other side, you'll have to

decipher the signs on that Gate and, in essence, dial back home.  Like a

fax machine."

"But here's the thing"-West squatted down, eye to eye

with Daniel-"I'm not going to send our men over there unless I'm sure I

can bring them back.  The question is, can you do it?"

Daniel had another idea ." Why not try reestablishing the contact from

this side?"

"Because," O'Nefl explained, "once our team goes through, the entire sdo

win be evacuated and sealed.  We don't know what might come through from

the other side."

Now Daniel understood not only why the soldiers had surrounded the

StarGate as the probe was going through, but why this whole operation

was located in such an unEkely spot.

Daniel looked up at the ceiling.  Every fiber of his body was urging him

to say yes, to promise the general anything he wanted to hear in

exchange for being able to visit the place he had seen through the

static on the video screen.  It suddenly seemed to him that his whole

Iffe had been a preparation for exactly this moment, when he would

embark upon a dangerous voyage to an unknown and forgotten land .

If he didn't go, the story of his Iffe wouldn't make any sense, But what

about the others?  He looked at O'Ned, and especially at the

good-natured Kawalsky.  He couldn't put their lives at risk just to

satisfy his curiosity.  His moment had finally arrived, but now the

stakes were too real, too high.

He looked once more at General West, who raised his eyebrows in

question.

"Yes, I can do it," Daniel said with resolve.

" Are you sure?"

"Positive."

West nodded, then looked at each of the soldiers in the room one by one.

When they had all signaled their agreement, West decided, "Fine.  You're

on the team.  You leave tomorrow at 06 hundred hours ."

O'Nefl, deep in concentration,'sat motionless on a folding metal chair,

a dim forty-watt bulb dangling overhead.  He was studying the nine-foot

long section of earth taken from directly below the StarGate by the

Langford Expedition .

The pair of fossilized human bodies had been fused directly into the

rock over ten thousand years ago, turned instantly into gnarled stone

sculpture.  The muscular corpses were almost perfectly preserved.  The

only damage came where tne iong scepters they carried had been chipped

lose and

taken away for testing, and several perforations in the bodies where

genetic scientists had extracted DNA samples.  But the twisted metallic

skulls drew and held O'Ned's attention hour after hour.

Since he'd arrived at the sdo and taken over the project, O'Neil had

spent many hours in the darkened room, contemplating the ghoulish

artifact.  It was the only way he had to prepare for what might still be

on the other side of the StarGate.  It seemed to him like a strange

mirror, reflecting his own fate, they way he would die.  Every bone in

his body told him they would still be there, that he would face these

warriors, at once so advanced and so primitive.  Less than twenty-four

hours remained before he would lead his team through to the other side

and find out.

It was not a good mission.  The probe had made it through, but there was

no evidence that humans could survive the,trip.  Even if they

encountered no enemy forces, the chances of coming back from a thing

like this were remote at best.  And O'Neil's chances were slimmer still

.

Not only had West given him what amounted to a suicide mission, but

O'Ned had no plans to come back.  Before General West's men had left his

home in Yuma, he knew this would be his last assigment.

For the previous twenty-two months, O'Neil had wanted nothing more than

to die.  He had become a living zombie: exhausted, broken, empty in

every way.  More than once, he'd loaded a pistol and wedged his thumb

backward across the trigger.  But he refused to do it.  Not only would

it probably kill Sarah, but his religious convictions wouldn't allow for

suicide.

Coming from a man who had been responsible for so much violence in his

life, this refusal was truly ironic.  The black sheep of a fine family,

O'Neil was born with chaos and wildness in his heart.  By the time he

was eighteen years old, O'Nefl was brought before the court for the

third time .

A lenient judge gave him a choice: he could enfist himself in the Army

or spend a year in the Washington State Correctional System.

He chose the Marine Corps and from his very first day, he proved himself

to be an exceptionally disciplined and gifted soldier.  After only

twenty weeks, he applied for and

won a transfer to the Marine Corps.  Combat Development Training Fadity

at Quantic, Virginia.  There he was taught the finer points of

infiltrating enemy territory, wilderness survival, political

assassination, the manufacture and detonation of explosives, how to

blend chemical weapons from common materials.  He rose quickly, being

promoted to the elite Jump Two Company.  Everything was going fine until

he started going out on "house calls"-usually political killings that

never made the newspapers.  That's when O'Neil realized two important

things about himself: he was a talented assassin who hated himself

deeply for kflhng, especially when he knew they were innocent.  He never

complained, never flinched.  He buried his conscience and learned to

drink scotch.  He stopped feeling altogether, earning himself the

nickname "Voodoo" because he seemed only to come to life when Jump TWo

went into action.  For seven years, everything that was ever alive in

him sunk deeper and deeper to the bottom.  On the outside, he was the

fearsome warrior who let actions speak instead of words .

Inside, he was vacant.  And that's when he met Sarah.

She'd just graduated from a small Jesuit college in the area and found a

job teaching school on the base.  Mutual friends introduced them, and

one thing led to another, although no one reefly understood what a fresh

flower like her saw in the withdrawn, taciturn young corporal.  She

found him fascinating, and she made him laugh.  They started seeing each

other every day, and two years later, Sarah told him she was pregnant.

O'Neil went ballistic, accusing her of doing it on purpose, trying to

trap him into marrying her.

Sarah responded by packing a suitcase and driving up to her parents'

house in Boston.  Only ten minutes after she'd gone, O'Ned made a

disturbing discovery: he'd fallen too far in love with Sarah to back out

now.

Three days later, in the middle of a blizzard, he showed up at her

parents' house and waited all day in the car until she would come out

and talk to him.  For six hours they steamed up the Ford's windows,

fighting like a pair of wet cats until, at four-thirty in the morning,

they went into the house and woke her parents.  O'Nefl introduced

himself and then asked for their daughter's hand.  In the thirteen years

since their marriage, O'Neil had never broken the promises he made to

her that freezing night.

Even that last day in Yuma, O'Nefl remembered the commitments he had

made.  Standing in the doorway as Sarah wept hysterically, trying one

last time to reach out and make human contact with him, O'Ned recalled

that he had promised to love and cherish her only so long as he should

five.  As far as he was concerned, those days were gone.

He stood there for a minute, trying to speak, wanting to say good-bye to

her.  Each time he tried, the words clogged themselves in his throat.

Finally, he just turned and started walking away.

Bythetime West found him sitting in the din-dy fit, refrigerated room,

O'Neil had already been there for half an hour staring at the crushed

figures.  O'Nefl theorized that when the Gate was buried in stone, these

two creatures must have tried to beam through.

He didn't look up when he heard the security door slide open.  He didn't

need to, he knew West would come looking for him.

"Our people tell me those things used to be alive," West said, walking

over to the limestone slab.

"I thought I was doing this alone," O'Nefl said at last.

"And you will," West assured him, "as soon as the team completes their

survey and returns, you'll be on your own."

O'Nefl was resigned to his orders, but he offered his opinion to West ."

The more people we send throu gh, the greater the chances something's

gonna go wrong.  And Jackson could be a problem.  He's smart.  He won't

go along with this plan if he figures it out.

" Then it's your job to make sure he doesn't."

They both stared at the twisted shapes a moment before O'Neil said,

"General, you've opened up a doorway to a world we know nothing about."

AH afternoon and well into the evening, the antiseptic corridors of the

silo's office complex resembled a college dormitory on the day after

final exams.  Allthe doors stood open.  Crates of books and trunks of

personal belongings

littered the hallways where the departing residents said their

good-byes.  A few were angrily discussing ways to get back on to the

project, but most were simply sad to be leaving and uncertain about what

the future would hold.  Because he was such a wdd card to begin with, no

one thought it strange that Daniel wasn't packing fast enough to make

the last shuttle down to the Denver airport.  Then, after Shore and

Meyers had stopped by to say their good-byes, Daniel shut his door and

started to get ready.

Kawalsky had issued him a set of olive green combat fatigues.  He was

doing up the last button when the door

opened.

It was Catherine.  She looked tired ." I thought you didn't like to

travel," she said with a weary smile.

"I got over it." It was good to see her.  Daniel had worried about what

Catherine would think when she heard he was part of the mission.  He

hadn't known her long, but he liked and respected her a great deal and

wouldn't have betrayed her for the world.

She found the nearest available chair and sunk into it, relieved to be

off her feet ." Listen," she began in her pleasant British accent, "we

think the trip through the ring shattered some of the instrument glass

on the probe.  Just as a precaution, I've got some poor bloke down the

hill at the Air Force Academy's metal shop budding you a special case

for your glasses.  Making it out of lead.  It should be here round about

six."

The idea of going anywhere without his glasses disturbed Daniel.  He

suddenly saw himself groping around blindly on a strange planet, and it

wasn't a pretty picture.

"Thanks, that was really ...  uh, thoughtful."

"Right.  And I'm going to box you up a lunch." Catherme was poking fun

at herself.

Daniel smiled, then said: "I've been thinking about what I said down in

the booth.  You know, about taking money from the military?  Look, I'm

sorry if it-"

"That's not important now," Catherine interrupted him .

"This is." She stood up, came across the room, and looked him seriously

in the eyes ." The first time I saw that ring being dragged out of the

dust in Egypt, I knew something like this would happen-that there would

be some incredible

journey to be taken.  And, naturally, I thought it would be I who would

take it.  But, now I've turned into an old woman, so it's going to be

you instead of me."

Daniel started to say something, but Catherine cut him off ." I'm glad.

If it can't be me, I want it to be you."

She reached up behind her neck and unfastened the medallion Daniel had

always seen her wear ." This was found with the StarGate," she told him

." It always brought me luck.

Daniel took the ancient bronze disk and turned it over in his hands,

inspecting the engraving work ." This is the Eye of Ra-an extremely rare

and valuable piece.  I can't accept this." Catherine reached out and put

a hand on his cheek.

"Bring it back to me," she said before gathering herself to leave.

"Wait a second." Daniel hurried over to his computer and picked up the

ancient figurine of the Egyptian woman .

"You were right, this piece is from the fourteenth century B.C.  Take

care of her for me."

Catherine smiled and accepted the bronze statuette, then, on her way out

the door, she called back to him.

"Bon voyage!"

Daniel sneezed as she walked out the door.

THE EVACUATION

The away-team was scheduled to rendezvous outside the silo at 5:45 A.M.

Kawalsky, responsible for the final equipment check and issuing

last-minute instructions arrived early and found, to his surprise,

Daniel sitting in the hallway reading a book.  Too nervous to sleep,

he'd spent most of the night pouring over the most ancient hieroglyphs

he could find, pre-First Dynasty stuff, memorizing as much as he could.

Scattered around him on the floor was an hour's worth of the mess Daniel

generated wherever he went.

"Jackson, where do you think we're going, to a library?

Get this stuff cleaned up."

Kawalsky, keyed-up and combat-ready expected Daniel to jump when he gave

an order.  Daniel, on the other hand, had no intention of taking orders

from some testosteroneswollen army-educated grunt who couldn't possibly

understand how crucially important these hieroglyphs might turn out to

be.

He looked up at the lieutenant with eyes puffy from a long night of

hodophobia, commonly known as "travel allergy," and calmly blew his

nose.  Kawalsky, pissed off, decided not to argue.  He tossed Daniel a

big envelope and went on to his next task.

The envelope contained the thin lead sheathe to protect his glasses from

the ring's vibrations.  There was also a note

from Catherine that read: "Didn't I promise to pack you a lunch?" At the

bottom of the envelope, he found five jumbo Fifth Avenue bars.

Two more soldiers reported to Kawalsky.  They were Feretti and Brown,

faces Daniel remembered from the morning he drove onto the base.

Feretti, living up to his name, was a restless man with bushy eyebrows

who couldn't seem to keep still.  He was perpetually hyper, always

digging through his pockets, looking around in all directions,

investigating everything.  He seemed to be the best of friends with

Brown even though they couldn't have been more dissimilar.  A calm,

slow-moving kid with a Mississippi accent who chuckled at every stupid

wisecrack Feretti made, he didn't seem to be cut out for the mission .

Daniel couldn't have guessed from looking at him that he was an

accomplished atmospheric physicist, a dynamite blues guitarist and, like

Daniel, an alumnus of Berkeley.  In fact, Daniel would never learn much

of anything about either of them, largely because they had closed ranks

and were determined to give him the cold shoulder.  The rumor

circulating around the base was that Jackson was an uppity civilian with

political connections who had somehow gone over the heads of West and

O'Neil, forcing his way onto the squad.  No self-respecting military man

was going to fratemize with him.  The unspoken plan was for everybody to

make life as hard as possible for him.

Daniel took the clue and returned to his reading.  At 5:44 and 45

seconds, O'Neil turned the corner.  He drew extra attention because he

was wearing a black heret.  Six soldiers snapped into an inspection line

offering the colonel a precision salute.  Daniel, the seventh, shuffled

into place at the end of the line, vaguely trying to fit in.

O'Neil, as serious as a corpse, asked the assembly a single question.

"Does anybody want to say something before we go?"

There was no reply.  The colonel stepped down the line looking into each

of the soldiers faces, deep into their eyes when "Aaachoo!"

Everyone present turned down the line to look at Daniel,

who was wiping his nose with some of the toilet paper he'd stolen from

the latrine.

"AH right, then.  Let's move out." And O'Neil pushed through the doors

leading into the Booth.

Unlike the day before, when the Booth had a technician for every

monitor, this morning there were only two men inside, technician Storey

and one other.  The rest of the science team had either been evacuated

or were in the process of going.  General West wasn't kidding; he wanted

the sdo completely sealed before the away-team stepped through the

StarGate.

With a nod, O'Ned signaled that they were ready.  Speaking into a

microphone so the remaining workers out in the silo could hear, Storey

made the announcement.

"Initiating the commencement sequence."

As the "Away Squad" trooped past him, Storey eyed the last man in line,

Daniel.  The technician felt, as did most of the scientific staff, that

while he was glad at least one of them was going along, he wished to

hell it didn't have to be Daniel, a Johnny-Come-Lately to the project

who most of them considered an annoying, arrogant little crap.  Thus, it

was with mixed emotions that Storey offered Daniel the thumbs-up signal

as he marched past.

The squad entered the silo and gathered at the base of the ramp that led

to the center of the ring.

"Permanent Cameras On," called a voice over the loud speakers.

Daniel licked his lips and tried to swallow, realizing that his mouth

had gone completely dry.  Was he really going to go through with this?

He knew the probe had arrived intact, but he wasn't made of metal.  What

if something went wrong?  What if the StarGate couldn't reassemble

personalities?

From this angle, the ring looked even bigger and much, much more

dangerous.  The entire group stood petrified and silent as the

technicians made some final adjustments to their computers.  Then

Storey's voice came over the speakers booming through the room, calling

out the coordinates .

"Lhft 11.329," and then after the ring had spun up to the section

showing Taurus, "Right 148.002," spinning Serpens Caput up to the

"register clamp." Daniel felt his stomach

rise to his throat as the eerie harmonics started to issue from the

ring.  The individual fight beams trickled out of the quartz jewels and

slowly blended into the delicate, shimmering energy field.  As the

seventh symbol was wheeled to the top, and the rumbling sound coming

from the ring shook everything in the silo, the group stepped well away

from the ring.  A moment later, the thin force field thickened and

started to boil until it sloshed over the edges of the ring and then

splashed violently out into the room.  It hovered there for a split

second, defying all laws of gravity, before being vacuumed savagely back

through the ring and out the other side to create the ghostly tunnel of

light, the circular waterfall, speeding away through the wail of the

silo.  Now the deafening roar quieted as the StarGate began cycling

through its harmonic progression.

The technicians rolled a pushcart loaded with equipment into place at

the bottom of the ramp.  O'Neil pointed to Kawalsky and one other

soldier.  The two men went to the cart and steered it to the top of the

ramp, putting them only a few feet from the gaping mouth of the ring.

When the ring's harmonic progression reached it's twelfth stage,

everything was ready.

One of the technicians approached O'Neil and pointed toward the cart

saying something to him that Daniel couldn't hear.  O'Neil nodded and

shook the man's hand.  Then both technicians jogged for the security

doors, which locked down behind them.

"Initiating the final sequence." It was Storey's voice over the

loudspeakers ." Godspeed," he added before he, too, made for the final

elevator.

O'Neil turned to look up into the big observation window of the

conference room.  Daniel followed his glance up and saw General West

pick up a telephone hookup that ran to speakers in all parts of the

silo.

"Final Evacuation," he said, and approached the bay window.  Looking

down on the men, he offered them a simple salute, then turned for the

exit as the window's shielding wall slowly slid closed.

The men at the top of the rainp had their eyes locked onto O'Ned, who

gave the order with one finger, "Go." Using the handheld remote control,

Science Officer Brown sent

the equipment cart rolling into the energy field.  As soon as the front

tip of the cart came into contact with the energy field, it evaporated

into a forward shriek of light.  The violent speed at which the heavy

vehicle was sucked through the ring sent a shock wave of fear through

the men who were about to attempt the trip.

All except one.  After a brief glance backward at his soldiers, O'Nefl

walked at a casual, even pace into the white teeth of the turbulent,

sloshing pool.  For a moment he seemed suspended in mid-stride until his

forward momenturn was magnified a million fold.  He was gone.

Kawalsky ordered the next soldier, Rogalla, across the last ten feet of

ramp.  The soldier, nervous, tried to edge into the force field.  Daniel

winced, imagining half of the man being transported across the galaxy

while the other part of him stayed here in the silo.  Fortunately, the

ring's energy quickly reached out, surrounded him, and took him whole.

One by one, Kawalsky commanded the soldiers up the ramp.  Feretti

disappeared into a blur, and then Brown.  Now only Daniel and Kawalsky

were left.  The lieutenant signaled that he would go last, but Daniel

froze.

"No hesitation," Kawalsky shouted.  Then he put his money where his

mouth was and jogged up the ramp, leaping into the center of the ring.

He hung there for a split second, pinned to the shimmering surface of

the energy before he was sucked through.

Daniel walked tentatively up the ramp until he was inches away from the

turbulent light.

A deep hollow clapping sound filled the room, the sound of the giant

concrete doors closing high above him, the echo bouncing down the silo

walls.  Like a young pharaoh sealed inside his pyramid, Daniel was now

the only soul left in this huge structure.  He shut his eyes tight and

inched forward.

THE OTHER SIDE OF

THE GATE

Shortly after his twelfth birthday, Daniel was persuaded by his foster

father to try out for the Pop Warner football team, one of the man's

worst ideas ever.  Daniel quit an hour into the first practice,

immediately after going through "the Gauntlet." He could see it was a

bad situation right from the start.  He was supposed to run a straight

line between two rows of bigger boys who aB got to cream him with big

pads.  When the coach blew the whistle, Daniel stood up and asked, "Why

would I do a thing like that?" But the coach, a big red screaming face,

quickly convinced Daniel that he did indeed want to participate in the

self-torturing drill.  His teammates came through and did their part.

They whacked him silly.  The incident is noteworthy now because it was

probably the only physical experience that in any way prepared him for

the trip he was about to take, the much rougher ride through the

StarGate.

As soon as his eyes touched the bright surface of the threshold, he saw

the sdo wail speeding toward him like a falling house.  Much too fast

for him to react.  By the time he flinched, he was well out of the

Earth's atmosphere, accelerating through pitch silent black twisting out

of control, smashing blind through speeding interstellar darkness .

He felt himself glide for a second until a wrinkle in the energy field

threw him end over end.  No gravity, no control,

no sense of up or down, only the sudden bruising glances off what felt

like the walls of a tunnel.

Shooting past a cluster of what appeared to be new stars, there was a

long flesh of light, enough time to see his legs elongated, stretched

miles out in front of him, until they snagged and his head came whipping

past, as he saded toward a face-first collision with a gigantic planet.

His scream wouldn't sound.  He hit the surface and zoomed out the other

side, crashing again into the electric bum of the walls, spinning

through a vacuum of light and sound .

Then arriving.

Daniel came through in pieces.  The toe of his right boot came first.

Then his left hand materialized.  The tip of his nose spread out to

become his still wincing face.  For a split second the pieces dangled in

the light at the bottom edge of the StarGate untu more molecules came to

tU the gaps.

When Daniel was whole once more, the ring spat him out onto the hard

floor like unwanted luggage, covered in frost .

Later, he surmised that the frost was a by-product of his molecular

reconstruction.  Just as microwaves can heat objects by increasing the

rate of molecular movement, the StarGate chilled its cargo by packing

the molecules tightly at the moment of reconstitution.  For less than

Yiooth of a second, the atoms of Daniel's body were squeezed together at

a rate of zero movement, long enough for him to be coated in a thin

layer of ice.

Freezing and completely disoriented, he was unable to control his fall.

He fell out of the ring and hit the floor hard, but not as hard as he

would've if he'd gone through first .

The entire team lay in a pile on the stairs at the base of the StarGate,

spilling off the top of the equipment cart.  It was several seconds

before the first of them, Kawalsky the ox, was able to shake off the

dizziness and sit up.  When he could focus again, he glanced around the

room at what looked like a massacre.  Right next to him, curled up like

an icy newborn, was Daniel, a pond of vomit near his head.

When Daniel found he couldn't breathe, his first impulse was to claw his

Aay back into the beam and get back to Earth's oxygen before he

suffocated.  That's when he felt a pair of powerful hands close around

his arms.  Panicked, he tried to fight back.

"Jackson", you all right?" It was Kawalsky hoisting Daniel up into a

sitting position and then pulling his arms above his head.  He started

breathing again.  When the first cool breath of the new atmosphere hit

his lungs, the sting opened his eyes and he began to cough.

The passage through the ring had knocked the wind out of him.  When

Kawalsky was satisfied that Daniel was okay, he went to check the next

soldier.  The chill from the frost deepened into Daniel's skin.  He

shuddered and felt like needles were stabbing him everywhere.

Remembering who and where he was, he squinted away from the bright light

pouring out of this second StarGate, nearly identical to the first, and

saw the luminous outlines of the others, scattered around him in various

states of recovery.

The trip through hadn't been what he'd expected.  Not that he assumed it

would be some rhapsodic, beam-me-upScotty experience, but neither had he

expected to have the crap beat out of him.

"Everyone all right?" Kawalsky asked.

The soldiers, dazed, disoriented, grumbled in the affirmative until the

group's wiseacre, Lieutenant Feretti, joked sarcastically, "That was a

rush, let's do that again!"

It was painful to laugh.  One by one they sat up or, if they could, got

to their feet.  Still coughing and shivering from the cold, they

gathered at the equipment cart.  As O'Neil started issuing instructions,

the inner ring of the StarGate began to spin.  Then suddenly it stopped

with a click, shutting itself off and plunging the room into absolute

darkness.

O'Neil's voice cut through the darkness, "All right, ladies, let's go to

work.  Phase One.  Just the essentials."

With a sharp crack, O'Nefl cracked open a flare that sputtered to life,

hissing an orange-white light into the room .

With choreographed precision, the team began to off-load only the

equipment they needed for their first reconnaissance expedition.

Kawalsky broke open a second flare and held it aloft.  Daniel watched as

Freeman expertly assembled a specially built video camera and Brown

mounted a miniature radar dish to the top of a backpack-size unit for

the collection of technical data.  While the soldiers continued to

prepare, Daniel waded beyond the murky pool of light to the nearest wall

in search of clues.

The room was a tail black marble box.  Daniel inched forward until he

found the wail, then ran his hands over the polished surface.  Although

the large stones were beautifully cut and set, there was no trace of

writing anywhere.  Daniel moved deeper into the shadows, reading the

empty wails by Bmflie.

The team was strapping into their equipment, ready to roll.  Feretti,

Poffo, and Reilly switched on powerful flashlights, the beams

intersecting in the dark air as they scanned the room.  The men gathered

at the large doorway, the only way into or out of the room.  O'Nefl

thrust his flare around the corner peering into the next room.  It was a

short stone hallway.

Everything seemed clear, so he gave Freeman the sign to switch on the

intense light at the head of his camera.  Then he turned and pointed.

" Feretti, you take point.  First team, move."

Swinging his rifle up to patrol position, Feretti stepped through the

threshold into the dark corridor followed by Brown and another soldier.

"Kawalsky, you and Freeman cover the rear.  Reilly, you and me.  Let's

go." They, too, bolted into the hallway.

Kawalsky looked around like he'd lost something.  With a muted growl, he

said, "Jackson, let's go." Daniel snapped away from his investigation of

the wail and trotted through the doorway.

After a few yards, the hallway widened into a larger area that resembled

the apse of a cathedral.  By that time, Daniel had caught up to Freeman.

Noticing something, he reached out and grabbed the nose of the camera

directing it's light down to the floor.  He and Freeman were standing at

the edge of a circle twelve feet in diameter.  It appeared to be a

metallic disk, probably made of copper, that had been carefully set into

the surface of the floor.  Freeman looked at Daniel and shrugged.  Two

steps later, Daniel had another idea and grabbed the camera once more,

this time directing its light straight up.  Sure enough, an identical

disk was cut into the ceding directly above the first.  Daniel stood

gazing at the ceiling until Freeman, annoyed and not wanting to fall

behind, shook lose and moved forward.  By that point, Daniel was pretty

certain these opposing disks weren't made of copper.

Picking their way carefully through the dark hallway, alert to any sign

of danger, the team came to the Grand Gallery .

This vast chamber was designed in a monumental architectural style and

finished with polished facing stones.  For some reason, it began to feel

vaguely familiar to Daniel .

Along the walls, towering ornamental columns rose up to support the

stone roof.  They were moving uphdi now.  The floor of the immense

gallery was built at a gently rising angle.  Even O'Nefl was impressed

with the chamber, but not enough to distract him from the task of

finding an exit .

The team moved up the floor of the Grand Ganery, dwarfed by its size.

The team's flashlights revealed the dim outline of a steep ramp at the

end of the Grand Gallery that climbed up to yet another chamber.  With

no responsibility other than to look around, Daniel was doing just that.

While the soldiers, armed to their teeth, were anticipating combat,

Daniel felt like he'd been transported to an archaeological nirvana.  At

the same time, he couldn't shake the eerie feeling that he knew this

place.  It wasn't ddji vu.  He just couldn't quite put his finger on it.

When Feretti was alone at the top of the steep rwnp, he suddenly

squatted down.  The movement set off a chain reaction as each member of

the team hit the deck.  Before Daniel knew what had happened, Freeman

had cut the light on his camera and dropped to the floor.  AH eyes were

glued to Feretti, who lifted up just high enough to study the contents

of the next room.  Without turning around, he pye the come ahead signal.

Daniel started to go until Freeman reached out and grabbed him by the

ankle.

"Not you, bonehead.  Stay down."

O'Nefl sprinted silently to the base of the ramp then

crabbed up the incline to Feretti's position.  After conferring for a

moment, O'Neil signaled the team to approach.  Daniel checked with

Freeman and got the go-ahead.  By the time the team gathered on the

ramp, they could see that Feretti was already deep into the next room.

It was some sort of Entrance Hall.  There was light at the end of this

room,

sunlight.  The hail, another large boxy room, was punctuated every few

yards by huge stone polars.

The team watched Feretti dart from one of these pillars to the next

until he was in position to see where the light was coming from.  He

turned and gave the group a thumbs-up .

O'Nefl responded by sending two more soldiers into the hallway to meet

Feretti.  When he was convinced the area was secure, the rest of the

squad came forward.

When the team converged in the Entrance Hall, O'Nefl conferred with

Brown, who had already taken atmospheric readings.

"Conditions are similar to inside.  Radiation, electromagnetic and other

exposures indicate normal." O'Neil listened to the report before poking

his head around the corner and studying the last hallway.  Satisfied

with what he saw, he turned back to the squad and pointed again to

Feretti and Brown, who immediately turned and went.  Moving one pillar

at a time, the team advanced toward the huge square doorway and the

sharp daylight beyond.  A few strides before the threshold, O'Nefl

lifted a hand in the air, stopping the troops progress.  Without turning

back, he signaled a soldier to either side of the doorway, twenty feet

wide .

When they'd peered outside and given the all clear, O'Ned took the last

steps forward and leaned out to check the area above the doorway.  Then

and only then did he lead the way out into the sun for their first look

at this new world.

The team came out onto a long stone pier that extended into an ocean of

sand.  They could barely believe their eyes as they saw nothing but

lifeless brown sand dunes stretching away in every direction under an

intensely blue sky.  Down at the end of the stone platform, forty yards

away, stood a pair of obelisks half buried in the loose sand.  The team

gazed around at this and brown world, each man lost in his own thoughts.

Except for a hot breeze there was no movement, no sound.  No indication

of any life on this sandy twin of Earth.

Before Daniel was outside, he had a theory about what this massive

structure was going to look like.  He walked into the sunlight and while

the others stood mesmerized by the barren vistas of this new world,

Daniel turned and craned his neck for a view of the structure he had

just

exited.  It wasn't what he expected.  The door was only a small

proportion of the structure's exterior.  On either side of the door were

massive stone pylons, thick wails that towered above the entrance.  Into

the pylon walls were built narrow slits, windows that allowed air in,

and, in case Of attack could allow weapon fire to the outside.  These

pylons were very much in the style of those to be found at the ancient

temples of Laxor and Karnak.  Everything was starting to make sense.

While the others were stupefied, O'Neil was on the move .

"Hold and secure positions around this entrance.  I want a better look

at where we are."

"Hold on, I'll go with you," said Daniel.

O'Neil didn't respond.  Daniel trailed after the three soldiers as they

jogged down the gently sloping ramp.  As the dunes grew higher around

them, so did the temperature .

Daniel guessed it was 90 degrees in the air, I 10 on the sand.

Kawalsky, well over six feet, and Feretti, well under it, made it to the

base of the ramp first and took up defensive positions at the base of

the obelisks.  When Daniel approached, he saw that these marble pillars,

forty feet tall and tapering to sharp pyramidions at the top, were

different from any he'd seen on Earth; they were not covered with

hieroglyphs.  Astonished, Daniel couldn't believe that his theories were

being proven light before his eyes.

After examining the twin spires, Daniel ran past the soldiers and up the

side of the first dune where O'Ned was already standing, looking back.

When he reached the top he turned and looked back, hoping he would see

the structure more clearly and, also, hoping that it would further

support his hypothesis.

What he saw knocked the wind out of him.  It was much more than he had

hoped for in his wildest dreams.  Not only was the enormous structure

completely Egyptian in design but from this distance he could see the

structure was merely an entrance to a much larger structure.  A

structure more famous than any other in human history: a pyramid.  But

it was a pyramid so monstrously, phenomenally large that it seemed to be

hovering directly above Daniel, ready to come down and crush him.  It

had to be twice or three times as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Unlike the dilapidated

pyramids at Giza, this one showed no signs of decay.  Its smooth facing

stones were all perfectly in place and seemed to glitter in the hot

suns.  Hanging up in the electric blue sky behind the pyrarfd were not

one, not two, but three suns.

Now Daniel understood why the interior of the building had seemed

familiar.  It was a far more advanced version of Khufu's Pyramid.

Perhaps this was the very same structure the ancient Egyptians had once

tried to reproduce.  In a moment of triumphant exhilaration, he realized

that he had been right all along.  He leaped to his feet and shouted to

the dunes ." I knew it!"

O'Neil had no idea what Daniel was talking about.  He watched coldly as

Daniel gyrated through an impromptu victory party in the sand, laughing,

punching the air, and yelling, "I knew it," about twenty-five times.

Ignoring Daniel, O'Neil went on with his calculations.  He decided on a

plan, stood and marched back up the ramp to deliver his orders.

.He sat in a shee of shadow between two dunes watching Science Officer

Brown hammer rod after galvonicauy calibrated rod deep into the ground,

collecting soil and mineral samples.  Brown transferred the specimens

into numbered glass beakers, murmuring an endless blur of facts and

numbers into a tape recorder.  He and Daniel were five hundred yards

away from the obelisks, but even at this distance, the pyramid, that

most primitive and mysterious of constructions, seemed to loom directly

above them.

Daniel had been back inside the pyramid to search for information,

particularly the writing he had expected to find.  The constellations

cut into the spinning inner wheel of the StarGate were the only glyphs

of any kind.  This absence of markings had scared and confused Daniel.

While he stared at Brown executing his careful procedures, he was

thinking hard about what the team would have to do next.

Nearby, O'Nefl had found a natural stone ledge and was using a pair of

binoculars to scrutinize the endless roil of pale brown dunescape.

Kawalsky and Porro labored up the sandy hill to the top of bluff where

O'Neil was standing .

Both of the men were drenched with sweat.

"Colonel, we've surveyed the quarter-mile perimeter .

Nothing to report.  It's just a bunch of sand." Daniel could hear them

clearly.

"AD right, good work," O'Neil said ." Let's wrap it up and move everyone

back inside.  I want you people back through within the hour.  I'll mark

the equipment I want left behind."

O'Neil looked over at Daniel and started toward him.

Kawalsky wasn't sure what he'd heard.  He called after the colonel,

"What do you mean, 'you people?" Are you planning to stay for a while?"

He was only kidding, but suddenly realized it wasn't a joke.  O'Neil

continued his march through the sand toward Daniel.  *'Sir, you're going

back with us, aren't you?" There was no reply.

When O'Neil reached Daniel, he stopped and shouted to his men scattered

in the surrounding dunes ." Let's pack it up!  It's time to head back."

"Head back?" Daniel knew that was impossible.  He didn't have enough

information yet.  He looked across the dunes, pretending to study the

pyramid.  He knew O'Nefl was about to give him the order he couldn't

execute.

"Get ready to move, we've got to get you back inside so you can get to

work on the StarGate ."

Kawalsky, Reifly, and Feretti came in earshot just in time to hear

Daniel telling O'Nefl:

"I need more time.  We've got to scout around.  There's bound to be

other structures here, other signs of civilization .

If I can find-"

"That would be nice, Jackson, but not on this trip.  What we need from

you is to get back inside and reestablish contact with the StarGate on

Earth."

The soldiers came to the top of his dune, surrounding O'Ned intent on

understanding his plan.  Daniel was in the tacky position of announcing

the bad news in front of them.

"You're not getting it," he let it fly ." This structure is an

almost-exact replica of the Khufti's Pyramid." There!  Now they had the

whole ugly truth.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Feretti asked with a pained

expression.  Obviously, Daniel had overestimated the group's grasp of

Egyptology.

"What I'm talking about is that we're not going to find any

hieroglyphics or constellation displays inside this pyramid.  No writing

of any kind.  I've checked everywhere."

"Spit it out, Jackson." Kawalsky was suddenly very interested in what

Daniel had to say.

"Look, the coordinates were marked on big elaborate tablets back on

Earth, right?" He tued to sound encouraging ." So, there must be

something like that here.  All we have to do is expand our search and

find it."

Kawalsky spontaneously combusted.  He jumped into Daniel's face ." Your

only assignment was to spin that friggin' ring around and get us back

home.  Now, can you do it or not?"

Daniel gulped ." No, I can't."

O'Ned put a restraining hand in the middle of Kawalsky's chest and

stepped between him and Daniel, as calm as ever .

"Can't or won't?" he asked.

"You told us you could do it," Kawalsky roared.

"I assumed I would have inform-"

"You assumed?" O'Neil's disgust was plain.

Then Kawalsky lost it.  He reached past the colonel and grabbed a

fistful of Daniel's shirt, pulling him forward..

"That wasn't the deal, Jackson!!"

"Lieutenant." O'Nefl's calm voice froze Kawalsky, but didn't convince

him to release his grip on the front of Daniel's uniform.

"Oh, this is beautiful, this is very pleasant," Feretti started

yammering ." This means, correct me if I'm wrong, that we're stuck out

here.  Oh, that's spectacular.  I ,

Kawalsky was holding Daniel forehead to sweaty forehead, his eyes

beaming pure hatred ." Listen to me, you lying son of a bitch." He

lifted Daniel off the ground ." You make that thing work, or I'll break

your neck." Kawalsky felt himself on the verge of doing just that, so he

pushed Daniel away, knocking him backward into the sand.

"That's enough," O'Neil announced very evenly ." We'll establish our

base camp right here.  Kawalsky, organize a detail to haul the supplies

out here."

"Establish a base camp?" Kawalsky was incredulous .

"The mission objective is to recon the quarter-mile perimeter, then get

back through the device.  What good is it gonna do to-"

O'Neil was finished talking ." That's enough, Lieutenant!

You are not in command of this mission."

It seemed like the wrong way to say the wrong thing to the wrong guy at

the wrong time.  Kawalsky took a sudden, threatening step closer to

O'Neil.  For an instant, everyone was certain there would be a fight.

No one needed to remind Kawalsky of who was in charge .

It had been an extremely sore spot with him ever since O'Nefl had

suddenly arrived and relieved him of his command.  Until this moment, he

had been able to suppress his anger, burying it deep within his

professionalism.  But it was clear to him that the whole project had

-started to going to hell the minute O'Ned took over.  And now here they

were .

They were marooned in this Saharan infernowith, at best, three days

worth of water.  The success of the mission had never seemed

particularly important to O'Neil, and that led Kawalsky to suspect he

might be prosecuting some secret agenda, something cooked up between him

and General West.  He had every reason to hate O'Ned.

When Kawalsky stepped toward him, O'Neil made no move to defend himself,

practically daring the bigger man to attack.  But the next second,

Kawalsky did what O'Nefl knew he would.  He followed orders.

After a tense, threatening moment, Kawalsky chose the supply detail ."

Feretti!  Freeman!  Redly!  Poffo!  Back inside ." He turned at once and

began slogging down the side of the dune, the first steps of the long

trip back to the pyramid.

O'Nefl returned his attention to Daniel, looking at him for a minute

before saying, "Now you've endangered everyone's life except mine.  Now

follow the men and help them off-load the equipment and bring it back."

Daniel didn't think following Kawalsky into the darkness of the pyramid

was the safest course of action at the moment, but it didn't seem as

scary as staying out there in the desert with ONeil, so he started down

the dune after the soldiers.

An hour later, the soldiers were already well into the process of

establishing the base camp, pounding long tent spikes into the ground,

unpacking additional communications paraphernalia, stacking the supply

crates to erect a

shade wall.  None of the soldiers discussed the limited supply of

rations and water, but everyone was thinking about it.

Daniel was positive Kawalsky had assigned him the heaviest single item

on the cart.  It was slow, hot work tugging the small crate across the

refling desert and then up the steep side of the last dune.  About

halfway up, he took a break and listened to the enlisted men argue.

"I don't believe this!  We're stuck out here!" Feretti was still having

a fit.

"Knock it off, Mr.  Doomsayer.  Quit being so negative," Freeman said.

I 'He's right," agreed ReiHy, looking up from hammering the tent spike

." If we're not back soon, they'll just turn the Gate on from Earth."

"Look, dimwit," Feretti began to lecture Redly, "ask yourself how you

got here.  Was it a two-lane highway?  No.

You got blasted through this weird energy cannon at about fifty billion

miles an hour, turning you into a higgin' zeromass, interstellar Gumby,

okay?  Now think: how many directions were you going at once?  One!  One

direction .

Now, not only is the sdo emptier than a church on payday, but even if

those science boys do go back inside and even if they do turn that

goddamn galactic garbage disposal back on, what are you gonna do?  Swim

against the current?"

Science Officer Brown was listening.  He looked up from assembling the

dish scanner and said, "Feretti"s right.  The beam moves one direction

at a time.  This is deep shit we're in."

Inside the StarGate room, O'Nefl lifted the last crate off the equipment

cart and walked toward the doorway.  He looked down the long hallway,

pitch-black except for a series of flares.  He didn't see anyone coming.

He immediately set the box down and returned to the equipment cart,

kneeling over its floorboards.  He reached into his pocket and brought

out an oddly shaped tool, then bent down to work.  A moment later

Kawalsky's voice was in the doorway.

"Sir!  Base camp is o

perational, sir.

Coolly pahffing the tool, O'Neil eased around to face the intruder, his

expression as impassive as ever.  He nodded in vague approval.

"I want to apologize for losing my cool out there," Kawalsky began.

O'Ned's hand slid into his pocket then out again, unnoticed ." Part of

it," Kawalsky went on, "is that it seems like more is going on here than

meets the eye."

"So what?" O'Nefl asked, implying that it wasn't Kawalsky's job to know

everything.

"For instance," the soldier persevered, "what was that you said about

not corning back with us.  What was that all about?"

"Apology accepted," O'Neil said flatly ." This crate goes to base camp."

Kawalsky stood his ground, waiting for a more human, more rational

response.  But O'Ned wouldn't budge: "You're dismissed, soldier."

Furious and disgusted but unwilling to show it, Kawalsky leaned over and

picked up the last crate.  He made sure O'Nefl saw how easily he lifted

it, using his strength to send the colonel a veiled threat: if I wanted

to, I could break you open with my bare hands.  When he'd made his

point, Kawalsky set the crate on his shoulder and walked out.

The moment he was gone, O'Nefl went back to work on the equipment cart.

Working the oddly shaped tool into a gap between the floorboards then

giving It a strong twist, he revealed a hidden compartment.  A hatch

door popped open .

O'Neil reached inside and brought out a pair of heavy steel cylinders.

The gleaming canisters were obviously the two interlocking halves of a

technologically sophisticated device.  He lined up the guide marks on

the thick tubes and pushed them together until they locked with a sharp

click .

As soon as the device was assembled, a small door, no more than two

square inches, slid open at the end of the canister .

It held a small square orange key.  O'Nefl took the key, then closed the

panel.  Very gingerly, he layed the log-size mechanism back into the

hidden compartment and locked it.

He stood up and, when he was satisfied no one was watching, he forced

the key into a sht cut into the waistband of his fatigues.  Then he

headed out to rejoin his men.

Daniel pulled the trunk up the last sand hill and onto the rock shelf

O'Nefl had chosen as a base.  Exhausted and hurting, he collapsed

chest-first into the sand with a huge grunt of relief.

The soldiers showed how impressed they were by ignoring him completely

and returning to their assigned tasks.  When Daniel pushed himself up, a

layer of the sand came with him.  He was dripping with perspiration, and

the sand clung to the moisture.  Just what he needed: his uniform and

face were both covered in a mask of fine grit.  But that was the least

of his problems.  His lower back felt like the bull's eye at a hatchet

tossing competition, and he could feel the first pain ofsumburn rising

on his neck and arms.  He wondered what sunstroke felt like and whether

he'd know when he had it.  Then he remembered he was on another planet,

and his travel allergy kicked in.  He sneezed eleven times in rapid

succession.

He tipped the crate onto its tail side and sat in the sliver of shade it

created.  He started going through the supply kit he'd been issued.

Toothpicks, water purification tablets, a two-ounce mylar blanket, a

sewing kit, compass, processed fruit rolls, sunglasses, breath mints,

two knives, signal flares, cyanide capsules, a hammock, string, tape,

bandages, first-aid materials, but not the thing he was looking for ." I

can't believe the Army.  There is every useless thing inside this pack

except sunblock ."

None of the soldiers so much as looked in his direction .

Daniel tried again ." Feretti, Poffo, didn't any of you guys bring any

sunblock?  I'm burning up out here."

"Jackson, we need that crate over here," Feretti told him

matter-of-factly.  Daniel wiped as much sand off his face as he could,

then hunkered down into his box-pulling stance .

As soon as he bent over, his back felt like the proverbial poodle in the

microwave, so he decided to make two trips .

He unlatched the fid and opened the box.  When he saw what he'd been

schlepping across the desert, he jumped back with a shout.

"Jesus.  You guys plan on flighting a war here?" Two dozen semiautomatic

assault rifles were strapped into the crate.

"Thanks to you we've got the time to fight one," Feretti hissed.  He had

just about reached the boiling point, and the sight of Daniel staring

dumbly at the rifles was making him hotter still ." Why don't you do

something useful, Jackson, like maybe a little reading!"

With one hand, he whipped Daniel's forty-pound backpack in a straight

fine through the air.  It flew straight into Daniel's chest, sending him

into an ungraceful back flip off the crest of the dune.  He landed

thirty feet down the hm in a spectacular shower of sand and spinning

books.  By the time he'd sat up and spit a couple of times, his

half-empty bag was rolling to a stop at the base of the slope.

Obviously, getting along with the soldiers was going to take a bit of

work.

Feretti walked to the edge of the dune and watched Daniel stagger to his

feet.  He made sure no one had been hurt before going back to his work.

By the time Daniel looked up, the top of the cliff was empty.  It was

only him, his books, and a lot of sand in between.  Reluctantly,

painfully, Daniel started the long, hot walk to the bottom of the steep

hill.

He reached down stiffly for the last of the books, trying to grab it

without bending his back.  He got it, but as he was stuffing it into the

sack, he suddenly let everything tumble to the ground.

Something had been there.

Pressed into the sand a few feet away were what appeared to be

hoofprints.  Daniel edged closer.  The prints were so deeply indented

into the and soil that only a very heavy animal could have left them.

The tracks, obviously fresh, headed off around the next dune.  His first

impulse was to call the others and show them what he'd found, but he was

certain they'd only use the occasion to give him more grief .

He looked up the slope, but the soldiers were out of sight .

After a brief hesitation, he decided to see what was around that next

dune.  Lacing his fingers behind his back, trying to look absolutely

harmless, Daniel followed the trail around one dune and then another.

The prints led him deeper and deeper into a maze of tall moguis, then to

the base of a steep, twenty-foot wail of soft sand.  It took Daniel

several tries before he was able to scramble to the top and take a look

around.

That's when he saw it.  He froze, gripped by fear, and stared at the

grotesque sight before him.  Less than a stone's throw away, a huge

bizarre-looking animal raised its head and studied Daniel through the

blur of heat lifting off the

sand.  About the size of an elephant, it was a long-haired giant, a

horrible hybrid of mastodon, camel, and water buffalo.  Extremely

top-heavy, the animal had absurdly thin legs to support its huge weight.

The two mammals stood in the hot sun staring at one blankly for a long

time before the larger one turned away with a loud snort.  It dropped

its head back to the ground where it was rooting in the sand, probably

for food.  Using its meager forelegs, it began to dig.  Daniel watched

the powerfid animal kick up big sprays of sand as it burrowed.

""Where's Jackson?" Kawalsky asked before he'd come to the top of the

base camp hill.  The entire contingent of soldiers started snickering.

All eyes went to Feretti.

"Professor Jackson dropped his books over the side," Feretti explained,

pointing to the edge of the stone outcropping.  The way Feretti said it

brought a bigger laugh from the men, but Kawalsky wasn't amused in the

least.  He hurried to the edge of the bluff and looked over the side.

Jackson's backpack lay at the bottom of the long incline, abandoned.

Grimly serious, Kawalsky turned back to Feretti and got a straight

answer out of him.  The next moment he was barking out a crisp series of

commands.  He put the base on alert and mustered a search party.  He

ordered Brown and Poffo to grab rifles, canteens, and field phones.  The

three of them were just about to leave when O'Neil arrived.

When the situation was explained to him, he repeated, almost word for

word, each of Kawalsky's commands with one exception.  He would join the

search party instead of Poffo.

As Daniel watched the beast dig, something in the animal's fur glinted

over and over again in the sun.  The reflection was coming from the area

around the animal's jaw.

Daniel didn't notice it at first, because it seemed such a natural part

of watching an animal graze, even an animal as weird-looking as this

one.  But as soon as the sight registered with him, he immediately

started marching in a straight fine toward the creature, reaching into

his pocket as he went .

He brought out a Fifth Avenue candy bar and ripped the wrapper open with

his teeth, taking a big bite.  The animal

quit digging when it sensed the human coming closer.  It looked up,

potentially menacing.

Daniel hesitated long enough to question whether he was sunstroked or

actually knew what he was doing.  No, he was sure the metallic

reflection could only mean one thing.  He came close enough to see that

the animal was fitted with a harness, stirrups, and a set of reins that

hung down to the sand.

The earthing took a deep breath.  Here was an unmistakable sign that

they were not alone.  It meant there was intelligent life here, a

species capable of making tools and domesticaling other animals to help

them do their work.  His heart rate surged, but he continued to move

forward.

The closer he came, the slower Daniel felt like walking .

The animal seemed much bigger than it did a minute before, seven feet

tall at the shoulder.  And much ugher.  At first glance, it had appeared

to be a much larger cousin of Ovibos moschatus, the homed musk ox native

to the North American tundra.  Upon closer inspection, however, the

beast looked like nothing so much as an early, not-completely-successful

experiment in crossbreeding.  It could have been descended from the

mammoths of the Pleistocene Epoch, or the horselike Hippotraginae

antelope, or possibly from the extinct woolly rhinoceros.  Or maybe all

three.  It had a high, humped back and long stringy hair that hung in

dirty matted locks.  The blistered, ofly skin on its face held a pair of

bulging, watery eyes set on either side of its stump-like head. Pointing

straight ahead, the nostrils were glistening, moist, and unusually

large.  It grunted toward the human, saliva dripping off it's beard.  It

seemed to be friendly.

Simultaneously disgusted and fascinated, Daniel crept forward.  Even

with his sore back, he didn't feel like he was in any great danger.  The

harness, made from some type of leather and vines, told him the animal

was probably tame .

And besides, it looked much too slow and awkward to give him much of a

race if it came to that.  A real city boy, Daniel had no idea how

dangerous the situation was.  He had had no experience handling

livestock, and didn't know that even a withered old milking cow can kick

a full-grown man to death.  Like most people, Daniel wanted to believe

he shared

a special sympathetic bond with aB animals and babies.  It was only

humans over the age of nine that found him so obnoxious.

Holding the candy bar at arm's length, swallowing nervously, he crept

closer.  When he was within a few feet, he stopped short and his eyes

widened dramatically.  There was a red X moving across the side of the

animal's sweaty face .

It took him a minute to realize that the X was a laser, a targeting

device.  He looked wildly around the desert and spotted Kawalsky aiming

down at him from a far-off dune .

O'Neil and Brown came to the top and stood on either side of him.

Daniel put his hands in the air, surrendering.  I 'Don't shoot!" he

yelled to the soldiers ." This is a perfectly tame animal ."

The moment Daniel's arms shot into the sky, the beast began the

ungraceful process of getting down on its knees .

Obviously, both hands in the air was a command it had been taught by its

masters.  From the soldiers' vantage point, it seemed that Daniel knew

what he was talking about.  The animal looked about as threatening as a

cow on roller skates as it folded its legs under and settled down into

the dirt, the red X of the sighting laser still trained on its brain

pan.

"Don't feed it," O'Neil warned from the top of a high mound, spotting

the Fifth Avenue.

"It's wearing a harness," Daniel yelled back ." Just don't shoot!"

Although Kawalsky had no intention of fning until the animal attacked,

Daniel felt sure the shot would ring out any second.  He had to prove

the thing was tame before his companions butchered it.  Smiling

nervously, he called to them, "Just watch.  No reason to worry."

Extremely worried, Daniel came the last couple of steps toward the

kneeling monster and held the candy bar at arm's length.  Slowly, he

leaned forward until two thick slabs of lip flesh closed heavily around

his hand.  Daniel closed his eyes and held on.  The animal's breath was

overpoweringly foul .

When the powerful tongue, the size of a cave eel, slid forward across

his hand, the sensation of hot spittle was too much.  Daniel yanked his

hand free with a yelp, but immediately turned and faked another big

smile for the soldiers.  By that time, they were moving closer, only

their

helmets visible as they dipped between the first set of moguls.  The

creature grunted around in the sand, found the Fifth Avenue, and chewed

it up, paper and all.

Daniel reached out and petted his fum y new friend.  Although it was

emitting a sharp, punishing body odor, the animal seemed sweet enough in

disposition.

"You're a good old boy, aren't you?" Daniel asked the lubricious ogre in

a high, singsong voice he used exclusively for friendly animals. Patting

and scratching the brute's filthy fur, Daniel examined the reins and

saddle that were made of animal skin and a poorly refined iron.  Whoever

made them had better skill than equipment.

"Who do you belong to, mister?" Daniel asked, reaching under the

animal's fleshy wet ear to give him a nice scratching.

It was the wrong place to touch.  Faster than a scared rabbit, this

tow-truck-on-legs stumbled up and broke into a headlong sprint.  Daniel

had just enough time to get out of the way, but unfortunately, he

stepped directly into a loop in the reins.  Half a second later, the

slack in the reins disappeared, snagging Daniel's foot and yanking him

violently into motion.  The next thing he knew, he was sand surfing at

breakneck speed across the uneven desert floor, being towed along by

this yak from hell.

Kawalsky took aim, but it was too late.  The beast was darting between

four-foot dunes, bouncing Daniel around like a tin can tied to the

bumper of a car.  The soldiers gave chase, but the beast's incredible

speed quickly increased the distance between them.

Daniel was being puffed ankle first at forty-five m.p.h.

across an endless skin-scratching washboard.  Bumping and twisting, he

glanced off the side of one dune only to crash with a spectacular spray

of sand onto the face of the next.

When the terrain flattened out, and his trousers tued like a balloon

full of heavy sand, he was able to control the ride somewhat by holding

both hands out to the sides.  He looked like a human catamaran.  Despite

the constant gale of sand kicked into his face by the pumping hooves,

Daniel sat up and tried to reach for his snagged boot.  He almost had it

when the medallion Catherine had given him bounced up and out of his

shirt.  They were headed straight for a giant

wail of sand.  At the last second, the animal jagged away, but not soon

enough for his passenger who rode to the top of the natural ramp, then

went airborne just as the medallion bounced past his nose and over hs

head.  He tried a desperate backward lunge just as the slack in the

reins ran out, yanking him violently in a new direction.  He scraped

across the hot ground, face-first, his nose scooping up a fistftil

ofsand.

Eventually the beast trotted to a stop.  Daniel, his sandstuffed uniform

making him look like a circus fat man, was sneezing like a kitten who'd

just inhaled a pepper shaker .

Miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken.  He looked at his hand and

discovered he'd snagged the chain with one finger.  Painfully, he roiled

over, sat up, unstrapped his boot, and started getting the sand out of

his mouth, eyes, ears, and nose.

Soon he could see O'Nefl, Brown, and Kawalsky coming past the last dune,

jogging toward him with their rifles sighted on the animal.  As the team

came closer, the beast turned around and started licking Daniel in the

face.

"Get your stinking breath away from me," he screamed, trying to slap the

repulsive face away.  The beast ignored him, continuing to nuzzle and

rick.  O'Ned got there first.

"Colonel, get this thing off me."

Strangely, O'Neil lowered his gun and walked right past Daniel to the

lip of the nearby ledge.  Brown and Kawalsky did the same thing.  Seeing

that he would get no help from his supposed teammates, Daniel pushed the

nauseating animal away and came to see what the soldiers were gawking

at.

"What's so interesting?" he asked, coming up the slope.

They were looking down into a deep ravine that ended in a spectacular

set of white cliffs.  Crawling by the thousands across the faces of the

cliffs, marching in lines across the valley's flat bottom, and climbing

up a series of gigantic ladders were thousands upon thousands of human

beings.

"SO MUCH FOR

COMMUNICATIONII

Thousands upon thousands of ragged, dirty men were laboring in organized

large groups, into battalions of two hundred or more, some of them

working on the narrow shelves cut into the bright white cliffs, others

out on the muddy floor of this colossal mining pit.  It was a scene of

horrible human misery.  In the stifling afternoon heat, the tinners were

scrambling everywhere, edging out on thin ledges cut into the chalky

cliffs.  At the bottom of the valley, where the groundwater prevented

them from going deeper, they worked in milk-colored mud.  At several

points around the perimeter of the stadium-shaped bowl, there had been

major cave-ins, places where the soft wails had given way and crashed

toward the muddy bottom, burying everything in their way.

O'Nefl surveyed the scene through his binoculars.  Young children, no

older than seven or eight worked alongside the men.  Their main task

appeared to be carrying satcheis of ore or coal-like substance up the

network of thin trails that snaked like veins to the top of the ravine.

But the most dramatic way in or out of this man-made canyon were the

rope ladders.  There were hundreds of these handwoven ladders hanging

everywhere between levels, but half a mile from the team, two dozen of

them reached spectacular lengths, connecting the very bottom of the pit

with a rock

outcropping three hundred feet above.  Uneven in thickness and stitched

with broken rungs, they looked perilously slipshod.  Nonetheless, each

of them wagged back and forth with the weight and motion of between

forty and fifty boys at once, some climbing with their loads, others

passing them on the way down.

They were dark-skinned people, some working shirtless, but most of them

wearing thick robes that covered them shoulders to ankles.  It seemed

like bizarre wardrobe given the intense heat.  Worse, their heads were

covered by hoods or scarves, wrapped in a fashion similar to the

bedouins of the Syria and Jordan.

The mining enterprise extended into the valley for two and a half miles.

From the team's angle, the workers looked like ants moving everywhere

across the surface of the valley.  One work group, at least a hundred

men strong, was working a long stone's throw beneath the soldiers. Their

work was kicking up clouds of white dust so thick it looked impossible

to breathe.  They were covered with the powdery soot, giving them the

eerie appearance of dusty ghosts.

The away-team was astonished, blown away.  They thought they were

prepared for anything.  Ten-foot-tall aliens with swollen pink heads

wouldn't have surprised them half as much as what they had found:

humans.  It sent a shockwave of recognition through the team, a sudden

awareness of being related to these people.  Even O'Neil did something

completely out of character.  Once he'd established the workers were not

armed, he handed the binoculars to Brown, who was clearly eager for a

look.

Daniel's mind raced.  Human beings, here, on the other side of the known

universe?  What was the connection?

Could these people be descendants of people from Earth?

Or, more disturbingly, could we be descended from them?

For every answer Daniel could find, a thousand questions would arise.

Everything changed the moment the first worker looked up and made eye

contact with Daniel.  Elis shout caused a hundred beads to turn toward

the top of the dune.  Then, in a long chain reaction back across the

busy valley, work stopped and all the thousands looked to see what was

happening.  Those who were close enough saw the four

men in green clothing isolated against the giant watt of white sand.

Kawalsky and Feretti instinctively readied their guns and wanted to

retreat up the hill to better positions.  O'Neil signaled them "guns

down" and watched the curious miners watch him.  There was no malice in

the growing crowd, but neither was there any sign of welcome.  Neither

side knew how to move.

"Fall back," Kawalsky decided.  Then he corrected himself, "Should we

fall back, sir?"

"What would that accomplish?" O'Ned asked after thinking it over ." We

might as well meet the neighbors." He started off down the slope.

"What the hell is he doing now?" Brown knew exactly what he was doing.

"Let's trail him," Kawalsky said, getting up to follow .

Now twenty thousand eyes were fixed on the strange visitors as they

piled their way down one of the spiflways into the ravine.  Some watched

frozen from the cliffs, laying their tools on the ground.  Across the

uneven valley floor, they continued to come, crowding around to gawk up

at the first unknown travelers in their history.  As Daniel walked down

into the gorge, he felt like something was swallowing him.

O'Neil lead the way, watching the crowd gather mass .

Fprtunately, he saw no sign of hostility.  The people seemed peaceful

and curious.  But there was something strange in the way they were

milling about.  O'Neil couldn't quite put his finger on what was odd in

their behavior.  He gave the crowd his iciest stare, intentionally

intimidating them.  But when he saw that wasn't necessary, the next step

was to talk.

"Jackson, come down here." He motioned his Egyptologist forward ." Talk

to them,"

"What?  How?"

"You're the language expert.  Try and communicate."

Daniel hesitated, but then plunged in.  With the entire population of

the mining rolony scrutinizing him, he slowly walked past O'Ned to the

base of the cliff.  He approached one of the miners, a skinny

bucktoothed man, and spoke the historic first words between the two

disparate cultures: "Urn ...  hello?"

The man turned and laughed nervously to no one in particular.  He was

more than a little tense about being singled out like this.

"I am Dan-iel.  Daniel," he said again, gesturing broadly to himself ."

And you?"

Blank stares.

Daniel tried a formal Japanese-style bow.  This time he met with more

success.  Several of the men in front awkwardly returned the gesture. It

was a beginning.

"Essalat imana, " Daniel said very formally, bowing once again.  The

miners raised their eyebrows and looked at one another.  Obviously, they

didn't speak Aramaic.  Switching gears, Daniel tried speaking ancient

Egyptian, a language that hadn't been heard on Earth for the past

seventeen hundred years.  Since no one knew exactly how to pronounce the

verbal equivalents of the hieroglyphs, all Daniel could do was take a

stab at it.

"Neket sennerer ado ni, " he announced.  We come in peace.  The miners

stared back at him, politely curious but obviously not understanding

him.  He tried several slight variations of the sentence's vowel

structure, but nothing seemed to work.  Either they didn't understand

ancient Egyptian, or he couldn't speak it.

He went through several less likely possibilities.  He greeted the crowd

in Berber, Omotic, ancient Hebrew, and Chadic.  But nothing worked.  It

was an intensely frustrating moment for Daniel.  He had spent his life

studying these languages, achieving levels of fluency that were far

beyond the merely useful.  Now, he was given the incredible opportunity

to actually use them, and found that they were good for nothing.

Daniel looked up at the hot suns contemplating his next move and began

absentmindedly fiddling with the medallion around his neck when a man

standing nearby came absolutely unglued and started screaming wildly. He

was screaming something to the rest of the miners, a look of sheer

brick-shitting terror on his face.

"'Naturru ya ya!!  Naturru ya ya!!" he cried over and over while he

backed away, cringing in fear as if Daniel were going to start whipping

him at any second.  Everyone started

dropping to their knees as quickly as they could and "assumed the

position," putting their faces to the sand in a posture of abject

servitude and submission.  In a few seconds, the words "naturru ya ya"

had been repeated in every corner of the mining pit, causing the many

thousands of miners to prostrate themselves facedown in the white sand.

Daniel stumbled backward.

"What the hell did you say to them?" O'Neil demanded.

"Nothing.  All I said was hello."

"Damnit, I told you to communicate with them."

"How?" Daniel pointed at the groveling masses.

"Oh ferchrissakes, Jackson, just communicate." Exasperated, O'Neil

studied the crowd for a moment, then approached one, a teenage boy, at

random.  He tugged the kid to his feet with one hand and offered a

handshake with the other.  When the boy didn't understand, O'Nefl seized

his hand and shook it vigorously, saying "Hello, United States of

America.  Colonel Jack O'Nefl."

The boy looked like he had developed rigor morris.  He was so alarmed

and confused, he was about to cry.  When O'Ned saw this, he relaxed his

grip and let the terrified youngster take off running, scared out of his

wits.

"So much for communication," Daniel commented dryly.

"Colonel, eleven o'clock." Kawalsky drew attention to something moving

toward them across the floor of the valley.  It was another one of the

mammoth-like animals, but this one was finely groomed, with silver

ornaments and carefully braided hair.  On it's humped back it carried a

decorated howdah whose passenger was hidden behind veils draped over the

windows.  As the animal ambled forward, it parted the silent crowd like

a royal rowboat bobbing through water lilies.

Wafling beside the animal, speaking excitedly up to the closed litter,

was the same boy who shook O'Nefl's hand .

The window cover was pulled back, and the rider shouted angrily at the

boy who immediately backed away.

The animal arrived, escorted by a small entourage that included some

females.  The soldiers assumed they were about to meet one of the

overseers of this miserable operation and poised themselves for a

showdown.  But when the small door swung open, it was a thin old man who

climbed down the side of the animal with surprising agility.  He wore a

deep red robe that was unlike those worn by the others .

He had on a headdress similar to the ones worn by the bedouins of the

Middle East.  His gray beard was carefully shaped.

His mood was very serious, 'concentrated as he walked over to the group.

He walked right up to Daniel.  Without warning, he fell to his knees and

started racing through some sort of catechism or prayer.  He was talking

fast, inches from Daniel's feet.  Daniel looked back at his companions

and asked, "What's he doing?"

"We do not know, 0 Holy Master," Kawalsky said with a smirk and a mock

bow.  It was obvious these people thought Dariel was something he

wasn't.

Daniel bent and listened to the small man as he recited the long

invocation.  The words sounded like they could be Omotic or Berber.

Possibly even Chadic.  Whatever it was, Daniel didn't recognize it.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the prayer was over.  The old man

pushed himself back onto his feet and was imitated by everyone on the

vaney.  He signaled for the women to come forward.  Two of them did,

bringing water in big earthen cups.

The younger woman came to Daniel handing him a piece of very soft cloth.

Then she raised her pitcher to pour the water.  Did she want to wet the

towel?  He held it out to her cupped in his hand.  She held out her

finger and shook it " no, take that away." By the time Daniel understood

what he was expected to do, it was too late.  He'd looked into the

girl's eyes and been electrocuted by her beauty, her impossibly magnetic

eyes.  His mind went into an immediate taflspin, and he started

experiencing ddjil vu.  But how you can have a ddji vu about someone

you're absolutely positive you've never seen before?  Maybe it was the

first sign of sunstroke.  He must have looked strange because the girl

reached up with the washcloth and wiped him across the brow.  Daniel was

surprised by the open tenderness of her gesture, the caring way she

wiped the cool towel across his forehead.

She held out the pitcher again, and this time Daniel, looking into her

eyes, knew what to do.  He cupped his

hands and caught the drink she poured him, then swallowed it while

giving her a meaningful look.

The girl, twenty years old and painftifly shy, then moved on to

Kawalsky.  Daniel noted with disappointment that she wiped his forehead

in the same way.  It was just part of the ceremony.  The old man was

speaking to him again.  He tried to concentrate.  Then an idea hit him.

Daniel unwrapped a half melted Fifth Avenue bar and held it out,

offering the man a taste.  The man understood what Daniel was doing, but

was clearly apprehensive about eating the exotic brown substance.  To

him, as for humans everywhere, the sight of an unfamiliar food looked

ugly and potentially poisonous.  After some hesitation, he reached out,

accepted the bar, and took a small bite.  His worried eyes grew wide

with concentration as he chewed.  Then suddenly, his whole face lit up

in a smile.

"Bonniwae, " he said.

"Bonniwae, " Daniel repeated the word, thrilled to be communicating with

him.

"Bonniwae, " he said again, giving the new taste an enthusiastic

endorsement.

"What the hell does that mean?" interrupted Kawalsky.

"I have no idea," replied a thrilled Daniel.

Pointing and beckoning, the man in the red robe used sign language to

invite his visitors to go somewhere beyond the high walls of the pit.

"They're inviting us to go somewhere."

" Where?"

"How should I know?  Somewhere in that direction."

The squad turned to O'Ned for a decision.  But he hadn't made one yet.

He was watching the old man like a hawk, scanning him for any clue of

deception.  He didn't want to walk into a trap.  The old one seemed

puzzled by the silence .

He repeated the invitation with clearer, broader gestures.

.  Daniel tried to persuade O'Neil ." Aren't we looking for signs of

civilization?  Okay, now we've obviously hit a bull's eye.  If we want

to find the StarGate symbols and get back home, we've gotta go with

them.  This is my best shot."

O'Neil just stood there, as expressive as a brick wall .

Although it was a pretty convincing argument, he knew Daniel was more

excited about playing the role of amateur

archaeologist than anything else.  He wasn't convinced until Brown added

additional new evidence.

"He's probably right, sir.  I've been taking some readings on this stuff

they're mining.  It's the same quartz-like material that the StarGate is

made of."

"AH right.  There's no alternative," O'Nefl concluded .

"Radio back to base camp.  Tell them to keep the area secure until we

return."

They came out of the pit along a wide switchback trail, the old man

leading a caravan ten thousand strong.  At the top of the road, there

were two more tall obelisks marking the entrance.  Daniel broke out of

line and jogged up to walk beside the old man to study his manner and

dress.

His name was Kasuf, and although ceremony called for him to walk alone,

he wanted to know more about these visitors so he allowed Daniel to walk

alongside him.  He wasn't sure whether they were gods, but with

production slowing in the quartz mines lately, he didn't want to take

any risks.  He could see that their weapons were very advanced and their

manner was not entirely friendly.  They were dangerous in more than one

way.  Whether they were gods or not, Kasuf didn't want to take any

chances, so he decided it best to treat them as though they were.

The one walking next to him, the one with glasses who sneezed so often,

seemed friendly and peace loving enough .

And very talkative.  Kasuf listened patiently to the young man's

gibberish but could make no sense of it.

Daniel had never had so much trouble communicating in all his life.  He

felt himself on the verge of losing his temper, so he took a deep breath

and marched along with the old man for several minutes in silence. About

the only thing he learned before rejoining the soldiers was that these

giant pack animals were called mastadges.

Each of the stump-headed animals was tended to by a distinctive-looking

teenager.  Cleaner and younger than the miners, the shepherd boys wore

striking haircuts, long dreadlocks dangling from mostly clean-shaven

scalps .

Marching next to Kasuf was the boy who seemed to be the de facto leader

of the shepherds, the same boy who had unwillingly shaken hands with

O'Neil a few minutes before.

His name was Skaarg.  He was a handsome skinny kid who walked with his

shoulders back and his chin in the air .

He was angry with himself for having run away from O'Neil before, and

was determined to be fearless from now on.

The caravan snaked out into the desert.  It was a ful mile later before

the whitish quartz-dust surrounding the mining pit gave way to the

planet's natural topsoil, the same brown silica the soldiers found

around the pyramid.  How many centuries of chiseling pieces of quartz

out of the pit's giant wails, then hauling them up the ladders a bag at

a time, had it taken to create these eerie white dunes?

Daniel kept trying.  Back in line, he pestered the miners on aB sides of

him, asking question after incomprehensible question.  He wanted to

learn the names of things, hoping he might stumble across some

linguistic clue that could teach him to speak their language.  He was

practically bouncing down the trail, intensely interested in everything

around him, but there were two things distracting him: his hodophobia

was acting up, making him sneeze every other minute; and, of course, the

girl.

She was oly a few strides behind him, and Daniel kept inventing reasons

to turn around.  Each time their eyes met, both looked nervously away.

He was in the middle of asking the confused miner next to him about

their agriculture when he felt someone touch him in a rather private

place.  Goosed, he spun around to find the same disgusting monster that

had dragged him across the desert.  Now the beast was trying to nuzzle

up to him affectionately.

"Get away," Daniel swatted at the animal.

The animal cried out, bleating like a ten-ton goat.  Everyone close

enough to witness the scene thought it was pretty funny.  They were

cracking up, but no one laughed harder than a strange-looking shepherd

boy.  He was shorter than the others, and his skull was oddly shaped.

Above his CroMagnon eyebrows, his head swelled like something were

trying to get out of the top.  His big horsey teeth were so crooked,

they looked like white tomahawks tossed at a red target.  His name was

Nabeh.

"Mastadge, " the boy grinned wildly .

Both the animal at the front of the caravan next to

Kasuf and this one trying to cuddle with Daniel were called Mastadge.

However, there was a vast difference between the stately beast parading

up ahead and the slobbering, malodorous monstrosity molesting Daniel.

The caravan turned and headed down a long valley with a steep line of

rocky cliffs on the right.  TWenty minutes later, they'd come to a break

in the cliffs.  Daniel looked behind him and saw the thousands of people

marching in fine, still coming over the last crest and down into this

valley.  Kasuf turned them up the slope toward the gap in the hills.

When he came to the top, he stopped and called Daniel to the front,

pointing across a long plain.

In the distance, Daniel saw the high wails of a huge fortress, a city.

It was the ancient settlement of these people using like an island from

the endless ocean of sand.  Awed, Daniel turned and shouted to the

soldiers.

"It's a city."

While O'Nefl trotted forward to recon the scene, Daniel had time to pick

the maiden out of the crowd again.  They looked directly at each other

for a heartbeat untu both pretended to notice something else.  This

exchange did not go unnoticed by Kasuf.

"Put your tongue back in your mouth," O'Neil snapped, arriving at the

top of the hill.  He surveyed the scene, then came down the slope to

find his men.  He explained that they would enter the enclosed city one

at a time, at intervals of ten paces: Brown, then Kawalsky, then

Jackson, then himself.  Kawalsky knew that was the other in which O'Nefl

would choose to sacrifice his men if it turned out to be an ambush.

When O'Neil left to explain the sequence to Daniel, Kawalsky turned to

Brown.

"As soon as you're inside, check above and behind, I'll be two paces

behind you."

When they came within two hundred yards of the city, the old one, Kasuf,

signaled for something.  One of the women brought forward a long animal

horn.  The old man put it to his lips and trumpeted a message to the

city.  A set of tail doors swung open between the two main towers. These

towers, eighty feet tall, were made of the same material as

the rest of the city-solid stone the color of straw.  The perimeter

wail, which ran off unevenly in both directions for several hundred

yards was only slightly lower than the towers, about the height of a

six-story building.  Kasuf had sent a

few of the boys amning ahead before O'Nefl could stop them, so by the

time Brown was at the gate, a throng of curious onlookers were swarming

the entrance.

Before he was through the doors, Brown knew there was no possibility of

avoiding an ambush if that is what these people had planned.  Inside the

city, there were more tail buildings crowding around narrow streets. The

air itself was thick with people.  A matrix of footbridges connected the

upper floors of the buildings, all of them were jammed with spectators

who could be concealing weapons beneath their long robes.

For the last few minutes, Daniel had been suffering another sneezing

attack, drawing strange looks from his fellow marchers and, now from the

people observing from the slate gray rooftops.  Adding to his

discomfort, his filthy friend, the mastadge, had been bumping him with

it's ofly nose looking for more candy.  As he came to the doors, wide

enough for ten people to walk abreast, the distance between him and the

girl closed.  Now they were wafldng practically side by side, and Daniel

felt a rush of heat come to hig face .

He ransacked his mind for something suitable to say to her, and was

about to speak when the mastadge nuzzled.him again in a sensitive area.

Daniel quickly pulled the last Fifth Avenue bar out of his pocket.

Before he unwrapped it, he shook it in the animal's face.

"A little bit," he explained to the animal before he unwrapped the

treat.  But the big fleshy Rps reached out and snatched the bar away.

"A little bit, I said!" But the animal was already chewing happily ."

Now stop bugging me."

Behind him, Daniel heard O'Nefl's voice saying, "I told you not to feed

it ."

The miners walling nearby picked up on the words "little bit," repeating

them over and over.  The foul-smelling mastadge had a new name.

Daniel's torment ended when one of the boys pulled the animal away by

the reins toward a holding area just inside

the gate.  The animal moaned in protest about being separated from its

new provider.

When Daniel looked up, he was both amazed and very uneasy.  This was not

a city for a claustrophobe.  The rough walls towered above them as they

walked along this central street.  On both sides, narrow twisting

alleyways cut between the buildings.  At every angle, from windows and

bridges, pressed into doorways and leaning over ledges, the population

of this city surged forward to stare at him with intense curiosity.  The

team was now completely at the mercy of this people, about whom they

knew almost nothing.

When they were a hundred yards deep into the citadel, they came into a

large open square, where Kasuf had turned to wait for them.  While

people filled the square, Daniel studied the buildings around him.  The

primary building material was stone, large slabs skillfully quarried.

But the most surprising element was wood.  The rickety staircases that

staggered up the sides of buildings, the gangplanks bridging the upper

floors and the doors to the many apartments were all made of a gnarled

rose-colored wood .

Around the windows and across the cornices of the buddings, elaborate

geometrical designs had been chiseled into the stone.  But nowhere could

Daniel spot anything that looked like a written inscription.

Kasuf stepped onto a small platform and raised his staff into the air

signaling for the crowd to be silent.  When they were, he turned to the

visitors and started rambling through what sounded like another prayer.

When he was finished, he used his long staff to point to a covered

object hanging high between two buildings.  As he did so, a man on a

scaffolding pulled away a large piece of cloth.  As the curtain

fluttered to the ground, Daniel looked up in total astonishment.

Suspended under the archway by a tangle of bulky ropes, he saw an

enormous gold disk, easily ten feet across .

Emblazoned across its surface was an exact replica of the design on

Daniel's medallion, the one Catherine found in Egypt.  As soon as the

giant disk was revealed, the entire city fell, its knees in one massive

human wave, bowing toward the visitors.  It was an awesome sight.

.I think they think we're gods," Daniel stammered.

"What do you think could have given them that idea?"

He looked up at the giant disk, then down at the smaller version hanging

on Daniel's chest.  He reached out and took hold of the antique

treasure, pulling Daniel half a step closer.  The colonel looked at him,

suspicious, menacing.

"Exactly what does this symbol mean?" he asked, threateningly.  He was

sure Daniel knew a lot more than he was letting on.

"It's the sign of Ra, the Egyptian sun god." As Daniel explained this,

he felt a sour sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach ." It looks

like they worship him.  They must think he sent us here."

Satisfied Daniel was telling the truth, O'Nefl released his gnp on the

medallion.

From his platform, Kasuf was making some sort of speech, gesturing

frequently toward the team.  Somewhere in the middle of it, Brown's

radio squelched to life.  The signal was so dim, Brown plugged in an

earphone and cranked the volume up.  Through the crackling of

electrostatic interference, he heard what sounded like Feretti's voice.

It had come on so quickly, there was almost no warning.  At first,

Feretti had ordered the team off the crest of the bluff toward shelter.

He quickly realized his mistake, struggled up the hill, and got on the

shortwave radio.  Down on his knees with his jacket pulled over his

head, he was screaming as loud as possible into the handset.  He was

trying to warn the away-team.  The roaring noise around him, a

highpitched shrieking howl, made it dif.9cult for him to hear his own

voice.

"Must abandon base camp!!  Repeat: must abandon base camp!!" he yened.

As he knelt, he felt something crash down on top of him .

It was Poffo, staggering blindly across the top of the bluff.

"Let's go!" he yelled to Feretti ." Let's get the hen out of here."

Feretti nodded.  They had to get back to the pyramid or they were dead

men.

""Come again, base camp.  We do not copy," Brown said urgently into the

handset ." Say again, base camp!" By that point, everyone's attention

was riveted to the drama of Brown shouting into his radio.  Whatever

ceremony the old man was trying to observe had been completely

interrupted.

Frustrated, Brown gave up trying.  He looked to O'Neil and said, "It's

no use.  Something's interfering with the signal.

A deep horn blast sounded from the top of the perimeter wail near the

main gate.  A moment later, a second horn moaned to life, and the pair

of them sent a low rumbling blast through the city.  Every head in the

square turned and looked as one.  Something was wrong.

O'Ned made a snap decision.

"We're heading back right now.  Let's move."

Kawalsky and Brown were on their feet and moving before Daniel could

say, "Why?"

O'Nefl's first impulse was to leave Daniel behind, maroon him, pay him

back in kind.  But at the last minute, he came back and grabbed Daniel

by the sleeve of his uniform and started pulling him down the narrow

street.  The path back to the gate was choked with at least a thousand

people.  As the soldiers pushed forward, hands reached out to stop them,

and mouths, frantically speaking, ttied to explain something urgent.

They were telling the soldiers not to go.

At first, O'Neil pushed them aside politely but firmly.  But when he saw

a handful of men pushing the main gates closed, he broke into a dead

sprint, clearing the way with a series of brutal forearm shivers to the

head or throat of anyone who stood in his way.

The men closing the gate ignored O'Neil's howling.  They had just

finished reinforcing the door with the first of three heavy cross beams

when O'Ned arrived at the entrance flanked by his two soldiers.

"Open the door!" he thundered at them, showing them what he wanted with

a gesture.

All of them started talking at once, waving their hands and pointing

over the wall, out into the desert.  It was clear they weren't going to

cooperate, so O'Neil called Kawalsky over.

"You think we can lift that beam by ourselves?"

Kawalsky shot him a look that said, "easily." Standing shoulder to

shoulder, they were a formidable sight, both of them tailer and more

muscular than these mostly thin, mostly haggard people.  No one in their

right minds would tangle with these two.  Nevertheless, as they moved

toward the gate, one of the gatekeepers reached out and grabbed O'Nefl's

wrist.

With a speed that surprised even his men, the colonel corkscrewed the

man's am behind his back and slammed him face-first against the door. As

the man sud half-conscious and whimpering to the ground, O'Neff took his

pistol from its holster and pointed it into the crowd.

"Don't do it!" Daniel screamed.

O'Nefl raised the gun above his head and fired three times into the air.

Each explosion jolted the crowd.  They had never heard gunfire before,

and they were instinctively terrified.  Everyone froze in their tracks,

stunned and afraid.  Kasuf, trailed by two of the city's Elders, caught

up to the team and nervously came forward out of the crowd to see what

was happening ." Sha shay ti yu, " the old man yelled.

"Brown, help Kawalsky open this door." O'Ned was going eye to eye with

the crowd, daring the next person to make a move.

Daniel was sure O'Neil would start mowing people down any second.  He

had no idea why the colonel had gone berserk, ruining all the goodwill

they had established with these strange desert people.  Leaving before

they had explored the city, he thought, would be a suicidal n-dstake .

They still needed the signs for the StarGate.

"Sha shay ti yu.  Sha shay ti yu ." Skaara, the shepherd boy who had

unwillingly shaken O'Nefl's hand at the mining pit, came out of the

crowd moving very slowly.  O'Nefl lifted his pistol, aiming for the

spare between the boy's eyes.

"Sha shay ti yu, " he kept saying softly.  He held his hands open and in

front of him as he approached the man in the black heret, careful

neither to threaten nor show fear .

Accustomed to handling the powerful mastadges, Skaara knew how to

approach a frightened animal.  O'Ned cocked the firing pin, but the boy

kept coming closer, repeating the words and pointing to the ramparts at

the top of the wail.

O'Nefl glanced up to the walkway at the top of the thick wails.  A dozen

or so people were spectating from up there, and some of them waved for

him to come up.  The boy pointed to the colonel, then up at the wall and

used his fingers like eyes looking around.

"He wants you to look over the wall," Daniel interpreted for O'Neil.

"I know what he wants."

O'Ned turned to Kawalsky before following the boy up theladder.

"If they try anything, drop 'em."

With one last check around, O'Neil followed Skaara into one of the

towers that stood at either side of the gate.  Inside, they wound their

way up a circular staircase built for people shorter than the American

soldier.  They came out onto the stone walkway between the city's double

wall.  Standing where his team could see him, O'Neil looked out over the

wail for what seemed like a long time.

"What is it, Colonel?" Kawalsky didn't appreciate being left hanging

when he was holding a thousand people at gunpoint.

A giant low-flying brown cloud, as wide as the horizon, was rolling

across the desert floor toward the city like a flash flood.  O'Neil

could feel the breeze tunaing to wind at the top of the parapet.

"A sandstorm.  Coming this way," he yelled back.

Skaara pointed beyond the wall and taught O'Neil the word for sandstorm,

"Sha shay ti yu ."

"Excellent!" Daniel said sarcastically, "that would have been an

excellent reason to shoot everyone!" Not content to let tempers cool by

themselves, and suddenly sure he had the moral high ground, Daniel

marched over to the soldiers and forced the nose of Kawalsky's rifle

toward the hardpacked ground.

"Don't push me, Jackson," the lieutenant warned him.

O'Nefl leaned over the parapet and called down ." We'R have to stay here

until the storm is over."

Feretti realized it was probably too late, but he had to try .

Lugging the thirty-pound stationary radio unit, he fought his way

through the storm, staggering up the long ramp toward

the shelter of the pyramid.  The gusts, sweeping up ton after ton of

sand, were strong enough to knock him off the ramp and out into the

dunes if he lost his balance.  As the dust thickened, he pulled his

T-shirt up over his nose to filter the air.  Squinting hard to protect

his eyes, he moved more and more slowly, afraid of stepping off the side

of the rainp.

He camethrough the tail open entrance and turned the corner, wiping the

fine sand away from his face.  As soon as his scratched and watery eyes

were clear enough to see, he switched the radio on.

"Mayday.  Mayday.  Brown, do you read me?"

As the last members of Feretti's Base Squad came stumbling in out of the

storm, he was already edging his way back toward the dust storm, trying

to get his radio signal around the stone wails.

After a minute of trying, he thought he heard Brown's voice responding

through the crackle of interference, but he couldn't be sure.  The storm

was too loud.  Just in case Brown could hear him, Feretti screamed into

the transmitter, trying to alert them to the disaster headed their way .

After several minutes, he retreated deeper into the cavernous shelter.

Positioning the radio set as close to the door as possible, he turned

the volume up full blast and set his helmet over the top of it to help

protect against the dust .

With sand crunching between his teeth, Feretti moved back inside to join

the rest of the team.

They had no idea whether the Away Squad was safely under the protection

of the "thousands of people" Brown had told them about over the radio,

or whether they were choking to death somewhere out in the desert.  But

all of them could sense their chances of surviving this mission quickly

slipping away.  Without anyone saying a word, they sat down in a

semicircle facing the entrance and watched the dark wind whip sand past

the doorway.

After a minute, Freeman got up and went to the radio, switching it off

and puffing it several feet further from the dust.

"You're wasting the batteries," he said to Feretti ." We're not gonna

get any kinda signal during this storm.  We should try again when this

thing passes."

"This is bad, man, this is very very bad," Feretti shook his head ." I

was in Saudi Arabia for two years, and I never saw anything like this.

Not even close."

He wanted to kick himself.  If he hadn't thrown that bag of books at

Daniel, if he'd exercised a little more selfcontrol, he wouldn't have to

sit there helplessly imagining O'Nefl's search party being suffocated.

He also knew that without Daniel, the statistical probability of them

getting home was a big fat zero.  They were trapped in a nightmare, and

he had nailed the coffin shut.

"I don't get it.  Why don't we just try and turn the StarGate on

ourselves.  I mean, how hard could it be?"

Reilly suggested, a pragmatist.

"Hey, there's an idea," Feretti rolled his eyes, then explained why that

wouldn't work ." If you spin that thing in the wrong order, we

rematerialize somewhere out in the vast vacuum of outer space.  Have you

got any freakin' idea how many millions upon millions of possible

combinations there are on that wheel!?"

" No.  How many?" Freeman asked wryly.

Feretti started chalking the problem up on his mental blackboard, but

then caught Freeman grinning over at him .

"Shut up, Freeman."

The soldiers fell silent again, staring at the grand rectangle of the

entrance.  They could have been part of an ancient, suffeahst drama: an

audience waiting in a giant stone chamher for the actors to make their

entrances.

Several miles from this peculiar stage, beyond the roaring hiss of the

wind, an oblong asteroid tumbled upward over the horizon growing in

brilliance as the sky darkened to evening around it.  It was the

misshapen pearl that was this planet's moon, and it was suddenly blotted

out by a triangular shadow moving across the sky.  A few seconds later,

the shadow slid away and was gone.

The last light of the last sun was quickly faltering behind the

impenetrable curtain of airborne sand.  As it did, the fight on the

scene in the entrance hall dimmed until the clean edges of the radio

began to decompose, dwindling into the approaching night.

The soldiers heard something coming from the direction of the entrance.

Rifles snapped to the ready.  It was the

unnustakable sound of metal clattering on metal.  It was Feretti's

helmet vibrating atop the radio.  The next moment, all the equipment and

then the entire floor of the pyramid began to tremble.

"Earthquake!  Just what we need, a goddamn earthquake."

"It's not," Freeman shouted over the rumbling, moving to a sheltered

position between the pillars lining the hall .

The shaking and the noise got more and more intense.

Hovering above the storm, slowly lowering itself through the storm was a

pyramid-shaped aircraft.  Bright beams of light knifed from its sides

into the night sky.  This floating pyramid was descending to a landing

atop the larger pyramid on the ground.

Long mechanical arms unfolded themselves, dropping into the sky like an

eagle's talons as the triangular ship lowered itself directly onto the

tip of the great stone structure below.  The landing arms found their

targets and locked down tight.  This was the explanation that had eluded

generations of researchers, the answer to the riddle of the great

pyramid called Khufu.  It had been built as a landing station for

precisely this kind of craft.

Once the landing was successful, parts of the giant spaceship's antiored

exterior began to move.  Huge sections of the outer walls started to

open and unfold.  Like a hightech origami construction, it began

converting itself from spaceship to pyramid palace penthouse.

Before the long and complicated transformation was complete, a new

presence was entering the pyramid.  Deep inside the edifice, where the

matching medallions had been set into both floor and ceiling, a rod of

blue light shot between the two disks, connecting them.  The beam spread

sideways along both medallions, slowly shaping itself into a closed tube

on light.

The soldiers, jittery, guns trained in every direction, were whispering

among themselves about what to do.  At the same time, a presence was

moving swiftly down the dark corridors, coming closer.  Feretti fit a

flare and was about to toss it toward the entrance when he heard

something behind him,

He turned just in time to see a jackal-headed creature towering above

him.  It was too late to do anything but gasp.

THE f-rDEM

%W L.  MA 0NY

don't think we should be eating anything," Kawalsky whispered over the

music.  The truth was, he was starving and wanted to know if the others

were planning to risk the food.

Daniel, playing with a piece of the rubbery, too-spicy "bread" leaned

down the table and said ominously, "They might take that as an insult."

The feast was an hour old, and still no food had been delivered.  While

torcheght played on the ominous disk that seemed to watch them from

above, the visitors sat crosslegged behind the long low tables that had

been carried into the courtyard and placed on colorful woven carpets.

In the open space between the tables, a group of elderly musicians had

been sawing and plucking at their stringed instruments, playing what

sounded like the same song over and over again.  Earlier, Corporal

Brown, a decent guitarist, had delighted the crowd by improvising on one

of their instruments.  The hundreds of people crammed into the courtyard

had cheered when he picked up the three-stringed zither-like instrument

and plucked out a few simple blues rims.  Taking their clues from Daniel

and Kawalsky, the onlookers had snapped their fingers and tapped their

toes, even though Brown's song was as foreign to them as the present

melody was to the newcomers.  Only Daniel seemed

to enjoy the group's minimalist, whining music, which reminded him of

the hand-clapping "Balee" chants he'd heard performed at Nubian weddings

during his visits to Upper Egypt.

The table was set for twenty-two, all of them men.  As far as Daniel

could tell, the women of this society were expected to serve quietly,

then make themselves scarce.  Kasuf was among the eighteen locals, all

of whom were older, bearded, and, despite the evening beat, were attired

in itchylooking gray robes with heavy hoods.  -They were obviously the

city's ruling Elders, its political leaders.  They seemed to be having a

good time.

Into the circle of torchlight came a procession of serving women dressed

in dazzling silken costumes carrying all manner of tableware:

terra-cotta dishes and platters piled high with vegetables, rough iron

goblets, appetizer plates, spatulas, napkins and knives, soupspoons and

saucepans punch bowls of wine with thistles floating on the surface'.

and, finally, a pair of four-foot-long tureens that had carried in on

poles.  Everything was set down on the inconstructed tables that sagged

in their middles, threatening to collapse.  Kawalsky lifted the cloth

draped over the top of the heavy tureen in front of him.  When he saw

what was inside, he jumped back in horror.

Laying on its back in a shallow pool of broth was a giant grinning

lizard that had been cooked whole-skin, eyes, tad, and all.  It had the

same ash gray scaly skin as a desert snake.  The animal's lips had

pulled tight during the cooking process to expose its bright yellow

gums.  Its feet and head poked out of the steaming soup as if it had

died peacefully while taking a bath.

"Well, Jackson, you don't want to offend them now, do you?" Kawalsky

offered sarcastically.

"Permission to vomit, sir?" Brown asked, only halfjoking.

"They can't seriously expect us to eat this, can they?"

In one movement, the team turned to look down the table .

The Elders were enthusiastically motioning for them to dig in.  The four

travelers smiled as they looked again at their disgusting Reptile du

jour.  Still wearing a big smile, Kawalsky turned to Daniel.

"Jackson, how about a nice biojuicy drumstick?"

"It can't be any worse than the food in the sdo," Daniel replied.  He

knew that if it was food and it was within Kawalsky's reach, it would

soon disappear.

"It could be poisonous," Brown pointed out ." None of us should eat it."

"He's right.  Kawalsky," O'Nefl's voice was commanding ." We can't

afford to lose Jackson.  Taste it."

Kawalsky was too hungry to grumble about the implications of O'Nefl's

decision.  He picked up one of the long knives and, after checking with

the Elders who gave him the go-ahead, sliced off one of the reptiles

thick hind legs .

Nervous, he dropped it into the broth with a big splash, which caused

laughter in the courtyard.  Kawalsky looked up and saw that everyone in

town was watching him.  He managed a smile as he fished the big

drumstick out of the tureen and dropped it on his plate.  He cut off a

thin piece and brought it to his lips.  With a deep breath, he plunged

the alien flesh into his mouth and let it sit on his tongue .

The townspeople started laughing, this time because of the expression on

the big man's face.  He bit down once into the meat, and when nothing

bad happened, he chewed and swallowed.

"Tastes like chicken."

"Does it seem safe?"

"How should I know?"-slicing off another bite-"Ask em if they've got any

salt."

Kasuf was looking down the table, watching with intense concern as

Kawalsky chewed the food.  For him, the acceptability of the meal was a

matter of life and death.  Daniel saw how concerned Kasuf was and

decided to reassure him using the word he had heard the old man use

after eating the candy.

"Tastes good, uh, you know, it's .  .  .  Bonniwae!" he said,

reassuringly.

"Bonniwae?" The old man looked horrified.  In his language, that meant

sweet.

Daniel cursed under his breath, frustrated.  After all his travels and

years of language classes, he couldn't even communicate the simple idea

of "delicious." Kasuf was

now speaking angry to some of the serving people.  Daniel jumped in.

' 'Not bonniwae.  Tastes like chicken.  Chic-ken," he said slowly. Kasuf

had never seen a chicken, so he didn't understand..  Daniel, thinking

quick, tucked his thumbs under his armpits and did his impression of the

animal, "hock hock, hock hock ."

No one had any idea what he was doing.  They stared down the table,

expressionless.  Then Kasuf, deeply afraid of being rude to his guests,

replied.  Smiling politely, he tried to imitate Daniel's imitation.

Wiggling his arms as he had seen his guest do a moment earlier, the

dignified leader of this people gobbled back at Daniel.

"Quit while you're ahead, Jackson," Kawalsky said between mouthfuls.

But Daniel's strongest need in life was to communicate his ideas.  He

didn't give up.  Although it took him several more tries, he finally got

the idea across that the meal was just fine.

As the elaborate dinner party wore on, both Kawalsky and Brown became

bolder about sampling the many exotic dishes brought before them.  They

joked and laughed with the elders at the table, learning the names of

the foods and then twisting them into comic English.  For example, the

light brown chunky sauce that tasted like pork teriyaki was called mba

hinjwui.  After a while they laughingly called it my behind juicy."

Only O'Neil remained stone sober throughout the dinner, thinking and

waiting as usual.  He ate nothing but a few pieces of blackened bread

and drank the water only after treating it with chlorine tablets.

Daniel had moved down the table and was trying to powow with Kasuf, but

their languages were so different that only the most primitive concepts

could be communicated.  He had thousands of questions but no words, not

even a common vocabulary of hand gestures, to ask them .

Using pantomime, he was several minutes into a question about the mining

operation when he saw her again.

She was serving bread to the Elders at the far end of the table from a

large basket.  Daniel completely lost track of

the conversation.  Kasuf turned to see what the young man was looking

at.

She was radiant.  Her black hair was loose now and spilling over her

shoulders.  She wore a length of blue cloth tied around her waist as a

skirt and a sheer blouse the color of burned apricots.  As she moved

closer, Daniel couldn't help noticing how very transparent the blouse

was.  He looked away, embarrassed, but then quickly looked back trying

to keep his eyes above her shoulders.  He followed her every move as she

made her way down the line of diners.  He realized how absurd he was

being, allowing himself to be so smitten with this girl he did not and

probably could not know.  But there was something so perfect about her,

something beyond her outward beauty that called him to her.  He watched

her hands.  Her dark eyes, the timing of her smiles.  She was elegant

beyond her years, and there was an intelligence to each of her gestures

.

Something about her was so familiar, so right.

The first time he saw her, she had seemed timid and demure, but he had

since realized that acting shy was merely the way these people expressed

politeness in public-and they were unfalteringly polite.  Each man she

served seemed eager to engage her in conversation, as they would a

favorite niece.  The strength of her concentration as she listened, and

the flash in her eyes as she responded told Daniel many things: that she

was completely comfortable around the city's ruling class; that she was

confident; and that she had a good sense of humor.  Several times, she

said things that made her guests laugh.  She seemed smart enough to

"work the crowd" but warmhearted enough to take authentic joy in doing

so.

If and when he ever got back to Earth, he hoped to someday find a woman

half as enticing as this one.  He tried to shake it off and return to

his conversation, but Kasuf wus now busy with someone else.

"Here she comes, Romeo," Brown said with a smirk on his face.  Everyone

who wasn't blind or brain-dead new Daniel was infatuated.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Daniel shot back defensively,

trying to save face.

"Wouldn't be so bad, would it?  You two could honeymoon back at the

pyramid.  Rent a little apartment here in town.  Find yourself a job in

the mining pit.  Maybe teach Greek and Latin to pick up money on the

side.  Start a little family ."

Daniel leveled a murderous glare at the science officer, who was

obviously amusing himself to no end.  Feering chastised and suddenly

self-conscious, Daniel turned away and pretended to listen to the

musicians, still scraping and wheezing through their performance.

Brown's joke felt like a dagger in his heart.  Here Daniel was in

another part of the universe, exploring an unknown world, feasting with

its exotic inhabitants, but he couldn't run away from a painftil truth

about himself.  He was an unrealistic, romantic dork when it ewne to the

opposite sex.

The next thing he knew she was kneeling beside him, extending the

basket.  Her eyes were lowered, and she seemed to be sanding just a

little.  He reached into the basket and selected a treat that looked

like a strawberry with hair .

With the others, she had been animated and warm, but now she kept her

eyes trained steadily on the floor.  Saddened, Daniel signaled that he

was finished, allowing her to move on.

With his mind on other things, Daniel started to put the berry into his

mouth when something stopped him.  It was her hand.  She reached up to

his lips and took the food in her hand.  Then, kneeling very close, she

showed him that he must first peel the fruit.  She stripped away the

small roots and the papery skin to expose the soft green fruit beneath.

Outwardly, Daniel was calm.  He seemed to be watching with appropriate

interest as she showed him this simple operation.  But inside, he was a

crowded theater going up in flames.  Utter, mind-numbing panic.  The

girl waited for him to reach out and take the fruit from her.  When he

didn't, she did something that surprised her as much as it did him .

She raised the beer y to his lips and, very gently, fed it to him.

There was more tenderness in it, more intimacy, than either Daniel or

the young woman felt comfortable with .

This awkwardness was compounded by the several people who broke into a

chorus of oohs and aahs.  Daniel turned and looked at the crowd.  A

hundred or so nosy people were

watching, smiling back at him.  In a flash, the girl was gone .

AH Daniel couw do was watch her go.

Kasuf looked toward a group of elderly women.  The women conferred among

themselves, then nodded back at him.  Some decision had been made.

"Looks like your girlfriend's got a headache," Kawalsky called down the

table, a remark that seemed to be understood even by those who spoke no

English.

"Just shut up and eat your Uizard, Lieutenant," which is exactly what

Kawalsky did.

"Jackson," O'Neil called from the end of the table, come over here ."

Daniel got up and went to where the colonel was sitting half in shadow,

lighting up a cigarette .

"You said that thing was an Egyptian symbol, right?"

"The udjat, commonly known as the Eye of Ra," explained Daniel ." There

are several variations of the motif, but the early tombs at

Hierakonpolis and Abydos show the-'

"Yeah, yeah whatever." O'Ned didn't care ." Look, it only stands to

reason that if they know one Egyptian symbol.  .  ."

They'll know others!  We can write to one another .

Let me try." Excited, he got to his feet, and with the attention of the

entire courtyard focused on him, made his way in front of the Elders'

table.  He got down to his knees and stared at the packed earth, trying

to think of an appropriate symbol word.  He scribbled the first thing

that came into his bead: "FEAST." When he looked up, the Elders all

looked like they were choking on their food .

Kasuf stood up, shouting at Daniel as he did so.  Daniel was

panic-stricken.  That particular glyph, he reasoned, probably meant

something nasty in their language.  Quickly, he rubbed the symbol out

and began writing the first sentence in hieroglyphics he had ever

learned, the first exercise in Gardiner's Grammar:

"He says: the one who has come in peace, and traversed the heavens, is

Ra ."

Daniel wasn't halfway through the sentence's twentythree signs when

Kasuf's sandal cafne down on top of his work.  The old man averted his

eyes as he rubbed the message out with his foot.  As he did this, he

began shouting

instructions for the crowd to disperse, flashing a nervous smile at

Daniel every few seconds.  Kasuf was in a difficult position.  On the

one hand, the gods had strictly forbidden writing in all its forms.  He,

as shepherd of his people, was responsible for enforcing this rule.  On

the other hand, these strange visitors had probably been sent by Ra. Did

the prohibition against writing extend to the gods themselves?

Was this a test?  Kasuf didn't know.  He chose to stop Daniel from

writing the way he made most of his decisions, out of habit.

As the hundreds of people began milling reluctantly toward the

courtyard's exits, Daniel came back to his comrades.

"Why is it, Jackson, that every time I tell you to communicate with

these folks, you cause some sort of explosion .

What the bell did you write?"

"Nothing, they're totally overreacting.  I wrote 'banquet.  ' "

"That's a pretty strong reaction," Kawalsky said.

"I know, it's almost like they're afraid of writing."

"More likely, they're not allowed to Wte," O'Ned theonzed ." I don't

know what it is, but these people are scared shitless of something."

When he'd obliterated the last of Daniel's chicken scratchings, Kasuf

hurried over to where Daniel was standing and fell to his knees, tawing

a mile a minute.  He seemed to be apologizing.  During his speech, a

group of young men came to whisk the dinner table away.  Kawalsky

reached out and snagged one last piece of lizard meat before they took

it.  A moment later, Kasuf had summoned the group of elderly women. They

surrounded Daniel, speaking their language, giggling at their own jokes,

and playing with Daniel's clothes and hair.

Several more women arrived and began leading the soldiers to their

sleeping quarters, while others puned Daniel toward his.

"Should I go with them?" he asked O'Neil, reefly wanting to go.  In

spite of the responsibility still resting on his shoulders, the job of

getting the team back through the StarGate, he had only one thing on his

mind.  The women

were taking him toward the same exit he'd seen the young wqman go

through.

'Go ahead," O'Nefl said.  As soon as the colonel discovered that these

people had no writing, nothing that could help them open the StarGate,

Daniel became useless to him.  O'Nefl rearranged his mental fist of who

was most expendable, putting Daniel on top.

Feretti was dragged across the marble floor.  Barely conscious, he felt

like he'd been hit by a subway train.  He was fighting to open his eyes,

to stay alive, keep awake.  Whoever was dragging him suddenly stopped

and let him crash onto the floor.  He concentrated on his breathing.  He

could taste the blood in his mouth, felt the marble floor cooling the

side of his face.  When he finally got his eyes open and focused, he saw

where they'd brought him-to a sarcophagus.  Standing in the middle of

the room was a coffin-shaped stone box four feet high.  He'd never seen

a sarcophagus before but as soon as his eyes focused on it, he knew very

clearly what it was.  He assumed it was for him.  But a moment later,

the thing began to move.  Section by section, the granite walls of the

casket peeled away like the petals of a smooth mechanical lotus blossom.

At the same time, a platform, like a narrow bed lifted upward into view.

Atop this platform was a human body wrapped in dark wet cloth.  To

Feretti's horror, the shape came to life.  Very slowly, it sat up, then

pushed away the damp shroud.  When the cloth fell away from the figure's

face, Feretti heard himself wail.  Before him was a glowing golden fare,

a living version of the T'lltankhamen death mask.  Part humanoid, part

otherworldly.  The black eye sockets stared at him for an unendurable

moment until the mask turned away.  The terrified soldier heard

something move up behind him, and a moment later, the butt end of a

rifle-like weapon smashed into the back of his skull.

When the women were gone, Daniel flopped down on the big lumpy bed in

the center of the room and let out a great sigh of relaxation.

"I smell like a yak," he said to the walls .

For the last half hour, he had been lathered, shaved,

undressed, bathed, powdered, groomed, manicured, massaged, perfumed, and

dressed in a long white robe by the enthusiastic matrons.  The mattress

felt lumpy, like it was stuffed with balls of string.  He didn't care.

It was just so good to lay down and relax.  His entire body was sore,

scratched,sumburned, and ready for sleep.

He told himself that he ought to spend an hour or so making notes on aB

the things he'd seen.  But instead contented himself with replaying the

sequence of events mentally.  It seemed incredible to him that he had

seen the StarGate for the first time only forty-eight hours before .

And now here he was bedding down in the guest quarters of this town that

could have existed in ancient Egypt.

He still wasn't quite sure whether he'd stumbled into an archaeologists

dream or nightmare.  These people's dress, customs, architecture,

economy-every detail fascinated him, reshaping his notions of what life

along the Nile must have been from 800-200 B.c.  But nothing he had seen

or learned helped him with the all-important task at hand: finding the

code that would activate the StarGate in the pyramid.  He remembered the

conference-room discussion he'd had with General West and the promise

he'd made to bring the soldiers back through the device.  Ever since

he'd arrived in this strange new place and had seen the great deserted

pyrarfd in the dunes, he'd forgotten that promise .

Tomorrow, he decided, he would refocus his concentration .

To do that, he would have to leave Nagada.

Although these gentle people had been generous and welcoming beyond

measure, they were unwilling to help him find the hieroglyphs he needed.

They obviously knew what writing was, otherwise they wouldn't have

reacted as quickly and as strongly as they did.  After the party-ending

episode with Kasuf in the central square, Daniel had tried again with

the women who had lead him to this room.  One of them had a higwy

polished piece of silver that she used as a mirror.  Across the surface

of this, Daniel had sprinided some white powder and then drew a couple

of symbols.  The women met these attempts to communicate with the same

aggressive refusal Kasuf had shown.  They took the mirror away and

wagged their fingers at him.  O'Neil's theory made sense: it was as if

writing was forbidden to them.  The

question of who had done the forbidding wasn't Daniel's problem.  Not

yet.

He made up his mind that first thing in the morning, he must somehow

convince these people to lead him to another city where the people could

speak, write, and think for themselves.

Daniel felt himself drifting off.  He could hear a procession of

musicians in the street below making their way toward his apartment.

They played their instruments at a mercifully low volume.  A moment

later, there was unmistakable whispering outside his door.  He bolted

up, thinking there might be danger.  A hand reached through the curtains

and parted them, allowing someone to step into the room.

It was her.  The girl he'd been so interested in.  Now she was moving

toward him, eyes cast on the ground, wrapped in a long white robe

exactly like the one he was wearing .

Daniel's heart pole vaulted into his throat.  He got to his feet

wondering what was going on.  The girl looked nervous, unsure of herself

as she walked toward him.  When she was halfway across the room, she

stopped and loosened the knot in her sash, letting the robe fail to the

floor, exposing her beautiful naked body.

Daniel gulped.

THE DISCOVERY

Everything in this primitive city was rugged, dilapidated and scarred.

The rocky plaster of Daniel's sleeping chamber looked jagged in the

uneven candle light.  This background made the girl's smooth cream brown

skin seem all the more miraculous.  She stood there with her robe at her

ankles, trembling ever so slightly, looking at Daniel.  Neither of them

knew exactly what to do next.

By the time the shock wore off, Daniel was blushing hotter than a red

pepper.  He quickly realized what was going on.

"You don't have to do that," he said, and bent down to retrieve the

girl's robe.  He could see that this delicate creature was tightened.

Obviously, the Elders had seen him eyeing her and had decided to give

him a gift.  Suddenly he was terribly embarrassed.  He had been very

indiscreet, and now his infatuation had lead to this traumatic episode

for this innocent girl.  He picked up the robe and went to drape it over

her shoulders, but to his surprise, she resisted getting dressed.

Although she couldn't understand his words, Daniel tried to explain.

"I'm so sorry.  I'm reefly sorry.  Don't worry, you don't have to go

through with this.  I mean, I like you, believe me .

You're reefly beautiful, but ...  do you understand?"

Eventually, she allowed herself to be wrapped up in the

robe.  Daniel put an arm around her and tenderly escorted her to the

door.  He puffed back the curtain and, just to make sure she understood

how much he liked her, he put his hand on her cheek and smiled tenderly.

About a hundred people, the town Elders among them, had gathered on the

footbridge just outside waiting for the outcome of the girl's visit.

Another crowd of people were gawking from the balcony of the building

across the narrow street.

"Kha shi ma nelay?" Kasuf barked at Sha'llri ." Kha shi?"

The girl tried explaining something to the old man, but he flew off the

handle, angrily shaking his finger and yelling at her.  The girl gave up

trying to explain, hung her head, and started sobbing.  Kasuf turned to

Daniel,rudderity humble and pleasant.  He started apologizing rapidly in

his language, afraid the girl had done something to displease their

esteemed guest.  Groveling theatrically, he came forward until he

grabbed the girl by the wrist, intending to drag her off.  In a flash,

Daniel had her free hand and was pulling her back toward him.  He

wrapped an arm around her shoulder and srtled his biggest, brightest

smile.

"Just wanted to say"-he fumbled for words-"er, to say ...  Thanks!  Yes,

that's it: thank you so much.  I couldn't be more pleased.  It's a

really weird thing for you to do, but the point I'm trying to make here

is thank you, thank you, thank you." He knew these people couldn't

understand his words, but perhaps he would understand his tone of voice.

The crowd stared back at him uncomprehendingly as he pushed the girl

back inside.

"Good night now!"

He pulled the curtains closed and breathed a sigh of relief The last

thing he wanted was to get this girl in trouble.  He turned and looked

at her.

"Sorry about that."

A look of surprise flashed across her face.  A moment later she was

untying her robe once more.

"No, no, that's okay ." Daniel motioned for her to stop, and, completely

confused, she did.  He signaled for her to sit down on the bed, which

she did.  He crossed the room until he was a comfortable distance away

and sat down with

his back against the wail.  They looked at each other.  Daniel smiled.

The girl smiled.  They looked at each other some more.

Since the moment Daniel had laid eyes on her, he'd wanted nothing more

than to be close to her, to spend some quiet time learningto overcome

their linguistic and cultural differences.  Now that opportunity was

here, he didn't know what to say.

Kawalsky, Brown, and O'Neil had been taken to quarters on the far side

of the same building.  Each was given a separate room radiating off a

common par lor.  They had gathered in the parlor, the only room with

windows.  For thirty minutes, Brown had been working the radio

equipment, trying every trick he knew to raise Feretti and the others.

O'Neil stood at one of the windows where he could see the storm beating

against the huge walls that circled the city.  With his back tonied to

the others, O'Ned was absently rolling something around between his

fingers.  It was the orange key he had taken from the device hidden in

the bowels of the equipment cart.  When the curtains covering the main

entryway opened, O'Ned quickly pocketed the key.  Kawalsky unholstered

his pistol.

They had a visitor.  It was Skaara, who was starting to make it his

business to go everywhere O'Neil went.  His desire to stick close to the

colonel put him in a minority of one.  The people of Nagada, like

O'Neil's own soldiers, sensed dangerous unpredictability oozing from the

man in the black heret and had tried to keep their distance.  Everyone,

that is, except this kid, the first person O'Ned had frightened.  Now he

was following him everywhere, studying his every move.  As soon as he

was in the room, Skaara hurried to a corner and sat down against the

wall, showing he wouldn't be any trouble.  Kawalsky looked at O'Neil,

who nodded that it was okay for the boy to stay.

During the banquet, O'Ned had noticed the teenager sitting in the

shadows, watching.  And that's what he was doing right now.

O'Nefl left Brown and Kawalsky, walking into his private chamber where

he sat down in one of the uncomfortable

chairs.  The boy, afraid but determined to act fearlessly, came into the

room and sat down a few feet away.

O'Neil, ignoring the kid, took a cigarette out of his pack and lit it.

When the flame shot out of the lighter, the boy nearly jumped out of his

skin.  Nevertheless, when he'd caught his breath, he reached over and

pulled a cigarette out of O'Nefl's pack, mimicking the colonel's

movements, pretending to smoke.

"Lighter," O'Ned pronounced the word carefully, then tossed the Zippo to

Ska-gra.  The boy lit the thing several times, fascinated, before

clumsily fighting the end of his cigarette.  Casting a sidelong glance

at the boy, O'Nefl flicked the ash from his cigarette.  Skaara did the

same.

The two of them sat there for a moment.  Skaara was starting to feel

pretty damn confident.  He was, after an, the only one hanging out with

these remarkable visitors.  O'Nefl saw the boy's cockiness and couldn't

resist.  He took a long drag on his cigarette then inhaled deeply.  With

a wise-guy smirk on his face, Skaara went through the same motion, but

the split second the hot smoke reached his lungs, his eyes bulged

wide-open.  He came up gagging.  He doubled over and staggered across

the room until he crashed into the bed, the fire in his throat and nose

getting worse as he coughed.

Brown and Kawalsky could hear the kid coughing, but decided not to go

investigate.

When he could, Skaara propped himself against the bed and threw the foul

little thing on the floor, never to smoke again.

"Good idea," said the colonel, extinguishing his own smoke then coming

across the room to ground out the one the boy had thrown.  When he

looked up, he got an ugly surprise.  The boy, his eyes still fufl of

water, was reaching for the pistol he'd seen O'Ned fire that afternoon

near the city's main gate.  Just as the curious young man's fingers

touched the barrel of the gun, he heard O'Ned boom.

"No!  Dangerous!" O'Ned pinned the boy's hand on the bed, knocking the

gun away.  Then he deliberately slapped Skaara's hand, slapped it hard.

Kawalsky and Brown came around the corner in time to see O'Ned, the

pistol in one

hand, shaking the kid with the other, saying, "No, no, no, no, no ."

The moment O'Nefl turned him loose, Skaara darted for the door and

escaped.  The colonel followed him across the room, pulled the curtains

open, and watched him flee.

When the boy was gone, O'Neil sat down on the rockhard bed they'd given

him and concentrated on cleaning his pistol.  His encounter with Skaara

had surprised him-they had actually played together-something O'Neil

hadn't done in quite some time.  And just ag he expected, his thoughts

began drifting back to Earth and his own son.

Even before Jack Junior was born, O'Ned began to change.  Not only did

he start feeling happier and more alive, but for the first time that he

could remember, he actually began looking forward to coming home.  The

birth was the most rewarding thing he'd ever been a part of.  At the

same time, his enthusiasm for Jump T'wo slowly began to die.  He was

losing his taste for bloodshed and violence.

The afternoon of his son's sixth birthday party had been a crucial day.

Standing behind his son at the head of the table, excitedly helping the

boy rip into his presents, O'Nefl looked up and caught Sarah smiling at

him.  An intense feeling of gratitude flooded into him out of nowhere.

He realized that he was no longer the angry, empty kid he had been while

growing up, the boy that would hurt people and things because he didn't

know any other way to be.  Sarah had done this for him, and even though

they'd already been married for a long time, he suddenly understood that

he owed this woman his Iffe.

The next morning, he walked into the staff sergeant's office and told

them he wanted out of Jump TWo.  At first, his superiors refused. O'Neil

was the team's go-to guy, the best soldier in this ebte fighting squad.

But he was adamant and, eventually, rather than drive him from the armed

services all together, they gave him an instructor's position at the

Marine Corps training facility at Yuma.  They warned him, however, that

Special Forces personnel of his caliber never really retired.  Someday,

he would be called upon for another n-fission.  Of course, he hadn't

imagined it would lead him to anything like his present assignment,

especially after he'd been tossed out of the service.

By the time the boy, J.J., was twelve, he and his dad were best friends.

As a player-coach combo, they became the perennial team to beat at the

local little league.  The only disturbing thing was that somehow,

despite his father's transformation, the boy had inherited the same

wildness of heart O'Nefl had.  He started getting into more and more

trouble at school, crossing the line between "rowdy" and violent." Sarah

was concerned about it, but when she tried to bring the subject up, the

two men closed ranks .

They would exchange smirking amdes, members of the house's "Boys Only"

club.

Remembering how he'd indulged the boy's recklessness, O'Nefl sighed

loudly enough to attract the attention of Kawalsky and Brown.  O'Nefl

banged his head backward against the wall.  He didn't do this violently,

but it was more than enough to draw stares from the two soldiers at the

window.

Brown turned to Kawalsky and, trying to keep the question as light as

possible, asked, "Is it just me, or is there something real wrong with

that guy?"

"Just follow his orders," Kawalsky said ." He must have been put in

charge for a good reason.

Brown stared back at him for a minute before asking, you really believe

that?"

They had been sitting there staring at each for an awfully long time

before Daniel felt the need to try talking.  He cleared his throat like

he was about to call a meeting to order, then introduced himself to the

angel sitting sfiffly on his bed.

"I'm Daniel.  Daniel."

"Dan-duff ?" she asked.

"No, Dan-yur.  Me Daniel," he enunciated careftifly, pointing to

himself.  She smiled tentatively and nodded.

"Dan-yur," she repeated before pointing to herself and saying,

"Sha'llri."

"Sha'll?  0k, Sha'llri.  Hi."

After another awkward pause, Daniel went on.

"We came from the pyramid." He looked at her ." You know, pyramid?  Four

equal sides converging to a single apex.  Urn, you're probably not going

to like this, but I'm

going to draw you a picture." He raced his forefinger through the sand

on the floor, outlining the shape, then looked up at her expectantly.

Sha'llri turned her head and averted her eyes.

"I know, I know.  You're not allowed." Frustrated, he stood up and

walked to the far side of the room, put his forehead against the wall,

and went on talking.

"What is it with you people?  I mean, I've heard of graphophobia, but

this is ridiculous.  Anyway, you're obviously not going to be able to

help us find what we need, so I should just give it a rest, right?"

Sha'llri sensed how fnisirated he was.  She took a deep breath and a

huge risk.  When Daniel turned around, she was leaning over the drawing

he had made, augmenting it.

Daniel came back across the room to see what she was doing.  Across the

peak of the pyramid, she drew a line and above that, a circle.  It was

the same sign Daniel had found on the cover stones, the seventh symbol

that had cracked the code to the StarGate.

"That's the sign for Earth!  Do you know this symbol?"

Sha'llri looked up at Daniel suddenly very nervous.  She had broken one

of her people's fundamental laws, a violation that could have lead to

her immediate execution.  Since she wasn't dead already, she calculated

that Daniel wasn't an agent sent by the gods to test the city.  But now

she had another problem.  She had to communicate the extreme danger of

the situation to him.  She knew he'd want to know more, but she couldn't

help him any further until he understood how dangerous reading and

writing were.

With Sha'll holding a torch and showing him the way, Daniel pulled the

hood of the robe she'd found for him low over his face.  As they stole

furtively through the winding streets, Daniel realized that Nagada was

built on a slope .

They were nearing the corrals where the hundred or so mastadges were

kept penned up at night.  They were "perfuming the evening" with the

pungent aroma of fresh dung .

The back perimeter wall of the compound loomed in the distance.  Then

Sha'llri stopped at a tail stone building with a doorway defined by a

graceful lancet arch.  She pulled him by the sleeve into the pitch-black

atrium where the torch's

flicketing threw just enough light into the recesses of the abandoned

structure for Daniel to see that it was probably once a covered

marketplace, but now, judging from the intense smell of manure, acted as

a commodious compost heap.  Daniel's eyes began to tear up under the

assault of the biting acrid stench.

Taking him deeper into the squalid darkness, Sha'llri showed him a stone

staircase that lead down to a dead end .

Whatever door might have once stood at the bottom of these stairs had

long since been blocked over with large stones .

Nevertheless, they descended.  About halfway down, Sha'llri passed the

torch ti) Daniel and reached into the gap between the stairs and the

wail.  She loosened a hidden retaining pin, then pushed one of the stone

slabs out of the way, revealing a narrow opening-just enough space for

them to slide through.

Once they were inside, they found themselves in the basement of the

budding in a thick forest of beams that rose up to support the wooden

floor above them.  Low corridors ran off in several directions. Sha'llri

took the torch from Daniel and led him into one of these dank passages.

She hadn't been down there since she was a girl, but after only a couple

of wrong turns, she brought them to the top of another narrow staircase.

This one was very ancient, and carved from a single large stone that had

begun to crumble in several places.  At the bottom of these stairs, they

found themselves in a square earthen cell.  More tunnels twisted away

into the darkness, but Sha'llri brought the torch close to the wail,

Mthy with years of dust and grime, and Uluminated the symbol for Earth:

sun-overpyramid.

Astonished, Daniel came to the wall and reached out to touch it.  It had

been careftifly carved an inch deep into a smooth section of the stone

wail.  It was the only writing in the room.  Daniel thought for a minute

and then noticed that all the walls were made of roughly cut stone.  All

except the area around the symbol.  On a hunch, he began brushing the

centuries of dirt away from the lone hieroglyph until he found what he

was looking for-a crevice.

The sign was cut into the middle of a door.  He scraped away as much

dirt as he could from between the door and jamb, he wedged his fingers

into the space.  Prying at it with

all he was worth, he managed to budge it open about half an inch.

Sha'llri propped the torch against the wail and lent her fingers, as

strong as Daniel's, to the effort.  Finally, the door swung open.

Daniel pushed the torch through the doorway.

"Oh, my, God." Daniel couldn't believe what he was looking at.  There

was a narrow hallway five feet tall and approximately fifty feet long.

Every inch of it was jammed with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, the long

dead language he could read and write fluently.  There were portraits,

painted scenes, etchings, and carved reliefs in the classic "frontalism"

style.  But mainly there was text, long strips of hieroglyphic writing

chiseled into the walls.

Daniel thought he must have died and gone to Egyptologist heaven.

Sha'llri had led him into a lush forest of mysterious signs, probably

the most densely written and rewritten palimpsest ever.  An intense,

convoluted puzzle that, despite its jumbled, Talmudic format, was

executed with religious care, giving the room a shrine quality.  Daniel

licked his Ups and waded deeper into the room.

Sha'llri couldn't believe it, either.  Like everyone in Nagada, she

vaguely knew what writing was even though she couldn't do it.  As a

child, she and her friends had invented several symbols and written each

other notes in the sand .

But when they were discovered, they were punished very severely.

In her world, there was no need for writing.  There were no books,

street signs, or spelling bees.  They had stories of course, but only

ones that were spoken.  Once a song or a story was forgotten, it was

lost forever.  Before stepping into this small corridor, she had

absolutely no idea that this galaxy of symbols existed.  She couldn't

comprehend how utterly complex the rules for understanding them must be

.

She looked at Daniel with new eyes: was he a wizard that he could

interpret and make these marks?

Obviously he was.  Holding the torch to the wail, he'd already been able

to disrem that every entry told a story .

The earliest were large historical tableaux.  Generations of historians

who came later found whatever space was left and shaped their stories to

fit the empty spots.  Most of the writing moved right to left, but some

of it went in the

opposite direction.  Where necessary, the script ran top to bottom while

in other places it was written in the style called boustrophedon the

back-and-forth format that meant, literally, "an ox travels back and

forth when plowing the fields." This riot of writing, this colorftil

cacophony of characters, taken together, was a semiotic treasure chest,

a cave full of archaeological loot.  It was the ancient history of the

people of this world.

Daniel isolated the cave's original story.  Told in relatively large

pictures sculpted directly onto the wail, then painted over, it was not

an uplifting tale.  The first panel depicted several of the tutelary

gods, the same anthropomorphized animal deities worshiped in ancient

Egypt.  They were tearing children from the grasps of their screaming

mothers, herding them away across the desert.  Anubis, the jacka)headed

god of the dead, seemed to be supervising the work of the other gods.

Horus, the hawk, was present as was Thoth, the baboon-headed deity of

words and magic, the one who recorded the nwnes of the dead in the

underworld.

The scene shifted to some kind of battle or civil uprising, and then the

people were shown in chains floating over the desert, as if in a

collective dream.  When they woke, they fell to the ground where the

gods and their warriors brutalized the people, forcing them through a

StarGate.

Daniel studied the hieroglyphic writing surrounding the pictures.  The

grammatical elements were definitely related to the writing he'd found

on the cover stones, but the symbols before him were even more

rudimentary.  No one on Earth had spoken the language of the ancient

Egyptians since the last temples were ordered closed by the Christian

Emperor Theodosius I in A.D.  391.  Since the hieroglyphs left behind on

temple wails and papyrus scrolls was written in consonants only,

linguistic researchers could only speculate about the vowel structure.

Several top-notch Egyptologists, Daniel included, had developed

pronunciation schemes, but they were all largely guesswork.  Daniel,

never aft'aid to venture a guess, started reading the signs aloud.

Holding the torch, he moved close to a section of the glyph-cluttered

wall and began ." Naadas yan tu yeewah .

Suma'ehmay ra ma yedat." It was a story about moving

across a desert, a population migrating not out of choice, but by force.

Sha'llri watched and listened careftifly.  As Daniel read the signs on

the wail, she tried to see the connection between the painted symbols

and the sounds he was making.

"Nandas sikma ti yu na'nay ashay, " Daniel continued.

"Seekhma?" Sha'll asked, the word had caught her attention.

Daniel whipped his head around and looked at her.  Was she trying to

communicate?  Had he stumbled across a word she understood?

In her language, seekhma was the word meaning "chddren." Over Daniel's

shoulder, she could see a picture carved into the wail, a scene of many

people being herded like animals.  Many of the figures were clearly

intended to represent children ." Seekhma, " she said again.

"Sikma?" Daniel asked urgently, pointing to the hieroglyph for children.

Sha'llri looked at the symbol, which held no meaning for her.

"Seekhma," she said, pointing to the illustration on the wall, singling

out the children.

"Yes!" he yelled ." Yes, sikma, children!  Of course!"

Daniel's suspicion had been right all along.  Sha'llri and her people

spoke a dialect of ancient Egyptian.  And, by a stroke of sheer luck,

they had stumbled across this word, seekhma, which had changed little

over the centuries.

Excited, Daniel immediately found another symbol, the one for "god."

"Nefer?" This time the written symbol was more abstract.  The glyph

consisted of an eye over two feathers .

Sha'll looked at the symbol, but couldn't immediately guess its meaning.

"Nef-ear?  Naffar?" Daniel asked, then showed her the picture of Anubis

and several other animal deities who were herding the humans across the

desert.

Neyoum ifar!" Sha'llri yelled, as if she had just won a round of

charades.

"Nay-youm-ee-far?" Daniel asked, realizing how radically different their

pronunciations were.  He practiced saying the word several times,

quickly bringing his accent in

line with hers.  He was doing it, he was speaking the dead language of

the pharaohs, a language he had been looking at for many years.

Sha'llri said the word several times, carefully enunciating each

syllable, teaching Daniel to say it the way she did.

"Yes." He was agog ." Teach me to speak.  Uh, teachtakera?  Tekira?

Sha'llri takers Daniel, okay?"

"Sha'llri tahki-yeer Dan-yur.

It was the first time in her life that a man had openly asked her to

teach him.  Sha'llri swelled with pride.  This man with all his exotic

skills was asking her for instruction.

it was the first moment of her transformation.

For his part, Daniel was smiling like he had died and gone to heaven

with this beautiful woman assigned to be his guide.  And it wasn't even

midnight yet.

According to the watch on O'Nefl's wrist, it was 8:21 P.m., Rocky

Mountain Time.  But beyond the city's fortress wails, the first of the

day's three suns was dawning on the horizon .

The storm was over, and the dark sky looked utterly clear.

O'Neil stood at one of the parlor room's windows next to Brown, who had

set the radio on the sin and was trying to reestablish contact with

Feretti in total disregard of whether the neighbors might still be

sleeping.  He had a big strong voice to begin with, and now that he was

frustrated and starting to fear for the base-camp team, it became even

stronger.  Finally, he turned to O'Ned.

"No use, I can't raise 'em."

"What are you getting, more interference?"

"No," he replied, "nothing but dead air.  There should at least be a

tracking signal, but I'm not getting anything."

"Colonel!" The shout came from outside.

O'Nefl crossed the room and stepped out onto one of the many rope and

lumber footbridges suspended between the buildings.  In the shadowy

street below, he could make out the vague outfine of his lieutenant.

"Jackson's not in his room," Kawalsky called up ." I've been looking

everywhere, but I can't find him."

"What is that you're holding?"

"His jacket," Kawalsky answered, obviously peeved about having to carry

it around for His Royal Professorship.

O'Neil looked out at the horizon where the night sky was melting to

purple morning.  They could feasibly leave now for the pyramid, but

O'Ned decided to wait for fuff daylight .

He estimated it would be another half an hour before they had full

visibility.

The colonel figured Daniel was most likely out collecting wddflowers and

writing poetry, but there was the odd chance something very good or very

bad had happened.  If that was the case, he wanted to know about it.

They could afford thirty minutes of looking for him, -no more.

Two minutes later, O'Neil was downstairs.  He and Kawalsky were

following their noses toward the sharp smell coming off from the

mastadge corral.  They spotted Skaara sitting on the fence surrounded by

a handful of other kids.

Skaara still had O'Nefl's lighter.  He felt he had earned the right to

brag about his encounter with the aliens, and that's exactly what he was

doing, firing up the lighter and retelling the story of how he'd gotten

it.  Nabeh, the crazy-looking shepherd with the big head and wdd teeth

kept trying to touch the flame even though Skaara warned him not to .

Nabeh, older and slower than the other boys, was Skaara's sidekick and

devoted pal.

The boys scattered when they saw the two soldiers walking toward them.

All except Skaara, even though he was as frightened as any of them.  He

knew firsthand how unpredictable and violent the man in the black heret

could be .

Skaara sat on the fence without inching.

"Wait here," O'Nefl told Kawalsky.  He walked over to the boy by

himself.  He leaned against the corral fence and watched the big woolly

mastadges work out some of their morning energy by racing around the

corral.  He wanted to tell the kid that he was sorry about slapping him

the night before, that he'd done it strictly out of concern for the

boy's safety.  And if he'd overreacted, he at least had plenty of reason

to do so because of everything he'd been going through for the past

couple of years.  But O'Neil, even if he spoke the boy's language

wouldn't have been able to dive that far into his own feelings without

starting to drown .

Instead, he stood there quietly watching the mastadges sprint through

the cold morning air.  When he looked over at the boy, Skaara lit up an

imaginary cigarette, took a deep

drag, and then exhaled visibly into the frosty morning air .

The kid was letting him off the hook, showing him there were no hard

feelings.

I'm looking for Jackson," O'Nefl said to the boy, who, of course, didn't

understand ." See?  Jackson," he held up the jacket, but still got no

glimmer.  The other boys began edging their way closer.  How could the

colonel get his message across to them?  Speaking slowly and too loudly,

he explained, "We're ...  looking for ...  Jackson." O'Ned made circles

with his hands and held them over his eyes, irffitating a pair of

glasses.  The boys copied his movement, cupping their hands over their

eyes and laughing.

"No.  I mean.  .  .  " O'Neil pretended to sneeze.

"Ohh!" Skaara suddenly understood and pointed to O'Ned, "Bock hock, hock

hock?" in a fairly good imitation of Daniel's chicken sounds.  They aB

understood at once .

AN the boys quickly joined in like a choir of chickens.

"Yeah, that's right.  Chicken man.  Where's chicken man?" O'Neil said,

happy to have finally made some connection with these kids.

Skaara took Daniel's jacket from O'Nefl then yelled some type of command

to the animals.  A moment later, the manglest member of the herd,

"Little Bit," came trotting over to the fence, ne%Wng like a truck motor

badly in need of od.

Skaara held the jacket up to the mastadge's nose.  When Daniel's smell

penetrated the beast's giant nostrils, it suddenly reared up on it's

thin but powerful hind legs and let out a roar that woke up half the

city.

Skaara shouted for Nabeh to let her out.  As soon as the gate was open,

the big ox came barreling out of the corral at a furious clip.  She was

half a block away before Ska-gra led the boys in pursuit of the animal.

"Smart boy," O'Neil said.

Acracked and faded pyramid hovered in the sky, rays of fight as bright

as the sun's shooting from its underside .

Below, the deteriorating image of a boy-king, attired in full pharaonic

regalia, extending his arms to bathe in the light .

At his feet, several of ancient Egypt's animal-headed gods were

kneeling, their heads bowed in supplication.

Daniel scratched his chin, thinking.  He was sure now that this sequence

of paintings had come first.  Whoever the original historian to come

down into these catacombs had begun with this story, the strange

coronation of this boyldng.  Sha'llri was leaning against the opposite

wan doing her best to stay awake and help Daniel with the work.  She'd

never seen anything like the incredible concentration he brought to this

task.

"Barei bidi peesh, " he asked her, "shana?  sha'ana?"

"Chan'ada, " she gave him the pronunciation.

"Chan'ada sedma miznah, no: miz- mir- mirnaz.  Chanada sedma mirnaz,

min.

"Min, " she said with a smile.

"Looks like you found what you were looking for." A voice came from the

darkness.

Sha'llri gasped, and Daniel, caught completely by surpnse, thrust the

torch wildly in the direction of the voice.  It was O'Neil stooping to

walk under the narrow chamber's low ceiling with Kawalsky right behind

him.

"You scared the hell out of me," Daniel yelled, his heart thumping like

mad ." How'd you get down here?"

"I thought you didn't speak their language," O'Neil said hotly, coming

deeper into the chaotically painted passageway.

"It's ancient Egyptian," Daniel said, "but like the rest of their

culture, it's evolved independently.  But, once you know the vowels,

take into account the neutralization of aspiration, the loss of epical

and final consonants-"

"Give it to me in English, Jackson."

"I just had to learn how to pronounce it.  It hasn't been a living

spoken language in more than a thousand years?"

" This place is a datnn trip," said Brown, coming around the corner with

a powerful flashlight ." It looks like King Tut's tomb got turned into a

subway station full of graffiti ."

O'Nefl was interested in only one thing ." What does it say in here,

Jackson?"

Exhilarated, eager to explain what he had learned, Daniel moved across

the riot of hieroglyphs like a kid in a candy store.

"It's ...  well, it's simply unbelievable.  These watts tell the story

of the original settlers of this planet.  These people

came through the StarGate some ten thousand years ago.  It says ...  "

Daniel walked up to a long series of drawings and hieroglyphs, tracing

his finger quickly over the etchings.

"A traveler, from distant stars, escaped from a dying world looking for

a way to extend his own life.  His body was decaying and weak, yet with

all his powers and knowledge he could not prevent his own demise,"

Daniel paraphrased ." Apparently, his whole species was becoming

extinct, so he searched the galaxies looking for a way to cheat death.

Look here .  .  .

Again Daniel rushed over to another series of drawings .

As O'Ned listened to Daniel, he became lost in the story.  It was as

though O'Ned could completely visualize every word Daniel said.  The

visions did not so much surprise O'Nefl, but confirm something deep

within his darkest worries.  He listened intently as Daniel continued.

"It says he came to 'a world, rich with life." Where he encountered a

'primitive race, perfect for his needs." Humans!  A species he could

repair and maintain indefinitely .

He realized, within a human body, he had a chance for a new life. That's

when he found the boy!"

Daniel moved over to a series of strange drawings.  Etched crudely was a

flying pyramid hovering over a human, shielding his eyes from the bright

light.  Around the drawing, several other people running away.  Daniel

pointed to the figure beneath the pyramid.

"He came to some kind of village.  It says that the viuagers ran,

frightened as 'the night became day." But one young boy walked toward

the light.  'Curious and without fear,' he walked into a trap.  Ra took

this boy and possessed him.  It's like some kind of parasite looking for

a host.

"Transposed into this human form, he appointed himself ruler of aB

mankind.  The original pharaoh, Ra the sun god!"

This was the part O'Neil had been waiting to hear.  Slowly he moved

closer, examining the drawings as Daniel went on.

"Using the StarGate, Ra, or Reayew as they pronounced it, brought

thousands of people here to this planet as workers for the quartz mines.

Just like the one we saw.  Clearly, this quartz-mine mineral found here

is the building block of aN his technology.  Only with this could he

sustain eternal life.

"But something happened back on Earth, a rebellion or upnsmg.  After

hundreds of years of oppression, the people wilted until Ra was here, on

this side of the Gate, then they revolted, overtaking Ra's guardian war

gods, and they buried the StarGate so Ra could not return.  Fearful that

a rebellion could happen here on this world, Ra outlawed reading and

writing.  He didn't want the people here to remember the truth.  These

drawings here are the only record they have, and none of them can read

it!  It's

amazing."

When Daniel was finished, he waited for O'Ned to respond, but he didn't

say anything, didn't move.  He only stared at the watt, a faraway look

of concentration on

his face.

"Jackson, I think you better come over here." Kawalsky had taken the

flaswight and was exploring farther down the shaft ." Tell me if this is

.  .  .  Just get over here." The guy sounded so excited about whatever

it was, Sha'llri automatically got up to see what it was.

Kawalsky was only about ten yards away from the group, but with the low

ceiling, the darkness, and the torches, it was tough getting to him.  It

wasn't a place for claustro phobics.

Kawalsky had gone around a corner and found the corridor's dead end.

Enshrined in sacred writing on all sides, stood a single thin stone

pfflar with a vertical cartouche .

Even though it was partially buried in the sand, Kawalsky could see how

sdfflar it was to the one that ran down the center of the cover stones.

Daniel could too.  As soon as he turned the corner and saw the shrine,

he knew they'd found what they needed to operate the StarGate.

"They must have kept this here hoping that one day the Gate on Earth

could be reopened," Daniel said, then poked the torch close to the

tablet and tried to read the cartouche .

He didn't understand a single character, which was encouraging.  That

probably meant they were constellations as seen from wherever this place

was in the universe.

"Damn"-he suddenly remembered something-"My notebook is back there in my

room.  I made a fist of all the signs on the-"

"Yourjacket, sire," Kawalsky unceremonially shoved the

jacket at Daniel, then went to work on digging out the lowest couple of

symbols from the moist sand.  Daniel consulted his notes.  Sure enough,

the top symbol on the cartouche matched one of those on his list.

"We've got it," Daniel proclaimed ." The symbols match."

"Problem.  Big problem." Kawalsky was grave.  Flash and torchfight

converged on the big soldier, then moved down to the bottom of the

cartouche.  The last symbol was gone, broken off.

" Where's the seventh sign?"

Kawalsky got frustrated and started scooping up rough handfuls of dank

soil, throwing them aside.  Daniel stopped him quickly and took control

of the excavation process.  He dug carefully along the base of the wail

until he found the fi-agmented remains of the seventh symbol, one piece

at a time.

They spent a long time trying to fit the pieces together .

All they needed was enough of the symbol to distinguish it from the

others on the StarGate's wheel.  After twenty minutes, they realized it

was useless.  Either the tablet had been intentionally broken or it had

simply been eroded by too many years in the sand.  There was no trace of

the last symbol.

Daniel and the soldiers were stunned.  There was a feeling that their

incredible string of good luck had finally ended.  It seemed appropriate

that they were gathered around the tunnel's dead end.  Now the team had

two chances of ever getting home: slim and none.  It was a long time

before anyone spoke.

"This seventh sign is supposed to be the point of origin, right?" O'Nefl

asked ." Ask the girl.  Maybe she knows the sign for this planet."

Sha'llri, watching the scene unfold, guessed what the colonel must be

asking and shook her head.

Daniel put the question to her anyway, then turned to O'Neil ." No good,

she can't write anything except the name of Ra ."

"In that case, we're heading back to the pyramid."

O'Nefl stood up and took the torch from Sha'llri.  When

none of the others got to their feet, he made himself clear: "We leave

immediately."

"Don't you understand?  I can't make it work without the last symbol,"

Daniel shouted at him.  But O'Neil didn't even look back.

THE GOLDENNYING

MACHINE

Awan of sand spined into the city as the main gates were pulled open.

O'Ned unceremoniously walked out of the city, leading his soldiers.  He

was now absolutely determined to return to the pyramid, as if he knew

exactly what he was going to do when he got there.  Daniel, much less

eager to go, diflydahied at the gate saying good-bye to Sha'llri, trying

to explain to her that he was going to come back.

Kawalsky turned back and shouted at him .

"On the double, Jackson."

"Forget him.  He's useless to us now."

Kawalsky did a double take.  He didn't understand O'Nefl's attitude.  He

glanced over at Brown, both of them thinking the same thing: the U.S.

Marine Corps does not leave its people behind.  Cardinal rule.  Even

when the squad considered them annoying jerks.

Eventually, Daniel tore himself away and jogged after the squad trying

to catch up ." Hey, wait up," he yelled, feeling mistakenly that his

discovery of the cartouche had earned him full membership to the team.

Kawalsky turned to watch Daniel coming toward them, spotting something

else in the dunes behind him.

"Colonel O'Ned, it looks like we've made some friends."

Skaara and his gang of shepherd boys came riding up behind Daniel,

clinging to the sides of Little Bit, ready to enlist.

"Jackson," O'Nefl barked, "get (I of those kids."

O'Neil pressed on with his march as Daniel stood and yelled at the boys

in their language.  They understood him well enough and shuffled their

feet in the sand for a minute, neither following nor fuming back.  A few

minutes later, when O'Neil turned to check, the kids were still there,

trailing the soldiers by about one hundred yards.

"Damnit, Jackson, I told you to get rid of those kids!"

"I tried!" Daniel barked right back at him.

"Sir"-Kawalsky stepped in to make a suggestion-"we could get there a lot

faster if they gave us a ride."

O'Nefl was somewhere else.  He didn't hear a single word of what his

lieutenant had said.  Still staring at the boys, he unholstered his

pistol, took aim, and fired three quick shots.

"What are you doing!?  Stop!" Daniel demanded, but he wu too far away to

do anything.

O'Nefl fired three more times, his bullets ripping up the ground right

in front of the mastadge, scaring her into a sudden awkward dance.  The

boys jumped off in aB directions, hiding behind the dunes.

When the shooting was done, everyone looked in angry horror at O'Nefl.

"What are you doing shooting at children?  What's the matter with you?"

Daniel went into a paroxysm, ballistic .

"What if you hit one of them!?" Kawalsky and Brown kept quiet, but they

were asking themselves the same questions .

None of it made any dent on O'Nefl, who immediately turned and continued

the march, reloading as he went.

Skaara poked his head over the dune and watched as the team slowly

disappeared deeper into the desert.  His heart felt like galloping

hooves inside his slender frame.  His new friend, the man in the black

heret, had betrayed him.  When Nabeh flopped down next to him wondering

what they would do next, Skaara turned his head away even though it was

obvious he v.,as enished.

O'Ned put Brown in charge of counting out the pace .

Pressing for time, he ordered them to march as the armies Of Rome had

two thousand years ago: sprinting for fifty paces, then walking for

fifty, then sprinting again.  In this way, they covered the two-hour

trek to the pit in about

thirty-five minutes.  TWenty minutes later, O'Neil looked up and saw

something that froze him in his tracks.

"What in the.  .  .V

There were now two pyramids, one perched directly on top of the other.

The golden wails of the upper pyramid, full of hieroglyph-like symbols,

had opened into horizontal sections, revealing the complex machinery

lying just below their surface.  The golden flying machine that had

stacked itself atop the pyran-dd seemed very ancient and very modem at

the same time.  It was obviously hollow on the inside, conically shaped,

because it fit over the top of the lower structure like a golden shell.

Only the bottom third of the first pyramid remained visible.

"Looks like somebody was home after all," Brown said.

"It's a spaceship," Daniel blurted out, drawing skeptical looks from his

colleagues ." WeU, maybe not a spaceship," he backpedaled, "but some

sort of flying machine.  it was on the wall of the catacomb.

In fact, he was right the first time.  The ship, fully selfcontained,

allowed Ra to fly between the far-flung ruining operations he maintained

in this corner of the universe .

Although he hadn't been to this small planet for many years, he had come

immediately to find out why the quartz shipment had not been made on

time.

O'Nefl took off his small backpack and took out a pair of high-powered

binoculars.  The wails of the golden spacecraft were not built in one

piece, but in movable sections.  Soon after landing, the ship had

unfolded and opened to its present size.  Large sections split away from

the main body and extended mechanically downward.  In doing so, it

revealed long strips of the complex machinery lyingjust below the golden

surface.

The colonel scanned the surrounding area for signs of life, but could

detect none.  On the ridge where the base camp had been, he spotted some

half-buried equipment scattered in the sand.  A shred of canvas waved

from an abandoned tent pole.

Without telling anyone what he was planning, O'Neil grabbed a handftil

of flares from his pack and started tucking them into his waistband.

"Sir?" was all Kawalsky said.

"I'm going inside," he informed them, checking the action on his

automatic rifle.

That didn't make any sense.  Why waltz into a potential ambush before

you'd gathered as much information as possible?  It was obvious to

Kawalsky they should first try establishing radio contact with Feretti's

team.  He tried to propose the idea to O'Nefl, but he was already gone,

moving toward the pyramid like a human torpedo.  He seemed completely

oblivious to his soldiers supposedly under his command.

Kawalsky watched him go, then surprised Daniel by saying, "What are we

supposed to do, stand here and hold our privates?  I've had just about

enough of that guy."

The big soldier unscrewed the cap of his canteen and slugged a long

drink while Brown and Daniel looked at each other, not quite sure what

was going on ." I guess we should go after him, back him up.  What do

you think?" Kawalsky looked at Brown for'his opinion.

"Well, I'm not staying out here by myself," said the technology officer.

Kawalsky realized that leaving Brown here with Daniel was tantamount to

leaving him by himself.  Kawalsky held up his rifle and turned to

Daniel.

"You know how to puff a trigger?" he asked.

Daniel forced a smile ." I don't really understand what's happening

here," he said.

"Welcome to the armed forces, pal," Kawalsky said before dumping himself

over the edge of the dune and chugging after the colonel.

A few minutes later, O'Ned was at the base of the ramp .

He took up a position behind one of the obelisks and took a minute to

assess the situation.  Everything outside the pyramid was still.  He

peered up at the strange triangular structure perched like a Louisiana

bayou pole-house atop the great pyramid.  What Daniel said about it

being a spacecraft seemed ludicrous, but it was better than any

explanation he could come up with himself.

"Colonel O'Neil, slow down a minute." Kawalsky came running up to the

obelisk ." This is all screwed up.  We want to back you up, but you

gotta tell us what's up.  It's our job to follow orders, but you've got

a responsibility to keep us

informed ." Kawalsky tried to maintain a tone of voice somewhere between

obedient and threatening, loyal and mutinous.

"You don't want to go in, that's fine with me.  But do me a favor and

stay down so you don't give me away," he said glancing toward the upper

pyramid.  He was getting ready to go when Kawalsky reached out and

caught him by the arm.

"You're not going in there alone.  Just like we're not leaving Jackson

behind anywhere.  Marines take care of their own.

O'Neil was totally focused: reach the equipment cart, retrieve the

canisters from their hidden compartment, and initiate the detonation

sequence.  For the sake of everyone on Earth, nothing must interfere

with that goal.  He had hoped to leave the men well out in the dunes,

hopefully sparing their lives.  But now it was too late.  He couldn't

risk explaining the mission to them-they might try to interfere .

They would have to be sacrificed.

O'Ned looked blankly back at his lieutenant, and said as much as he

could afford to ." I've got to get to the StarGate room," he said ." I

wouldn't mind the help, but I'm going one way or the other."

" Two teams?" Kawalsky asked, apparently satisfied.

"Two teams," O'Neil announced ." Lieutenant, you and Brown take the

rear." O'Neil took several quick breaths to oxygenate his blood, then,

without warning, took off like a shot, running up the ramp at full

speed.  Daniel stayed in his crouched position, watching O'Neil go.

"Will you move!?" Kawalsky looked at Daniel like he was crazy ." Go!"

Daniel went.  But a second later, he started asking himself what in the

hell he was doing, sprinting headlong into this recently reinhabited

pyramid right behind the psychotic colonel.  Wouldn't the smart Daniel,

he asked himself, be running in the opposite direction?  The rifle

Kawalsky had given him felt like a live eel in his hands.  It was a

struggle to keep a hold of the heavy, alien object.

He felt worse when he followed O'Nefl into the shadows of the tail

entryway and saw Feretti's helmet laying next to the radio.  He stopped

and looked down for a minute,

gulped, then took off chasing O'Neil.  He caught up to where the colonel

was crouched against a pillar.

"Listen," O'Ned said.

Daniel was gasping for air, but fear instantly taught him how to do so

in complete silence.  He was too scared to listen, so he watched O'Nefl

listening instead.

"Good," he said, then spun around the corner and advanced six more

columns in as many seconds.  If Daniel had vmted another second to

follow him, he would have seen the shadow fall across the spot where

they had been.  Someone was just outside the pymwd, looking in through

one of the square windows that ran the length of the entrance hall.

It was Skaara, standing on Nabeh's shoulders.  He caught a glimpse of

the two figures, Kawalsky and Brown, as they darted past the window.

When they were gone, he jumped into the sand and led the charge for the

next window.

Inside, O'Nefl was standing stock-still in the shadow between two

pillars, checking forward, deciding on the best path to the StarGate.

Daniel was only a few feet away, his back against the opposite piuar,

facing back toward the entrance.  As he waited for the colonel's

instructions, he noticed something moving through the shadows of the

cavemous hall.  Just as he tried to say something, O'Nefl sprinted away

around the corner.

Daniel flattened himself against the column and watched the huge figure

step into the light.  Daniel recognized him at once.  It was Horus, the

Egyptian god of the sky, the deity who sat at the side of Ra and helped

to judge the worth of human souls in the land of the dead.  He was just

as the ancient Egyptians had depicted him-the athletic body of a man and

the enormous head of a hawk.  He wore armor on his shoulders, forearms,

and shins.  In his metal gloves, he carried a five-foot-long weapon.

Daniel kept perfectly still until the shape disappeared again into the

shadows.

Farther back, Brown watched Kawalsky head off around one of the pillars.

Two counts later, he started to fonow when thwack!  Something heavy came

down on his head with a horrible cracking sound.  Brown staggered, then

went to his knees.  He fought desperately to recover, tried to get up

and run, but a powerful blast of white light spit from the end of a

five-foot rifle, shearing off the top of his shoulder.

The force of it smashed him hard into one of the pillars, where he

collapsed, bleeding and dazed.

"Brown, report!"Kawalsky called out ." Where are you, man?"

Brown heard him but was too dazed, in too much pain to respond.  He

pushed himself across the floor toward the pillars, crawling toward the

light streaking in through the small square windows.

He managed to get himself under the very window Skaara was peering in

through.  The boy, standing once more on Nabeh's shoulders, got a

ghoulishly good view as a second Horus guard turned the corner and bore

down on the detenseless soldier.  He carried a pole-like weapon, a

scepter that flared out at one end like a cobra's hood surrounding a

large amethyst jewel set in the middle.  The warrior raised the weapon,

a rifle, and brought the butt end of it down on Brown's neck.

As soon as he had heard the shrill whine of the first shot, O'Neil hit

the deck, belly-sliding for cover.  He was near the end of the Entrance

Hall, about to enter the sloping Grand Gallery, crouched and silently

waiting for word to come from behind.  He had no intention of giving

away his position by calling to his soldiers.

He couldn't wait any longer.  Silently, he headed for the doorway

leading into the Grand Gallery when a grenadesize bail of light came

fishtaifing through the darkness, heading straight for him.  He leapt

out of the way, and the shot exploded against the wall behind him with

concussive force, raining scraps of granite on the floor.

Kawalsky ducked out from his hiding place and fired blindly toward the

area where he'd seen the power burst originate.  Then, from the side, he

felt his assault rifle clubbed from his hands by a single heavy blow. He

turned and came face-to-face with his attacker.  It was another one of

the Horus soldiers.  The creature's large head, a stylized image of a

hawk, seemed to be made from the same metallic substance as his body

arinor.  The parts of him that weren't covered were intensely muscular.

Standing too close to ire the long rifle, the warrior brought it up with

both hands into Kawalsky's chin, snapping the man's head back violently.

But Kawalsky reached

out and grabbed onto the weapon before his opponent could step back and

fire.  The two of them began to grapple at close quarters, which built

Kawalsky's confidence.  Handto-hand combat was his specialty, and this

opponent, although skillful, seemed no match for him.

The hawk had a unique weapon that kept Kawalsky off balance.  As the two

men battled for control of the weapon, he used his sharp beak to poke

and slash.  Kawalsky countered by forcing the rifle upward, then

attacking the man's unarmored midsection.  Using the staff for extra

leverage, he landed a vicious kick to the other man's stomach, doubling

him over.  He twisted the weapon free and was about to attack again,

when he was hit from behind, a sledgehammer blow nailing him right on

the crown of his head.  In the liquid, woozy moment before he blacked

out, Kawalsky turned around and looked into another pair of

expressionless bird eyes staring down at him.  He realized too late that

the enemy was working in pairs.

Daniel had watched the whole thing.  He was standing a few strides away,

petrified by fear.  The fight was over so quickly, and now, Kawalsky,

the strongest man he'd ever met, had succumbed to these impossible yet

utterly familiar creatures.  In all the time he'd studied Egyptology, it

had never once occurred to him that ancient gods might in fact be real.

Inching backward deeper into the shadows, he listened to his own

deafening pulse pounding against his eardrums.  As soon as Kawalsky had

fallen, the twin Horus warriors had separated, retreating into darkness.

His mind started seattering in a thousand directions, adrenaline racing

through his bloodstream.  Daniel took a deep breath and tried to focus.

When the thing comes back, he told himself, use the rifle.  Concentrate:

point the rifle at the head-no, at the stomach, Kawalsky kicked hijrn in

the stomach-and then pull the tagger.

Then there was something behind him.  He felt it coming around the

corner of the pillar, but it was moving fast and before he could react,

it took him.  A powerful hand clapped down over his mouth and pulled his

head back to expose his throat.  Daniel's eyes bugged to sflver-doflar

size, sure he

was a goner, waiting to feel the ice-hot knife blade slit open his

throat.

Then came a whisper ." I need your help." O'Neil's lips were practically

inside his ear ." We're going to StarGate, and you're going to cover me,

understand?"

The colonel waited until he felt Daniel nod yes, then, still cradling

the bead under his arm like a football, he leaned around the pillar to

check the hallway.  When the coast looked clear, he stood Daniel up and

pushed him up against the wall just hard enough to capture his fufl

attention.

He could see that Daniel was on the verge of freaking out, so he spoke

to him in a deliberately calm, almost relaxed way.

"This is how it's going to go.  You follow me forward, but keep looking

back and shoot at anything that follows us .

Now, let's move.  Fast." He reached down and clicked the safety switch

on Daniel's rifle to the off position.  A second later, they were

running at top speed deeper into the pyramid.

What was O'Ned making him do?  a voice screeched inside his head.  This

was only the Entrance Hail!  They weren't even close to the StarGate

room, and the rest of the way would be in the pitch-black.  Daniel's

stride began to falter until he realized that the alternative to

sticking with O'Nefl was facing the Horuses by himself.  He increased

his speed and raced beyond the reach of the last light coming in the

square windows.

O'Nefl broke open a flare as he ran, and began waving it erratically

over his head to make himself a more difficult target.  As soon as he

had his bearings, he tomahawked the flare far out ahead of them.  When

they ran past, Daniel sped up to get out of the light, then turned to

run backward watching for anyone who might try to follow.

They took the rest of the Grand Gallery at fufl speed .

O'Neil used another flare when he guessed they were coming to the

hallway with the medallions embedded in the floor and ceiling.  He held

the flare until they came to the doorway, then lobbed it through the

medallion hall into the StarGate room.  Before the flare had stopped

rolling, O'Nefl was inside, rifle-first, looking everywhere for the

enemy.  No one else was in the room.  There was still time.

O'Neil ran to the equipment cart, fishing the claw tool out of a pocket

in his fatigues.  Daniel entered the room a second later, trying to stay

close, trying to stay alive.

"Get back to the door!" O'Neil hissed, hardly fuming to look.

"Colonel, I saw the thing that got Kawal-"

The next thing Daniel knew, O'Ned had a pistol pointing right into his

face ." Do it or you're a dead man."

Daniel practically fell backward.  He was sure O'Nefl meant it.  He

retreated until he was at the edge of the flare's fight, then squatted

down near the tall doorway.  He pointed his rifle uncertainly toward the

shadows of the Grand Gallery and waited for the Horuses to attack.  He

glanced over his shoulder at O'Ned.

"What are you doing over there?" Daniel could see that O'Neil was

working something into the floorboards of the off-loaded equipment cart

." Come on, O'Neil, let's get out of here."

Ignoring him, the colonel continued working until he got the hatch door

to pop open, revealing the secret compartment built into the vehicle. He

pulled it open, fully prepared to insert the orange key.

The compartment was empty.  The canisters had been taken out without

tripping the fail-safe system: the detonator.  O'Ned stared in disbelief

at the empty space.  Then and there he realized he was facing a superior

enemy.  A moment later, Daniel saw the feet.

Stepping into the doorway were two of the huge falcon men, their helmets

glistening in the chemical light of the flair.  They held their ground

as a third figure, tailer by a foot, advanced slowly out of the darkness

and stepped between them, his weapon aimed.  Both Daniel and O'Neil

recognized him at once.  It was Anubis, jackal-headed god of the dead.

"Put the gun down.  It's over, Jackson."

Daniel nervously complied with the order.  As Anubis approached, Daniel

got his first face-to-face look at one Of these ghoulish, honific,

impressive creatures.  The jackalbeaded warrior strode into the fight

with a pompous, ceremonial style.  As he walked past, Daniel studied

this flesh and iron incarnation of what he had always assumed to be a

myth.  The warrior's head was especially disconcerting.  It appeared to

be both inorganic, sculpted from some metallic or quartzose material,

and, at the same time, alive.  Daniel thought it might be some kind of

helmet constructed from biomorphic metal.  Could they be cyborgs?

Anubis continued across the room untu he was a pace from O'Nefl, then

slid the palm of his hand along the underside of the long,

ancient-looking rifle.  As he did so, a group of flanges, the ribs of

the narrow gun barrel, flared open, making the weapon ready to fire.

O'Neil didn't flinch .

The two of them stared at each other for a long beat, almost as if they

recognized one another untu the strange warrior gave a signal to the

pair of Horuses.

It was eerily similar to the pictures Daniel had studied the night

before in the catacombs: Anubis was the leader of the other gods.  They

seemed to work for him.

The two Horus guards stepped forward, each grabbing one of the intruders

roughly by the collar with their powerful hands.  Holding their hands

low to the ground, they forced their captives to walk stooped low to the

ground.  If they tripped, which both of them did, the Horuses dragged

them effortlessly across the floor.

They moved away from the StarGate and into the next room, the hallway

with medallions set into the floor and ceiling.  The guards pulled the

Americans onto the large round plate.  O'Ned, alert, cooperating to buy

time, noticed the jackal making an adjustment to his armored cuff.

On the back of the wristband, a mounting shaped like a scarab beetle

held a large clear jewel in place.  The jackal pressed down on the gem.

The next second, a needle of blue light jabbed through the dark hallway,

rising from the edge of the medallion to its twin on the ceiling high

above.

The beam traced around the circumferences of the medalbons, leaving a

razor thin curtain of wavering blue light in its wake, surrounding the

five men standing on the medallion.

As soon as the light completed its circuit and closed into a cylinder,

there was an upward rush of bright white light that seemed to lift them

off the ground.  Daniel and O'Neil both felt a familiar, tingling bum

and a sudden escape from the prison of gravity.  The same disorienting

experience they'd undergone during their trip to this planet, the

sensation of StarGating.  Clearly, the medallions were based on the same

technologies that governed the huge quartz n'ngs.

When the rising flare of white light was above their heads, they found

themselves in a different room, standing on an identical medallion.

In the near-complete darkness, Daniel adjusted his glasses and noticed

they were surrounded on three sides by the outstretched wings of a

statue.  The menacing form looming over them stood at least eight feet

tall and was wrought from a single block of lustrous black stone. Daniel

recognized the unpleasant receptionist as the Egyptian deity Khnum, the

ram-headed god.

Daniel correctly guessed he was directly above the medalHon hall, inside

the strange craft that had perched itself atop the pyramid.  The Horus

guards tightened his grip on Daniel's collar, twisting the fatigue green

shirt closed around his throat like a choke leash.  Once more he and

O'Neil were stumbling forward with their heads lower than their hips.

They moved across a polished floor, their captors' armor clanking softly

in the darkness.  The echoing acoustics told Daniel that the room around

them was large enough to make their sounds seem very small.

The clang of a large handbefl pealed out of the darkness ahead of them.

A moment later the entire chamber Mled with a low-pitched growl, a

rumbling mechanical timpani roar.  Glaring light scissored into the room

from several directions at once as giant panels, eighty-foot-long plates

of the pyramid's thick exterior walls, began sliding open as daintily as

twelve small earthquakes.

They were in a long rectangular room with a very high ceiling, like a

primitive cathedral.  Giant faces looked down at them from the walls,

sculpted delicately into the slender pillars supporting the ceiling down

one end of the room .

The tiled floor was an elaborate symmetrical mosaic.

As the overhead panels continued sliding open, Daniel could see a golden

throne, elaborately sculpted and embedded with precious stones.  The

throne sat on a platform at the top of a flight of stairs.  Directly

above hung a giant sun disk embossed with an udjat, the Eye of Ra.  It

was identical to the one that hung above the main square in Nagada,

except this one appeared to be fashioned of sobd gold .

When they were halfway to the throne, Horus yanked back on Daniel's

collar and forced him to the floor.  O'Nefl scuffled briefly with his

keeper until Daniel urged him in a sharp whisper.

"Just kneel!" he counseled.

Reluctantly, O'Neil turned and let himself slowly drop to his knees,

looking defiantly at Anubis the whole while, carefully shaping the

misperception that he would offer only symbolic, ego-salving resistance.

By now, sunlight was pouring in from aB directions, bathing the room in

a warm yellow glow.  TWo shafts of light climbed the walls on either

side of the throne eventually reaching the sun disk.  A pair of doors

behind the throne puffed open to reveal another, smaller room behind.

Children, ranging in age from seven to nineteen years old, moved through

the door and out onto the throne platform in a tight cluster.  Wearing

very little, the children were dressed in the fashion of ancient

Egyptian courtiers.  They were barefooted, with very short skirts around

their hips and jeweled yoke collars hanging from their shoulders.  They

were protectively surrounding something at their center.

When the children peeled away, they showed the visitors what they'd been

fawning over, a chillingly accurate statue of the supreme pharaoh, Ra,

the god of the sun.

It was a breathtaking piece of work made entirely of gold, inlaid

everywhere with precious jewels.  Every detaithe long braided beard, the

two snakes wrathing from the headdress, the painted eyes-had been

rendered with obsessive craftsmanship.  Its perfectly proportioned arms

lay folded across the chest holding the traditional symbols of

governance, the crook and flail.  The shepherd's crook signifying

Industry, and the flail representing Domination, especially over slaves.

The eerily expressionless face bore a vague resemblance to the one on

Tutankhamen's famous death mask.  But a single glimpse at this

startlingly lifelike sculpture made the T'llt mask seem amateurish by

comparison.  This far more threatening image made the greatest artifact

of the Egyptians seem like a hopelessly sentimental cartoon.

Daniel was wondering whether the guards would give him

the opportunity to move closer and examine the lustrous idol when it

suddenly moved.  Cautiously and deliberately, the thing took a step.  A

mile deep in concentration, Daniel surfaced with a gasp.

The figure moved with austere grace to the throne, clad in the style of

the ancient pharaohs.  Draped over the shoulders was a yoke dripping

with ingots of red jasper and bright black onyx.  Wrapped around the

waist was a skirt, the stiff brocaded kilt that extended down to the

knees.

"Pharaoh King Ra," Daniel whispered, somewhe tween terror and delight.

He and O'Nefl looked at each other, then back to the bizarre creature

still marching throne-ward at a tediously slow speed.  It's skin, like

Anubis's helmet, seemed to glow ever so slightly, emitting a ghostly

pall.  Daniel wondered whether he might be made of the same

unidentifiable substance as the StarGate.

When he arrived at the beautiful chair, twenty paces from his guests,

the shape suddenly sat down at normal human speed, then leaned forward

studying them.  A minute passed before Ra languidly lifted a hand and

flicked a finger toward Anubis.  His soldier obeyed the command,

reaching up to his throat, and rolling a small tumbler tab with his

index finger.

Immediately his large jackal head began to retract beginmng at the snout

and moving backward.  The frightening helmet was built from some type of

"smart metal," an allo capable of remembering and executing complex

sequences of commands.  The headpiece peeled away in a section-bysection

folding action until it revealed the human face beneath.

It was the handsome, humorless face of a large youth .

The mask continued to retract section by section until it was gone,

receding back into the thin metallic yoke around the young man's neck.

Neither of the Americans could believe it.  They'd never seen technology

even remotely similar to this.  Daniel nervously looked up at the

pharaoh, and after a long beat, Ra gave a lazy nod in the direction of

the children.  His minimal command was translated into a flurry of

urgent whispers that soon led to two young children, no more than ten

years old, carrying out either side of a large tray.  On the tray,

dismantled into its constituent parts was the device O'Nefl had expected

to find in the hidden compartment of the equipment cart.

The nervous boys set the tray as close to the doomed visitors as they

dared, before scampering back to the safety of their group.  Daniel

scrutinized the electronic fragments, uncertain what they were.  He

spoke out the side of his mouth to O'Nefl, who was locked in a stare

down with the man of gold.

"What is this stuff?" he asked, neither expecting nor receiving an

answer ." Look, there are words." He leaned forward to inspect it ."

They look like instructions." The next moment, Daniel realized the

printed words were from a scrap of a warninglabel, the international

symbol for nuclear danger.  It didn't take long for him to figure out

what the wreckage on the tray was.

"That's a bomb, isn't it?  That's what you were looking for?  What were

you thinking?"

Daniel's first reaction was anger.  A bomb?  How could O'Neil have done

such a violent and stupid thing?  But that emotion was quickly

overwhelmed by the cold stab of fear running from his throat down to his

beily.  It suddenly occurred to him that both he and O'Neil were about

to die.

Daniel spent the next few moments looking for a way out of the

situation.  He decided that if he got the chance, he would explain that

he'd had nothing to do with bringing the explosive.  Also, he realized

that no matter what happened, he'd gotten everything he'd come for. He'd

answered the ancient riddle of the pyramids and proven, at least to

himself, that his theories about ancient Egypt had been valid .

He had overcome hyperastronomical odds and bested many enemies to arrive

at this very spot-the spot he was always meant to stand in.  Whatever

happened next, he was at peace with himself.  Of course, he still wanted

to get the hen out of there alive.

Suddenly, the golden figure sat forward on his chair.  A moment later,

his entire shape began to mutate, his skin lost its golden veneer and

his helmet-mask began to fold in upon itself, retracting behind his

head.  When the strange transformation was complete, there stood before

them a darkly beautiful young man-child with long braided hair.  He

appeared to be barely twenty years old and perfectly formed.  His face

was the picture of innocence.

When the delicate face became visible, the soldiers, who considered this

youth their god, put their faces to the floor exactly as the miners had

done when they saw Daniel's medallion.  With all eyes toward the floor,

O'Nefl saw his chance and attacked instantly.  He leapt toward Anubis,

jamming his shoulder viciously into the young man's side and seizing his

weapon at the same time.  Before he could recover, O'Neil chopped into

the side of Anubis's neck with the butt of the rifle, collapsing him to

the floor.  In one swift motion, he duplicated the way Anubis slid his

hand down the underside of the gun, snapping it open, then firing at the

Horus next to Daniel.  The blast caught the guard's shoulder,

pinwheeling him across the smooth floor.

At the first sign of trouble, Ra ordered the children to surround him.

Quickly, they formed a human shield around their leader.  By the time

O'Neil whirled around to fire, his weapon was pointed at a curtain of

terrified children.  O'Nefl hesitated.  He knew he should fire through

the children, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.  He turned instead

to fire at the second Horus, who was just swinging his weapon into

position.

Daniel, horrified, saw that this second Horus had the jump on O'Neil. He

stepped into the no-man's-land between the combatants and screamed in

the soldier's language not to do it.  Too late, the second Horus figure

discharged his yveapon, and the shot ripped into Daniel's gut, killing

him immediately.  As his body fell to the floor, O'Nefl had a clean shot

and took it, blasting the guard backward.  Then O'Neil made a second

ruinous mistake, he took an instingtive step toward his fallen comrade,

even though it was clearly too late to help him.  This tiny moment of

wavering inaction was all Anubis needed to come from behind.  As O'Neil

turned to hunt down Ra, he was greeted by a bonecrunching kick to the

chest that sent him flying backward.

O'Neil was able to push himself up to his hands and knees, and looked

ready to continue to fight.  Anubis was approaching now, his helmet

reactivated.  Behind him, the falcon-headed warrior trained his firearm

at the colonel.

O'Nefl struggled to regain his footing, but then suddenly collapsed like

a sack of steak knives.

Ra came out from behind the children and lifted a subtle gesture to

Anubis, who went to O'Neil and looked him over .

Just in case the man was feigning unconsciousness, Anubis reared back,

then crushed into his head with the blunt end of his rifle.  They

watched him for a minute, werting for a movement, a sign that he was

still alive.  Using his boot, Anubis roiled O'Nefl over onto his back,

then cautiously knelt down beside him.  He reached out and, with one

hand, pinched O'Nefl's nostrils closed, then clapped down over his

mouth, preventing all breathing.  Then he waited.

O'Neil didn't know what to do.  Even after the crushing blow to the

head, he was indeed only pretending to be unconscious.  As soon as they

had regrouped, he ended the fight because he knew he couldn't win.  Now

Anubis was preventing him from breathing, and it took all his willpower

not to make a grab for the jackal's weapon.  He relaxed for a minute

until his body began to convulse involuntarily, searching for oxygen.

As soon as they knew he was still breathing, Anubis took his hand away.

Now the best O'Nefl could hope for was that they'd keep him alive in

order to torture him.  At least that would preserve the possibility of

completing his mission.

A minute later, O'Nefl felt Anubis's strong hand seize his collar and

begin dragging him across the floor of the chamher.  As a precaution, a

second soldier accompanied him, a few paces behind.  It meant that

O'Nefl couldn't try to ambush his enemy, but it also meant they were

afraid of him, vulnerable.

Ra, still surrounded by his juvenile entourage, came across the floor to

inspect Daniel's body.  The shot had blasted a hole right through his

chest.  As Ra leaned over, he noticed something that made him intensely

angry.  He squatted down almost on top of the mangled corpse and stared

at the medallion hanging around Daniel's neck.  The udiat, the Eye of

Ra.

THE WRATH

Feretti was wearing out the metal on his belt buckle.  He'd been trying

for half an hour to dig a scratch, even a small one, into the hard stone

wail.  He wanted to leave it as a sign to anyone unfortunate enough to

get themselves thrown in there after he was gone, one way or another.

Abruptly, the thick crisscrossing bars in the ceiling, the only way in

or out of the watery tomb, slid open.  Those who could still stand rose

to their feet, resigned to whatever might happen next.  But nothing

happened.  Feretti looked up at the opening, anticipating the worst.

He'd already figured out that they'd need to be Chinese acrobats to get

out of here; four men balancing on each other's shoulders might be able

to reach the bars.  Unlocking them would be a whole different can of

beans.  No, there was only one way out of this hellhole, someone

upstairs tossing you a rope ladder.

Just then, they dumped O'Nefl roughly through the opening.  Knocked

unconscious, his body plummeted down and hit bottom with a loud splash.

The cell was tued with just enough water to make it impossible to lay

down.  The captives had to sit or stand, making restful sleep

impossible.

The cold water revived the colonel immediately.  He came up swinging

until a pair of strong arms locked him up from behind.

" Sir!  It's me, Kawalsky!  Are you all right?"

O'Neil stopped fighting and looked around, his eyes adjusting to the

darkness of the ceil.  Brown lay facedown in the water.  Poffo was dead

as well, floating nearby.

"What about them?" he asked, but no one answered.

"What about Jackson?" Freeman and Feretti asked at the same time.

O'Neil sat down, looking at the ceiling for several moments, wondering

how they were going to climb out.

" Jackson's dead," he said finally.

Standing by herself at the top of a dune, Little Bit, the mastadge that

had fallen in love with Daniel, howled at the midday suns.  The shepherd

boys, startled, looked in aB directions for signs of danger.  When he

saw they were safe, Skaara faced up the slope and yelled at the filthy

bellowing beast to keep quiet before returning to his treasure hunt .

The four kids had stumbled across the abandoned base camp and were busy

digging as much of the equipment as they could out of the sand.  They'd

already found the box of rifles, the shooting tools they'd seen O'Neil

use.  They knew what to do with these, but other discovelies proved

somewhat more puzzling-the crate of Spam, for example.

A moment earlier Nabeh, no Einstein, had exhumed a green bowl with a

strange leather ring suspended around the bottom of the dish.  He didn't

understand until Skaara yanked it out of his hands and set it on the

bigger boy's head.  Nabeh squealed with delight, his crooked teeth

poking out of his mouth as he broke into a beaming smile.

A loud sound coming from the direction of the pyramid got their

attention.  All heads turned to see a large section of the exterior wall

rolling back to reveal a large cavity within the structure.  Two

udajeet, one-man gliders, rocketed out of the port and hovered in place

as a larger craft, a chariot glider, floated out to meet the others.

Skaara didn't need to see any more.

"Udajeet!  Aba na wali, yalla!" he commanded.  Rabbi and Aksah, the

other two boys, didn't hesitate.  They sprang airborne over the side of

the bluff, plummeting down the same steep embankment Daniel had traveled

the previous day.  Skaara was about to bad over the side himself when he

noticed Nabeh still standing atop the dune, frozen like a deer staring

into the headlights of the doom.  He ran back and tugged his older

friend over the side of the bluff.  When they finished tumbling, there

wasn't quite enough time to cover themselves in sand before the three

aircraft were overhead.  Fortunately, the pilots didn't notice the boys

laying stiffly frozen in the sand.  The penalty for trespassing into

this forbidden territory surrounding the pyramid was public execution.

Unfortunately, the boys could see that the ships were flying straight

toward Nagada.  The boys sensed there would be trouble.

It took more than an hour for them to load the mastadge with everything

they were able to salvage and make it back to the city.  Long before

they entered the main gates, they could see that Ra's messengers had

brought a ruinous message to the city.  A dozen columns of black smoke

rose in the windless sky, spreading out to form a dark cloud above the

town.  When they were only a few hundred yards from the gate, one of the

gliders lifted straight up above the perimeter wail, then trolled slowly

out across the desert.  It was joined by the other glider and then by

the chariot.  One of the Horus guard pilots spotted the boys and swooped

over to take a look.  The boys were clinging to the sides of the

mastadge, staring back at Horus in the cockpit of his small airship.

Just like the mythical creatures he had heard about and even seen drawn

on the catacomb walls, here he was, Horus flying above him.  Without

emotion, the soldier returned their gaze.  When he was satisfied that

the children were returning from the mining pit, he flew on.

Skaara jumped off the animal and led it by the reins through the main

gate, which was standing wide-open.  It was even worse than the boys had

feared.  There was pandemonium in the wide street leading to the central

square .

Some fires had been extinguished, but several were still out of control,

and the disorganized effort to fight them was causing as many problems

as it solved.  People were trampled underfoot.  There was screaming,

tears, panic.  There were wounded people lying everywhere.

Rabbi and Aksah lead Daniel's mastadge the long way around the city to

the corral, while Nabeh and Skaara waded into the anarchy.  Keeping to

the wall so they didn't get

knocked over by the men wildly trying to put out the fires, the two boys

slowly advanced down the town's main artery.

Nabeh's building was one of those still on fire.  The boys ducked into a

doorway directly across the street to watch the chaotic fire-fighting

effort.  Skaara looked down, and noticed they were standing in blood.

Behind them, curled up against the wall was a boy two or three years

older than Skaara.  He'd been shot in the hip, and his leg had been

badly scorched from flame.  They turned the boy over.  He was

unconscious, having passed out trying to hold his leg in place.  Nabeh

shook the boy, trying to wake him up, but it was no use.  Without any

discussion, they decided they would carry the boy to help.  Nabeh lifted

him off the ground and, with Skaara's help, draped the boy over his back

.

Dodging men barreling toward the fire with loads of water, stepping over

the fallen, they fought their way toward the central square, to the

place children were supposed to go when they got sick or injured.

The situation in the central square was even worse.  Both boys had seen

dead bodies before when there had been accidents at the mining pit, but

never anything like this .

Apparently, Ra's soldiers had rampaged through the town on an

indiscriminate killing spree, and here is where they'd done their most

ghoulish work.  Blood was spilled everywhere across the paving stones.

The broken bodies of the victims had fallen in unnaturally twisted

positions.  One old man, working alone, was gathering the dead, one at a

time, dragging them across the square and piling them against the wall

that served as a goal for a soccer-like game children played there.

When they came to the children's clinic, they saw that it had already

burned and was now completely empty.  Skaara looked around the courtyard

for help.  It felt like the end of the world.  Screaraing, crying women

seemed to be running in every direction, each one responding to some

private emergency, rushing to find those dearest to her, her children,

parents, a lover, convinced that all had been lost in this senseless

attack.

Finally someone stopped to help them.  It was Sha'llri, Skaara's half

sister.  She came running up to the boys holding the side of her face,

blood everywhere.

"Sha'llri, har an'dona?" he asked her.  But she waved off his concern,

moving to the boy on Nabeh's back.  As she inspected the boy, Skaara

watched the blood seep out of the gash above her right eye.  It would

leave a nasty scar.

After a moment, she turned and began leading Nabeh toward the wall and

the stack of dead bodies.  When Skaara saw where she was headed, he

became hysterically angry .

He and Nabeh had found the boy and, whatever it took, they were going to

save him.  He yanked hard on her arm to stop her progress.  As gently as

she could, she told him.

"He's already dead.  Put him with the others, then come with me," she

said in their language.  Skaara could not believe what he was seeing all

around him.  He found comfort in how his people were working together to

help one another.  How Sha'll was able to be so strong, organizing the

relief effort.  Whether she knew it or not, Sha'llri was a natural

leader.  But suddenly her tough veneer weakened as she turned back to

Skaara, her voice cracking ." Where is Dan-yer?  Tell me what happened

to Dan-yer?"

Skaara didn't know how to answer her.  He couldn't answer her.  There

was already too much sadness here.  He couldn't add to it.  He turned

away from her distractedly, pretending he hadn't heard her questions.

His feigned distraction became painftily real as he looked to the far

side of the big square, up to the giant disk suspended between the

buildings at the far end of the square.  Crucified across the front of

the medallion, bound at the wrists, was Kasuf.  Skaara felt his stomach

nearly fall out of his mouth.  Even before Nabeh turned back to see what

was going on, Skaara was running as fast as he could across the uneven

ground.  A crowd had gathered trying to figure out how to get the old

man, beaten and bloody, safely down.

The men of Nagada prided themselves on their endurance and toughness.

They aspired to be like the sand: stoic, hard to hold, and able to

absorb aB the rain-tears--the gods could send.  Skaara was already

fifteen and thought he'd made the passage to manhood, but seeing his

father bludgeoned and humiliated brought him to tears in a single

moment.  The wide-open crying of an infant.

And the longer he cried, the angrier he became.  He knew

the people of the city had done nothing wrong ." Why?  Why did this

happen to us?" he asked.

One of the town Elders standing near said, "The visitors .

They brought this upon us.  False gods.  They seduce our praise and

angered the aliffighty Ra.

"No, it's not true," argued Skaara.

"It is.  Ra has returned to us.  We have angered him with our false

worship.  We must repent and serve him obediently.

Skaara was angry and confused.  He refused to believe they could have

been party to this, even inadvertently.  He wanted Kasuf to explain it

to him.  Perhaps Kasuf could make it aB clear.

Why were they taking so long to cut him down?  All the windows and

balconies surrounding the disk were crowded with people trying to help,

but no one was actually doing anything.  A network of thick ropes

supported the stone disk, which weighed slightly less than one ton.  TWo

men had tried to shimmy out along the bottom rope, one from each side.

But their weight caused the ropes, spun from vines and animal sinew, to

sag dramatically.  Everyone screamed at once, from the windows,

balconies, the footbridge, and below that they were too heavy, that they

would kill themselves along with the old man.  As one of the Elders

explained a rescue plan involving long planks, others shouted their

criticism.  It was a mob trying to save their patriarch by committee.

By the time Skaara came back from the corrals, two useless ladders had

been moved into place, and a group of citizens had stretched a piece of

canvas into a trampoline below.  In other words, no progress had been

made.

Laden with mastadge gear, he entered the budding and took the stairs at

a workmanlike pace up to the roof.  He stepped out onto the sloped roof

carrying a training saddle and a length of rope, moving carefully to

where the topmost of the ropes supporting the medallion was tied to the

caves .

He slid the last few feet and was lucky to break the slide when his feet

found the rope.  Someone had lost a shoe, Skaara wondered whether it was

someone who fell.  He decided to take the shoe with him.  Balancing the

saddle in one hand, the rope and shoe in the other, he stood up and

slid his barefoot out onto the rope, then left the budding behind with

the next step.  He braced himself for what he knew would come next.

When the assembled rescuers saw Skaara's tightrope walk, everyone

screamed bloody murder.  People in the window just below him were

reachirg up trying to grab him by the ankle, but Skaara obeyed the rule:

don't look down .

He knew it was dangerous, but he was angry in a way he never had been

before.  He was not concerned at the moment with his personal safety.

The howling of the crowd made no dent in Skaara's concentration.  It

actually started to feel quiet, the more focused he became on his task.

One foot and then the next.  The fence of the mastadge corral was much

harder to walk than this wide rope, and Skaara couldn't remember the

last time he hadn't made it all the way around.  Stay relaxed, stay

balanced, you're almost there.

On the ground, Sha'llfi ran to the people forming the trampoline to

help.  Skaara was two-thirds of the way to the medallion where many

ropes came together, fomng a web for the boy to move through.

He anchored his leg between the rope and the disk.  When he knew he

could hold on, he flipped himself over the edge so that he was hanging

chin to chin with his father.

"Are you all right?" the boy asked.

"Humiliation is worse than death," replied the old man, who averted his

eyes, unable to look at Skaara.

Skaara had never heard Kasuf speak like that.  Nor had he ever seen

tears in his eyes.  Overwhelmed at seeing this man he admired so broken,

Skaara focused on his next task, getting the harness secured around the

old man's middle.

"Arch your back," he said, and the old man did his best to comply.

Although he'd never worked upside down, Skaara was quite an expert with

these harnesses, and a minute later was cinching it tight around the old

man's middle.  He then tied the rope to the shoe and tossed it to the

crowd on one of the footbridges.

"I'm gonna cut him down, be ready."

All capable hands quickly took possession of the rope as Skaara

unsheathed a long cleaning knife, showing it to the people on the

footbridge.  When the front man nodded,

Skaara leaned over and informed Kasuf, "You're gonna swing around for a

second until I can get to the second rope.

He cut the first rope, sending Kasuf swinging sideways by one wrist.  A

moment later, the second rope was cut, and Kasuf, the Chief Elder of the

city swung through the air in a sixty-foot arch before gravity took Wm

back the other way.  The footbridge crowd Efted the old man to safety,

then rushed him into a nearby aputment to doctor his wounds.

Though the people were thrilled to see their leader was safe, they

avoided looking at him, attempting to save him the embarrassment.  The

foreman of the footbridge crew retrieved the rope, and after several

throws, Skaara had a hold of it.  He tied a toe loop for himself, then

shouted for them to lower him down.

When he was still thirty feet off the ground, he surprised everyone

again.

"Catch me," he shouted.  Then, without warning, he jumped out of the

sling, and plummeted downward, secure in the knowledge that Sha'llri,

Nabeh, and the others would catch him in the safety net.

p

"THERE CAN BE ONLY

ONE RA /l*

Silent and still, the sarcophagus sat at the back of the room.  Slowly

the sides of the ancient polished box began to retract, lowering into

the floor.  As the side wail pulled back, the narrow table at the center

lifted up.  On the table was a human figure covered with a wet cloth, a

death shroud, laying motionless on the table.  A minute later, the body

on the slab suddenly began to spasm, gasping for air.  It sat up and

tore away the cloth.

It was Daniel, reborn.  It took a few minutes for him to breathe

normally again, feeling as though his diaphragm and lungs, after their

short vacation, had forgotten their work .

He fell back on the table, dizzy, and looked around to see where he was.

As best he could, he scanned the eerie, empty room.  He was startled to

see a small boy, seven years old, waiting patiently for him to wake.

Daniel struggled to sit up, the semicircular canals in his ears slowly

adjusting to give him back his sense of balance .

Coughing and blinking, he got to his feet and looked at the child who

beckoned him to follow as he turned and walked out of the room.  Daniel

was unsure whether he should follow.

The boy led the way into the throne room, site of his illfated interview

with the boy-king Ra.  Daniel thought he must have slept for a long

time.  He felt alert and physically

strong.  Stronger than he'd felt for a long time.  Even though the fight

was dim and his glasses were missing, he found he was able to focus

sharply on everything around him.  Like the other children, the boy

ahead of him nearly naked.  He wore a very short skirt, an Egyptian

kilt, and a heavy gold chain around his neck.

A cat strolled across the floor in front of them.  A moment later,

Daniel spotted another cat curled up on the stairs leading up to the

throne.  He turned to look at the cat, which seemed in no way different

from the house pets he'd grown up with.  It blinked at him lazily and

turned away.  When Daniel turned back to the boy, he had vanished.

Daniel moved down the hallway until he came to a broad doorway.

He peered inside and found another marvelous surprise .

Wide sheets of pure white silk hung in the darkness, suspended from the

low ceding to within inches of the floor .

Billowing through the gaps between the sheets were rolling clouds of

steam.  The air was hot and moist, like a sauna.

Too curious to be truly afraid, Daniel walked into the fog, pushed the

fabric aside, and waded deeper into the mist.

He inched forward until he found the source of the steam, a shallow,

perfectly round pool.  Then the vapors parted allowing him to see the

object of an this decadent luxury.

Appearing then disappearing behind the lifting steam, Ra lay motionless,

submerged to his shoulders in the scaking water, surrounded by his young

attendants.  Although he in no way acknowledged his resuscitated

visitor's entrance, Daniel intuitively knew his presence was felt.

Silently, he came closer still, until he was poised at the very lip of

the bathing pool, the size of a tiny lake.

Ra opened his eyes, staring straight at Daniel.  The two of them studied

each other for a long time before a hand rose dripping out of the water.

With a relaxed gesture, he called for his robe.  Two of the children

conied the robe to a spot near where Daniel was standing.

Very slowly, Ra lifted himself up and marched through the thigh-deep

water with feline grace.  His skin was no longer gold, but had somehow

returned to it's natural color, a burnt almond tone common among the

people of North Africa.

If the story told on the walls of the catacomb were

true, the naked youth slithering toward him was in the neighborhood of

ten thousand years old, the creature within even older than that!  Only

forty-eight hours earlier, Daniel, famous for the "recklessness

creativity" of his academic ideas, would have dismissed the idea.  But

now, even with the evidence of Ra's lithe body displayed before him, he

was ready to believe it.  Fascinated, Daniel watched the enigmatic

creature prowl toward him through the mist.

"I was dead, wasn't I?" Daniel spoke in the language Sha'llri had taught

him.

Ra stepped into his robe allowing the children to wrap him inside.  When

he heard Daniel's mispronounced words, something like a smile moved

across his lips.

"That is why I chose your race.  Your bodies, so easily repaired."

Ignoring his visitor, Ra turned and walked at a leisurely pace out of

the room.

With Daniel and the children trailing behind, Ra led the strange

procession down the length of the throne room, up the stairs, and past

the throne itself into his private chamber.

The room was cluttered with fantastic works of art, beautiful furniture

and trinkets of aB sizes.  As he moved past a long marble table, Ra

casually drew Daniel's attention to the spot by dragging his fingers

across its surfaces.

Arranged on the table like a museum display, were the team's captured

belongings.  Rifles, pistols, field radios, spare ammunition, and

Daniel's books, one of which was laying open as if someone had been

studying.  The eeriest artifact on exhibit was one of the men's

camouflage army uniforms, complete from chin strap to boot strings.  At

the end of the table, still on the long tray was the disassembled bomb.

When Daniel looked up, Ra was peering at him amused.

He spoke to Daniel in a soft voice, velvet and croaking at the same

time.

"Your people have advanced much since I left," the strange boy monarch

said ." Your world has become dangerous"-he stressed the last word.  His

dialect seemed slightly different from Sha'llri's, perhaps the "high"

preegyptian language of palace life.  Daniel didn't understand every

word, but he gathered Ra's meaning.

"You have harnessed the power of the atom," Ra said,

gesturing toward the dismantled bomb ." But you stul do not P.

fully understand my power.  The power within the quartz."

"What do you plan to do?" Daniel asked, starting to understand the ugly

implications of the statement.

"You should not have reopened the gateway," he rasped .

"Soon, I will send your weapon back to your world.  I will encase it

within a shipment of the precious mineral of this planet.  It shall

increase your weapon's destructive power, a hundredfold." A wry smile

crossed his lips.

"Why would you do such a thing?" Daniel asked.

"I created your culture, your language, your arts, your goverrunent.  I

created your entire civilization," declared Ra, who moved uncomfortably

close to Daniel before he said, "And now, I win destroy it."

The blood drained out of Daniel's face.  His expression Of thinly veiled

dread seemed to please Ra, who smiled once more before slinking over to

a dressing area surrounded by tall mirrors.  Daniel followed him, trying

to invent some convincing argument about how they had come in peace .

The tray frill of bomb parts staring at him from the table made that

difficult to do.

"Why did you give me back my life?" Daniel wondered if there was still a

way out.

"I need you.  You will restore faith, the faith of these people in the

power of their one supreme god."

"Faith?" Daniel had no idea what the ominous words meant.

"An early discovery I made about your race," he whispered almost

secretively ." Myth, faith, habit.  Control of these gives more power

than any weapons." Ra Itted his arms to allow the convey of children to

slip a tunic over his head ." Myth, faith, habit," he reiterated ." A

scribe like yourself should remember those words."

He sat on a gorgeous folding stool, every inch painted with cryptic

heraldic symbols, as the children laced him into a pair of sandals.

"You will obey me before my people.  They will witness your obedience as

you kill your companions.  The ceremony will begin tomorrow in the late

sun."

Daniel tried to laugh at the idea, but a single strangled

blurt is what came out instead.  He looked at the arrogant man-child

like he was mad, asking, "And if I refuse?"

Calmly, Ra explained the alternative ." Then I shall have to destroy you

and all who have seen you."

The children were still busy adorning Ra in his jewels, but he

interrupted their work and prowled down the steps toward Daniel.  He

kept coming until he was dangerously close, untu they could feel one

another's breath.  Daniel cringed reflexively when Ra brought his hand

up between their faces.  A mule at heart, Daniel decided irrevocably

that he wouldn't inch again.  And he didn't, even when Ra put a finger

against Daniel's lips and then started to trace a path down his chin and

throat, then continuing down his chest .

The hand stopped on the medallion Daniel still wore around his neck.  Ra

looked down, turning his disk bearing his name gently over in his hand,

and then he pointed his amber yellow eyes back into Daniel's.  For one

brief moment, a strange kght glowed deep within Ra's eyes, inhuman, a

glimpse at the creature residing deep within the shan of this etemady

young child.

"There can be only one Ra," he purred before jerking down with enough

force to spht the chain, liberating his seal from the neck of the

detestable usurper.

Even though Skaara hadn't told her what the boys had seen at the pyramid

that afternoon, Sha'llri sensed something must have happened to Daniel.

He would have returned to her if he could have.  Although he had

rejected her on the night she was escorted to his chambers, she knew

there was a bond between them, a connection neither of them could have

planned or controlled or resisted.  They'd found the secret museum

together, the forgotten ancient history of her people.  That cluttered,

jumbled record of events many millennia hence had immediately changed

everything about the present.  Suddenly, everything needed to be

reevaluated .

And none of it would have been possible without him.  His coming here

had changed her in ways she knew she would always cherish.

She brought a candle across the city and fit it when she was alone in

the catacombs.  Recalfing Daniel's explanation of the hieroglyphs, she

read and reread the forgotten history

of her people.  Now she knew why letters had been made taboo, they were

so powerful.  Of course Ra had wanted to

hide the truth of his beginnings, they were not divine.  He had not been

born in the sun, and had not conquered Tuat .

He was just a creature that wanted to survive, at whatever cost.  A cost

Sha'llri was no longer willing to pay.

IN THE BEGINNING

His specieswassoentirely different from this human host

body he had discovered.  His people had nothing within their

own nature akin to empathy, sympathy, love, or kindness.

This was a race that existed only to survive and acquire .

After thousands of years of this existence, their knowledge

seemed unending, yet they still lacked wisdom.  Their un ending pursuit

of acquisitions, knowledge, art, science,

and possessions had eventually led to the extinction of

their race.

As the last breaths escaped the people of his world,

he was millions of light-years away from home, searching

desperately for a host.  He was detemned not to follow the

fate of his own kind.  He had mastered the technology to

transfer himself into another being but had to choose care fully.  Along

with inhabiting the host's body, he knew he

would absorb certain personality traits that were exagger ated within

the host's psyche.  Perhaps had he known the

intimate details of the life of this young boy named Ra, he

might have chosen another.  Or perhaps not.

Ra's childhood proved to be an excellent preparation for

the life he was to lead.  It made it easy for him to walk

directly toward the blinding light and ferocious wind tearing

unexpectedly across the desert that night one hundred cen turies ago.

Although both his parents were alive, for all

practical purposes he had grown up an orphan.  His mother was a lunatic,

barely able to care for herself.  His father was worse-a violent,

aggressive outcast who spent weeks

at a time wandering the desert by himself.  From infancy, the boy had

been reared by the entire tribe at once, belonging partly to everyone

but to no one in particular.  Because he was not an especially lovable

child, no one took care to nurture and touch the boy.  While other

children slept huddled between their parents, Ra was the only child his

age with a private tent.  Under these circumstances, he grew into an

almost feral child: aloof, unresponsive, slow to trust, and quick to

attack.  The situation only worsened as Ra got older and began to

develop his skins under the unwelcome tutelage of the Old One, the

leader of the tribe.  He despised being segregated from the hunting crew

and forced to spend his days practicing magic in the caves.  He felt

alone in every possible way, and developed a caustic resentment for aB

those around him.  When the frightening lights came across the midnight

sky, he had no idea what might lay on the other side, but he was

prepared to embrace any fate other than his own.

His hatred for his own people proved useful, as there were no inner

conflicts when the boy became the pharaoh king.  There would be no

feelings of guilt or remorse as Ra's people were put to hard labor.  In

fact, a strange new sense of pleasure became the most powerful trait he

absorbed from this strange young boy.  Ra was now a part of himself, and

together they became the sun god, to be feared and worshiped by this

primitive human race.

The pharaoh king learned quickly the ways to govern this species.  There

were two main aspects of his education.  The first was learning how to

gain and then maintain a monopoly on violence.  If not a monopoly, then

at least an overwhelming ability to destroy his opponents.  His retinue

of soldiers and elite guards understood that if he ordered them to cut

their own throats they would obey, but Ra rarely tested them.

In brief skirmishes with some of the slave populations, Ra taught

himself to wage war and to strike back with devastating, unmerciful

strength.  At this he became remarkably adept.

The second aspect concerned the psychology of governing.  After teaching

himself to wield an iron fist, he learned how to wrap it in a velvet

glove.  While force brought umediate results, myth, faith and belief

were stronger weapons at his disposal.  Through what he absorbed from

the young boy, the pharaoh king understood the fears and weakness of

these people and played upon them, ruthlessly .

He re-created his own likeness into the now-famous Tut mask, which

became his only public image.  Only his own elite entourage would have

the privilege to see the true face of Ra.

His guards, as well, had to be redeveloped.  If they were to serve him

successfuly, they, too, would have to call upon the fears of the people.

Through the mythology of these primitive people, the pharaoh king

learned that the jackal held a special place with their nightmares.  His

best guard, the king's champion, he decided would only be seen publicly

with the head of a jackal and be known as Anubis, the jackal-headed

boatman who takes men's souls to hell.

The rest of his guards would also take on these kinds of illusions, such

as his many Horus guards, with their hawklike heads, along with his

Thoth guards and Ramses guards .

AH to take on mythology aB their own.  An intricate mythological web,

weaved by the master himself, Ra, sun god.

He knew of the power of mythology because it now existed somewhere

within himself, in the part of Ra that he absorbed.  For the first time

in his existence, he now had dreams.  Sometimes disturbing dreams,

sometime pleasant and comforting ones.  It was a strange new sensation.

One he liked, very much.

A vision came to him of a vast underground chamber with magnificently

painted wails.  Unseen musicians played an intoxicatingly lovely song.

In the middle of the room stood an enormous balance seale.  He saw

himself sitting in one of its dishes.  Suddenly thousands of people were

in the room with him, lining up to test their weight against his.  It

was implicitly understood that the scales measured not the weight of a

physical body, but the worth of a person's soul, or "Ka." One by one,

they climbed into the dish.  Ra found he could manipulate the device at

will, tipping it in his favor .

The people in the hallway realized this and began to pile

onto the other side of the scale en masse.  No matter how many people

jumped into the dish on the other side, the scale indicated that the

slender boy was heavier.

Ra had not only now created his own mythology, slowly he began to

believe it.

In the first several months after his arrival on Earth, the desert

people were afflicted with powerful and disturbing dreams.  In these

dreams, the sun itself spht open to deliver a living god onto the land.

Night after night, this awesome event repeated itself on a rocky plateau

not far from the banks of a great river.  A site that would later come

to be known as Heliopolis.

Far to the south, the mountain people of the Nubians and the herders of

the Sudan, inspired by the overwhelming beauty of their shared vision,

headed north along the banks of the Nde searching for the landscape of

the dream.  Others came from the west, out of the Sahara.  From as far

north as Syria and Palestine, they gathered their belongings and set

out.  On the backs of camels or behind herds of goats, they came

carrying spices and spears and children.  They converged toward the spot

speaking no common language, sharing nothing in common except the

scorching dreams and the craving it had left in their hearts. Scratching

pictures in the dirt and spealdng with their hands, they exchanged tales

along the way of the lengths they had come and the dangers they had

faced.  Wave upon wave, they wandered to the base of the plateau, none

of them knowing exactly why they had come.  As each new group arrived

and communicated their experience, the miracle was reaffirmed.

They organized themselves into a teeming anarchic squalid camp, that

spread along the banks of the river for miles.  This wretched rejoicing

rabble packed themselves together to create the planet's first

metropolis, or better yet: theopolis, for this was a city of god.

As powerful as the blazing dreams had been, they didn't prepare the

people for the stunning majesty of what actually happened.  As the city

slept, the opulent and unwashed curled up together on the ground, a

shadow blotted out the moon.  Soon the winds came, and a harsh flood of

fight poured down on the makeshift city.  They followed the fight

west from the city, running at top speed fighting one another for

position, yearning to welcome their god to Earth.

They ran headlong into the light, shielding their eyes .

Then, at the center of the radiance, standing in a light so intense it

should have washed out all trace of color, they found him.  The sun god

Ra, his entire body composed of incorruptible gold, blazing with a

feverish golden hue.  He was surrounded by a company of kneeling

servants.  When these obeisant figures stood up, they pounded deep

spikes of fear into the hearts of the people.  Each had the body of a

human but the enormous head of an animal.  The menagerie of animal

spirits these people would soon know all too well: Khnum, the ram;

Sebak, the crocodile; Horus, the hawk; Apis, the bull; Anubis, the

jackal; Hathor, the cat; and Ammit, a strange beast known as "the

devourer." They formed an impressive and unnerving retinue.

Spontaneously, the people laid themselves facedown in the sand and wet

grass, weeping, overwhelmed by the miracle.  The power of the moment

stamped itself so deeply and so indelibly into these people's

imaginations that hundreds of generations later, long after this scene

had been intentionally erased from memory, human beings would continue

to ache for a repeat of the scene, for the advent of a dreamt-of

messiah.

This was not the only legacy Ra would bequeath to the subsequent history

of Earth.

His worshipers called him Ra-hotep-kan, sun god, because he had come

from the light as blight as the sun.  Ra allowed it, since it did not

conflict with the myth he had prepared for them to live by.  He told

them that he had been to a place called Tuat, the land of the dead.

Conquering that land, he made servants out of the animal-gods that fived

there.  He called upon the people of the wretched city to dedicate both

their love and their labor to him and his works.  When they died, he

told them, they would be escorted to Tuat by his servant Anubis where

their spirits, their Ka, would be eighed on a scale.  If the deceased

person had lived in pious service to Ra, they would dwell forever in the

land of the dead.  If not, Ammit, the devourer would be waiting nearby.

Construction of the great pyramid began almost at once.

The people did it wdhngly, gratefully, for Ra.  They studied and learned

and labored under the supervision of the animalheaded gods, most notably

Thoth, the this, the god of scribes, dreams, and magic.  The pyramid

project was by far the largest and most complex ever undertaken on the

planet, and it was a transforming experience for the people who built

it.

Ra could see that they were motivated by a mixture of love and fear.

This illiterate, barely civilized workforce learned to cooperate, think

together, quarry and cut stone, haul the heavy loads across the sand,

and raise the pyramid in less than half the time it would take to build

much smaller structures thousands of years later.

When the structure was nearly complete, Ra brought out from his

spacecraft a giant ring of quartz, The StarGate .

The StarGate was installed inside the pyramid, in the room built

especially for it.  By that time, the majority of Ra's workers had been

born in the squalid city, the sons and daughters of those who had come

to the place as holy pilgrims.  For this second generation, the building

started to feel less like sacred labor and more like toil.  They were

less blind in their submission to Ra, being more likely to visit the

places their parents had suddenly abandoned years before, the speak with

those who decided not to follow the dreams.  They could not be joyful in

their work when their nights were spent in hunger and the unsanitary

conditions of the sprawling shanty town.  Daily witnesses to the

fabulous luxury that surrounded their king, they began to want more for

themselves.  And what was their reward upon finishing this giant

masterpiece?  A small group of people kept a hidden journal, detailing

the truth about Ra and his origins .

Someone within Ra's elite entourage had leaked out this information to

these young rebels who were not about to let this knowledge be

forgotten.

On the night that the pyramid was declared finished, Ra moved through

the jubilant, celebrating city with his corps of bodyguards, selecting

hundreds of people for a "special honor ." They were taken into the

pyramid and sent through the StarGate, never to be heard from again.

These roundups continued for months.  At first, the zealots of the city

fined the streets begging to be chosen.  Many of

these volunteers were older people who were passed over in favor of

stronger, younger bodies.  Those who worked inside the pyramid relayed

what they had heard; that the chosen people were being forced through

the giant ring and sent to faraway deserts to build other pyramids.

Forgetting his own rules of mythology, Ra moved with too much haste.  In

the weeks and months that followed, Ra's frequent trips through the city

came to be feared.  Young people were covertly slipped out of the city.

Despite their devotion to him, the recurring scene of children being

torn away from their families began to breed resentment against Ra. Then

the persistent rumors of a rebellion on another planet came back through

the Gate and spread through the city.  It was said that Hathor, the cat,

had slaughtered the entire colony in a sea of blood.

Ra began to spend weeks at a time away from the city, busily

establishing new settlements, his need for more of the quartz mineral

intensified.  He not only needed it to fuel his sareophagus in order for

him to attain eternal life, but as his power became more widespread, his

n-dnions needed power for his technology.  So more and more mining

settlements had to be established.  But in his absence from Earth, he

left the increasingly thorny problem of discipline to his guards.

Whenever he returned, hundreds more of his healthiest subjects were

chosen to accompany him into the pyramid, where they disappeared

forever.  As disaffection grew, resistance began to organize.

One particular plot involved several hundred people, enough to ensure

that word got back to Ra through his network of spies.  But the arrogant

despot elected to ignore the threat.  Convinced of his invincibility, he

personally wandered through the mud and stench of the city pointing out

those he wanted.  When the citizens hid behind their shelters, Ra

ordered his guards to break in and drag them outside.  Behind the wails

of a small mud-brick building, the conspirators were laying their plans.

Ra's henchmen, however, paid no attention to the hand-scrawled map of

the pyramid's interior.  They dragged the men, a dozen of the plot's

chief conspirators outside and lined them up.  At least one of the men

was chosen, and taken through the Gate to the place where Nagada would

be founded.

When the signal came from the palace servants that Ra was gone, the

plotters rushed inside the pyramid, kuled the last few of the animal

guards, and tore the StarGate down .

They spent hours trying to break it with hammers, but were unable to

leave even a scratch.  Instead they dragged it out into the desert and

buried it under the first heavy stones they could find.  Months later

the cover stones were carved and put into place.  When they brought the

giant cover stones out to bury the Gate once and for all, Anubis's

smashed body was already in place.

Since that time, Ra had not been seen on Earth.  The once cohesive

society that had spontaneously appeared in the desert disintegrated like

a mirage.  Those who had buried the StarGate fought pitched, deadly

battles with those who remained faithftil until there was only chaos in

the place.

Children, they say, rarely listen to their parents but never fail to

imitate them.  The same was true of the rulers that came after Ra.

Although he was fiercely hated and soundly defeated, the rulers who came

after Ra duplicated almost every aspect of his reign, bequeathing a

sadistic and painful paradigm of political rule to the generations to

follow.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Sha'llri had been gone for several hours when Skaara, Nabeh, Rabbi, and

Aksah came into the catacombs looking for her.  She was sitting in the

small painted chamber, the secret museum, mourning quietly to herself.

She heard the boys coming and was going to order them to leave her

alone, but as soon as they stepped into the narrow tunnel room, she knew

what she had to do.  She told them to gather around her.  The boys,

still frightened of being discovered in this unholy place, reluctantly

approached.  Once she had them aB in place, she began to recite to them

the long-forgotten history of their people, doing her best to remember

all that Daniel,had taught her about the secret story written on the

walls.

As she read the words and explained the pictures, her voice grew

steadily stronger, more confident.  Even though she had heard the story

before, when Daniel had read it to her, this time, as the words left her

own lips, she became resolute.  Telling the story was cathartic.  She

told them she would not allow herself to five like this anymore.

Something had to be done!

And in that single hour, the children grew to be men .

Knowledge is power and, as the story unfolded, these youths became

strong.

For Skaara, the story affirmed what he had somehow

I I I I

instinctively known all along.  lbs validated all his suspicions,

answered the questions he'd been asking since he was small, erased all

the doubts that had plagued him.  And he got angry.  Angry about all the

people he'd seen killed by Ra's soldiers.  Angry about all the lies. The

generations of lives fived, not in spiritual service to god, but as

dupes and slaves.

He swore to himself that even if it took the rest of his life, he would

do something about it.

Preparations had been underway all night.  Those responsible for

organizing the event had arrived shortly after dawn, the earliest

allowable hour.  Kasuf was among the first to make the trip, riding to

the pyramid on the back of a mastadge, then supervising the

prearrangements for the ceremony from his chair next to the ensemble of

drummers.

As the third sun surged into the sky marking the official arrival of

morning, several thousand of Nagada's citizens had already reached the

pyramid, the feared and seldom seen palace of their living god.  They

gathered into a human sea around the long sloping ramp, the same ramp by

which the quartz was delivered to the pyramid.  A steady stream of

latecomers continued to feed the crowd's numbers, coming over the dunes

in a ragged procession that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The top of the pyramid's Entrance Hail had been festooned with lengths

of silk hunting, wide burgundy ribbons that cascaded the forty feet to

the floor of the platform, effectively screening the view into the

structure.

The crowd suddenly fell into a hush as a section of the fluttering

fabric was pulled back.  A moment later, the soldiers were forced into

the bright sunlight by a pair of Ra's Horus-helmeted henchmen.  Each of

the warriors carried one of the long weapons, the pulse rifles.  The

soldiers were herded down the wide sloping ramp, halfway to the

obelisks.

Only four members of the team were still alive: O'Neil, Kawalsky,

Feretti, and Freeman.  Under normal circumstances, the soldiers would

have taken advantage of being led out into the open like this.  They

would have counterattacked and tried to esr-ape in the time it takes to

blink.  But the beatings, followed by so many hours sitting upright in

the watery pit, had taken tnost of the life out of them .

Besides, there was nowhere to run, no physical space to escape into.

They were surrounded on all sides by the tightly packed crowd from

Nagada.  They stood on the ramp looking like an assembly of zombies.

O'Neil, powered by sheer meanness and single-minded determination, still

had a good deal of his energy.  But, in addition to the pair of armed

guards standing behind him, a group of four more stepped into the light

and took up positions at the top of the ramp.  The colonel seemed to

have lost fifteen pounds overnight, trading them for fifteen years added

to his face.

One of the Horus guards stepped up behind the haggard troops and,

swinging the thick end of his weapon, hit Freeman behind his already

wobbly knees, buckling him to the ground.

"Everybody kneel down," O'Nefl shouted, leading by example.  The Horus

seemed almost disappointed when the entire team followed O'Nefl's

command.  He brought his helmet close to O'Neil and stared at him oddly,

more intimidating than any drdl sergeant but still not enough to scare

the colonel.

Like most of those in attendance, Sha'llri wore a long colorless robe

with a hood pulled low over her eyes.  She slipped through the crowd

until she made eye contact with Skaara and Nabeh standing on the

opposite side of the ramp.

Skaara, ever so casually, glanced up at the two Horuses standing guard

over the soldiers.  When he was sure the gods were not looking, he

pantomimed a silent sneeze.  He was asking, with some urgency, where

Daniel was.  Sha'llri's facial expression told Skaara not to worry, but

inside her heart was in a tailspin, afraid his absence could only mean

one thing.

All attention suddenly shifted to a remarkable sight at the entrance.

One of Ra's child attendants, a girl about nine years old, came padding

barefoot from beneath the bolts of burgundy fabric.  The Nagadans had

never seen anything like this little girl.  In contrast to their coarse

garments, which covered them head to toe, the gill seemed to be

practically naked.  What little there was of her clothing was

unimaginably fine.  The colorful short skirt, and the yoke

collar dripping with jewels.  Her long straight hair was pulled back

into a tight clean braid.

The child made her way down the ramp keeping her eyes glued to the

floor, concentrating single-mindedly on her errand.  It was berjob to

tell the drummers from Nagada to begin.  Having come to the pyramid

palace as a very young child, she could not remember seeing people who

did not five within its confines.  Nor had she ever wanted to.  She had

been taught that the miners were filthy, disease-carrying slaves,

inferior in every way to those like herself who lived beside Ra.  The

striking contrast between her own beauty and the wom-down look of the

people in the crowd only reinforced the stereotypes she had been taught.

She located the leader of the drumming ensemble, and recited the order

for him to begin.  At the last minute, she looked into his eyes and

gasped at what she saw.  Not only was the man brutishly ugly by palace

standards, but he was amazingly old.  He must have been well into his

forties!

Although she and her companions knew what it was to grow older, none of

them had ever met someone older than Ra, who was etemany twenty.  When

the palace children reached the age of twenty, a select few of them were

kept on as Horus guards, and the best fighters among them had the chance

to become Ra's champion, Anubis.  There was only one, extremely

difficult, way to gain this valuable position: killing the current

Anubis.  The children who were not made into guards were taken away, but

none of them knew exactly where.

The girl backed away from the horrible man with the sun-withered skin.

TWice before, she had seen the quartz caravans derivering their loads,

but always from the great height of the spacecraft.  From that angle,

the miners were mere dark specks scurrying in the sand, anonymous worker

ants.  In one great flash of recognition, she realized what it meant to

get old.  She turned and hurried back to the top of the ramp, where

another dozen or so of the palace children had just come squinting into

the daylight.

The drums began, drowning out the sounds of the crowd, focusing

everyone's attention on the entrance.  %%at followed was a pathetic

scene, a painfully obvious, self-aggrandizing religious

ceremony-cum-political manipulation.  Ra

celebrating Ra.  Worse: Ra coercing others to celebrate him m a ceremony

as subtle as the half-time entertainment at a college footb all game.

The Americans found the flamboyant, overly dramatic entrance disgusting.

The long skeins of burgundy sdk were pulled aside to reveal a beautiful

throne sitting on two long bars.  The four Horus guards at the top of

the ramp lifted the throne and carried it into the sunlight.

A moment later, the frightening jackal-headed warrior, Anubis, came

through the doorway clutching Daniel by the arm.  The American soldiers,

still on their knees fifty yards away, looked at one another in

confusion.  O'Nefl looked like he'd seen a ghost.  And, in a sense, he

had.

"You told us he was dead," Kawalsky snarled at his superior officer,

trusting him less than ever.

O'Nefl didn't know how to respond.  Something was very wrong with this

picture.  He had seen Daniel's chest and stomach turned into minced meat

with his own two eyes .

No human body could suffer that kind of devastation and come out of it

alive.  Not even close.  But there was something else.  if anything,

Daniel now seemed stronger, more alive.  His glasses were gone, but he

wasn't fumbling around lik in rm Th

e a squ ting wo .  e idea crossed O'Neil's mind that the Daniel Jackson

standing next to Anubis, the one who looked relatively relaxed and

revitalized, could very well be an imposter.  His suspicions were fueled

by the fact that Daniel wasn't making eye contact.

When he cameinto the open, Sha'llri fought the impulse to cam out to him

over the rhythm of the drums.  Instead she looked eagerly across the

ramp once more to her brother and pye him a nod.  At once, Skaara and

Nabeh squeezed their way through the crowd, moving to their positions .

Sha'llri was already where she was supposed to be.

Anubis stepped out into the middle of the platform at the top of the

ramp and stretched his powerful arms into the air, silencing the drums

and the crowds.  It was Kasuf's cue.

Assisted by a pair of Nagada's Elders, Kasuf mounted the platform not

far from where the soldiers were kneering like sacrificial heifers.  The

old priest was in obvious pain, his visibly bruised face telling only a

small part of the internal injuries he had suffered.  He had been afraid

to come that day, knowing that another thrashing would end his life.

But he had been more afraid still that a similar beating might be meted

out to one of his people instead.

The crowd waited in nearly perfect silence until Kasuf suddenly began.

At the top of his lungs, he shouted the name of Ra.  When they heard the

name of their dreaded king, the thousands fell to their knees and

prostrated themselves facedown in the sand.

Daniel, usually so curious and alert, seemed to be lost in thought.  He

stood looking out into the desert over the heads of the crowd until a

swift kick from Anubis took his feet out from under him.  All must bow

before the omnipotent Ra.

From memory, Kasuf sang a short liturgical pacon to their king-god.  At

the end of the song, he stood and caned a question to the prostrate

thousands.  They shouted back their answer in one deafening voice.

"Ra, sa' adam Y'emallah nhet!"

Kasuf called another question, projecting his voice as far into the

desert air as he could.  Again, the answer came.

"Ra, sa' adam y'emallah nhet!"

Several times more, his call met with this response.  As if

spontaneously submitting to poptdar demand, a brilliant gold figure

emerged slowly from the deep shadows inside the pyramid.  It was Ra,

disguised in his golden facade.  He moved slowly, fluidly into the

sunlight, floating over the ground like a figure wW%g through a dream.

At length, he arrived at his throne and, as his servant children

clustered themselves around him, he delicately sat down.  One at a time,

the cheerless crowd began to stand.  Everyone knew what would happen

next, and although it made them angry, not a single person dared to

express their feelings.

Anubis left Daniel's side and went to Ra's throne.  Dropping to one

knee, he extended his weapon in both hands, offering it to his lord with

a ceremonial gesture, his head deeply bowed.  Ra nodded once very

broadly, then, milking every ounce of drama the moment would yield, he

extended his arm, pointing theatrically toward Daniel.  Anubis bowed

once more before standing up and walking back to Daniel.

While this charade was transpiring, SWa was doing everything he could to

catch Daniel's attention.  He couldn't simply call out.  Anubis was too

close, and the other Horus guards were scrutinizing the crowd carefully.

Skaara

coughed, he scratched his head, he pretended to sneeze .

Nothing worked, and there wasn't much time left.

The whole time, Daniel was staring at his feet, lost in a confused

tangle of thoughts.  There certainly wasn't any love lost between

himself and the Marines he'd come with, but he couldn't imagine killing

them.  And yet, that seemed like the only reasonable course of action

under the circumstances.  Daniel realized no matter what he did, the

kneeling soldiers were as good as deadmself included.  On the other

hand, he could refuse to pull the trigger.  But in that case, he

believed Ra would make good on his promise to kill "all who had seen

him."

The dilemma was doubly painful because Daniel had brought it upon

himself.  He hadn't told the whole truth when General West had asked him

whether he could bring the men back through.  The digital pictures of

the second StarGate sent back to Earth by the Maple Unit were clear

enough: there was no cartouche in the room, no reliable way of

establishing the new coordinates for the trip back home.  He guessed

that West was going to send the team through whether or not Daniel went

with them.  He was miffing to risk himself to satisfy his curiosity,

and, as he had done so often in his life, he had faded to consider the

consequences of his actions on other people.  Now, millions of people

would have to pay dearly for his selfishness and overweening curiosity.

If he did as Ra asked, he could at least spare the few here who he had

"contaminated" by Wlowing them to think he was a messenger of Ra.

Sha'llri being one of them.

He lifted his eyes and looked at the soldiers, all of them staring

straight back at him.  O'Nefl figured Daniel couldn't look at them

because he'd decided to accept whatever false promises Ra had made him.

Skaara, still fidgeting nearby, interpreted Daniel's demeanor as one of

despair, just at the moment when he was trying to offer some hope.  But

Daniel was actually trying to summon the strength to do this horrible

thing, the power to embrace the lesser of two evils.

With an exaggerated gesture, large enough to be seen far back into the

crowd, Anubis trust the pulse rifle into Daniel's hands, then yanked him

roughly down the ramp toward

the soldiers.  Daniel felt dazed as he was marched past the stone-silent

crowd feeling the first heat of the morning, the giant's hand strangling

the blood in his arm, and the sun continuously glinting into his eyes

from aB directions.  He thought there must stiff be a way out, some

compromise to be struck, some alternative he could present to the

sadistic boy-tyrant that would save the lives of his companions, the

wretched slaves in the sand around him, and the people back on Earth who

would be next.  Then Anubis stopped him.  He was now face-to-face with

the soldiers.  He could see their lips moving, speaking urgent words,

threats, ideas or please, he couldn't hear them.  He felt Anubis's hands

on his hands, arranging them on the rifle, pointing it at the soldiers,

then reaching down and sliding his hand along the underside of the gun

causing it to click open, ready to fire .

The harsh glare of three guns poured in from every angle, the beams

jabbing like fingernails into his eyes.

He realized something was reflecting the sunlight from below, someone's

jewelry or perhaps a shiny button.  It was very distracting.  How ironic

that such a peltry annoyance could catch his attention when people's

lives, thousands of them, were hanging in the balance.  Nevertheless,

Daniel stiffed from his catatonic musings long enough to deal with this

bothersome detail.  As Anubis made his way back up the ramp, leaving

Daniel guarded by the two Horus guards tending the soldiers, he glanced

down into the crowd and saw Skaara using O'Nefl's lighter to reflect the

sun up into his eyes.

When Skaara had his attention, he opened his long coat just enough to

show Daniel that he was concealing one of the rifles from the base camp.

Then, with a slight tilt of his head, he directed Daniel to look on the

other side of the ramp.  Daniel followed the boy's eyes to where Sha'll

was standing.  She smiled up at him eagerly as the boys surrounding her

showed him that they, too, were armed.

Daniel nodded once to show he understood, then suddenly broke out of his

torpor.  He took a deep breath, then let his instincts carry him the

rest of the way.  He shouted to the crowd in broken but passionate

Egyptian.

"There is only one Ra.  He tells me to kill these men, my friends, my

brothers.  I will obey him unto death."

Really getting into his act, Daniel pointed a finger at the soldiers,

thundering about how evd they had been to challenge the god of the sun.

Slowly he raised the rift to his shoulder and leveled it at the other

Americans.

Suddenly, Daniel whipped around to face the pyramid entrance.  He closed

his eyes and squeezed the trigger.  The deadly pulse of energy exploded

out of his rifle, careem'ng toward Ra's throne with a terrifying whine.

Before it hit, O'Ned was already on his feet and in the process of

disanning the nearest Horus guard.  The shot exploded into the ramp less

than five feet from Ra and his entourage, sending chunks of paving stone

and dust flying into the air.

At the same time, Skaara took out his rifle, pointed at the sky, and

held the trigger in the fire position.  The other shepherd boys did the

same thing.  The result was predictable: aB hell broke loose.  The

terrified crowd scattered in all directions, everyone crashing into

everyone else.

O'Ned snapped open the pulse rifle he had just taken from one Horus, and

used it to kdl the other.  Freeman hoisted Feretti onto his shoulder and

lugged him to the edge of the ramp, tossing him over the side before

jumping himself.  He never made it to the ground.  While he was stU) in

the air, Anubis fired from behind the smoke at the top of the ramp.  The

shot went through Freeman's head like a soft watermelon, raining pieces

of him onto the screaming crowd.

Daniel and O'Neil, the last ones off the ramp, saw Freeman get hit. They

both turned and sprinted for the opposite embankment, leaping with

reckless abandon toward the dunes below.  They heard the shots whiz past

them but never realized how very close they had come.  Before they were

on the ground, Anubis was running toward them, glad that he would be the

one to kill O'Nefl.  But when he came to where they had jumped, they

were gone.  He jogged farther down the ramp, sure of spotting them

somewhere in the stampede.  Anubis unsheathed a wickedly long knife and

jumped down into the sand.  He scanned the area for several seconds

before he correctly guessed what must have happened.

The moment the soldiers were on the ground, they had been wrapped in the

thick, hooded robes, making them

unpossible to distinguish from the thousands of others who were now

beating a disorganized retreat into the dunes.

Anubis looked into the sky and signaled the udajeet, the gliders, to

come closer.  As the two small planes swooped down, the jackal-headed

god reached out and grabbed one of the terrified Nagadans.  He plunged

the long blade into the man's heart, then quickly ripped his victim's

long cloak off.  He tossed the body aside and draped the hooded robe

over himself, showing the glider pilots what they were looking for.

The glider pilots understood.  They skimmed low over the melee,

scrutinizing as many individuals as possible.  But there were thousands

of them, and they were running without pattern in every direction.

Kawalsky, still wearing his waterlogged boots, should have been an easy

target.  Not only was he much tailer than anyone who lived in Nagada, he

was carrying the wounded Feretti on his hip.  Nabeh, Rabbi, and Aksah

hustled the soldiers across the sand and into the middle of a thick herd

of mastadges.  Daniel and O'Neil were already there, waiting to mount

Little Bit.  There were twelve of the animals; two to carry the soldiers

to safety and ten to act as decays if the udajeet gave chase.

Rabbi and Aksah helped load Feretti into the sling saddle hanging off

the side of another mastadge, and, as soon as everyone was aboard,

Skaara reached his hand into the hypersensitive area behind Little Bit's

ears.  He gave her a quick scratch, then got out of the way.  The dozen

animals suddenly took off in aB different directions.

The glider pilots swooped down overhead.  The rear glider nearly

collided with the one in front as they veered to fonow different

mastadges.  By the time two gliders returned to formation, the animals

had dispersed in every direction .

Scanning the horizon, the two glider pilots could not see them anywhere.

NOWHERE TO RUN

Ra sat in his private chamber seething like a basketful of visers.

Barely in control of his temper, he waited for the pilots to return with

the clever vermin who had come through the StarGate.  He was rehearsing

the exact manner in which he would make them pay for their crimes

against him, when he felt a tug at his sleeve.  One of his servants, a

ten-year-old boy, had come to notify him that the udajeet pilots had

returned.  For no reason, Ra slapped the child hard across the face,

knocking him down.  As soon as he had done so, he felt much better,

relieved.  Then, the eternally young king stepped out of his chamber and

mounted his throne, composing himself for his visitors.

The pilots, a pair of Horus guards, marched quickly into the room,

deactivating their helmets.  They came to the base of the stairs leading

up to Ra's throne and knelt down .

Anubis, his armor still stained with blood, came into the room and stood

at Ra's side, looking down at the two empty-handed warriors.

Ra fixed his eyes on the soldiers and very calmly, he hissed the

question ." Where are they?"

"They vanished."

Furious, Anubis came down the steps and kicked the soldier who had

answered the question ." What do you mean, vanished?"

The other soldier spoke up ." They are still in the sand .

Surely the sandstorm will kill them." Losing control of their small

planes in the wind, the Horuses had searched as long as they dared.

Waiting any longer to turn back would have meant certain death, so they

decided to head back and take their chances with Ra.

As angry as he had ever been, Ra stood and walked across the room to his

jewel box.  The box opened automatically as he approached, revealing its

contents: a coin-size quartz jewel connected to looping, ornamental

strands of black wire.  The wiring fit around the boy-king's hand like

an elegant, fingerless glove, hiding the quartz jewel in the palm of his

hand.  Calmly, he turned and came back toward the anxious pilots.  He

motioned for the man who had spoken first to stand up.

Nervously, the soldier complied.  He wanted to explain why he had cut

off the chase, but Ra signaled that everything was all right now and to

be quiet.  He came face-toface with the soldier and showed him a

reassuring smile.

"You tried," he said, slowly reaching up to stroke the man's cheek, "I

know you tried." He studied the pilot's face for some time, regarding

him, it seemed, tenderly.  But his hand suddenly flew open only inches

from the pilot's face.  When he saw the medallion in Ra's palm, the

loyal Horus guard had a fraction of a second to contemplate how his life

was going to end.  The dark glove's jewel came to life and slammed the

man backward against a pillar like a wrecking ball.  Slowly, Ra moved in

for the kill.  He reached out and brought his hand down toward the dazed

man's skull.  The Horus knew that if the jewel touched his head, he

would die.  But he was only half-conscious, unable to do anything but

watch his death happen to him.

Ra's hand came gently to rest on the head.  Immediately the man's legs

shot out stiff, and his whole body began to spasm violently, as if he

were receiving an electroshock lobotomy.  The head itself began to

vibrate at an unnatural rate of speed, then suddenly went still.  Over

the next few seconds, the man's facial features began to distort

radically .

The skull lost the integrity of its shape, swelling and constricting

like a thin bag of water.

The ring's jewel worked on the same principles as the

StarGates.  But here, the quartz was put to much more sinister purposes.

As Ra held the jewel down tight on the crown of the man's head, he was

actually rearranging his molecules, liquefying him from the inside.

As serenely as if he were watering flowers in the garden, Ra stood over

the man, distracted from his own pain by this hypnotic display of

gruesome magic.  When his victim was dead, he closed his hand around the

deadly gem and sighed.

Calmer now, he walked to the other terrified soldier and ran a finger

down the curve of his nose ." Let this serve notice.  I will not accept

failure." He turned and walked back into his chamber.

Hurricane force gusts came streaking through the desert with enough

force to play the dunes like a giant wind instrument.  Fighting their

way through the blasting sand, O'Neil and Daniel held tight to Little

Bit's hairy flanks.  The hoods of their robes were pulled down past

their chins.  The air was so thick with dust, their eyes were useless

anyway.

Fatigued, Daniel stumbled and fell into the sand.  The mastadge halted

its progress, turning back and howung even louder than the wind.  O'Nefl

pulled his mask away from his eyes and fumbled around the dune until he

found Daniel already half buried in the sand.

The mastadge continued screaming into the storm as O'Nefl walked Daniel

back up the dune, but then suddenly trotted away, disappearing into the

abrasive night.  O'Neil, thinking fast, tried to have Daniel call to the

animal before it got out of range, but it didn't work.  He couldn't

understand why this mastadge would suddenly jilt her beloved, stranding

them both in the storm.  In spite of their screams, the animal was gone.

O'Nefl hauled Daniel to the top of the dune where they both sat down.

They were about as far up Shit Creek as anyone could get and their

paddle had just jogged off into the desert.  O'Neil pulled his hood

tighter over his head and felt the sand gathering around him, slowly

burying him alive.

Half an hour later, Little Bit came trundling back, howling over the

wind as she approached.  When the beast was close enough, the marooned

men were able to pick out the shapes of several helmeted figures closing

in on them.  The one in

front scrambled to the top of the dune, pulling off his helmet and ski

mask, grinning wildly.  It was Nabeh, the slightly demented shepherd

boy.

Standing behind him, decked out in the uniform of a United States

Marine, was Skaara.  He squinted at O'Ned through the flying sand and

gave him a "thumbs-up.

Propped up by the boys, his eyes swollen closed, Daniel felt his way up

the rocky hillside to the entrance of the cave .

When Kawalsky saw who it was, he lowered his rifle and came to the

entrance to help.  O'Neil walked into the shelter under his own power

and surveyed the scene.

A dozen or so of the boys, none of them old enough in O'Nefl's view to

wear a military uniform, were buttoned into the oversize camouflage togs

they'd rescued from the base cainp.  Stacked against the wails were two

dozen rifles and several crates of ammunition.  Halfway back in the

cavern, a makeshift hospital had been set up.  Brown, his arm in a

sling, was doctoring Feretti.

"You made it!" Kawalsky greeted O'Neil with a roar .

Now aB the surviving members of the team were present and accounted for.

O'Ned reached up and clapped the big man on the shoulder, a soldierly

greeting, before continuing deeper into the cave for an inspection.  He

noticed that Skaara and Nabeh were moving with him, a step behind, as if

they were now his personal bodyguards.  O'Nefl turned and studied them

with a disappointed look.

"What do you think, Colonel?" Kawalsky asked .

"They're not exactly Special Forces but they're real eager to enfist."

Obviously Kawalsky was as proud of the job the boys had done that day as

they were of themselves.

"Take the guns away from them, Lieutenant, before they hurt themselves.

"Come again, sir?"

"You heard me.  Collect the guns and send them home."

Kawalsky came within inches of exploding.  He was fed up with O'Neil

coming into situations he didn't understand, situations Kawalsky had

completely under control, and screwing everything up.

"There isn't anywhere for them to go," Kawalsky stayed cool, informative

." If they showed up in the city, they'll be

executed for helping us.  Besides, we could sure use the help, sir.  His

tone left no doubt who he was ready to stand behind if it came to a

choice.

"For what!?" O'Ned got in his face, suddenly furious .

"To do what, Lieutenant!?"

O'Neil's outburst caught everyone by surprise.  Stunned, no one knew

what to say.  To Kawalsky, the answer was obvious.  The team needed to

help to getting back through the StarGate and safely home.  He was

bewildered that his superior officer had apparently forgotten the goal

of their mission.

Daniel, who understood the source of the confusion, propped himself onto

an elbow and called out to O'Neil .

"Why don't you just tell them the truth?  Tell them about the bomb."

Kawalsky stared at O'Neil like he might be the new commanding officer

and asked him, "What's he talking about, Colonel O'Neil?"

"My orders were simple.  I was to stay behind and look for any signs of

possible danger to Earth.  If I found any, I was supposed to blow up the

StarGate.  Well guess what, I found some." O'Neil turned away not

wanting to continue this confession.

Indignant, Kawalsky snapped at O'Neil, "Why wasn't I told!"

"It was strictly need to know." O'Neil was matter-of-fact.

"Need to know?  Don't you think this is something I would damn well need

to know?"

"You weren't even supposed to be here.  None of you were.  You were all

supposed to go back through the Gate with Jackson ."

Even though Kawalsky knew O'Neil was right, he didn't like it.  He had

been the commander of this operation long before O'Neil came along, and

this option had never been discussed with him.  He had always understood

that the military often moved in strange, mysterious, and often stupid

ways, but this was too much for Kawalsky to comprehend.  There was

nothing he could say.

Frustrated with the everlasting stupidity of the military mind, Daniel

intellected.

"And this great plan of yours would leave you here with

a nuclear weapon?  Weu, it's his now, and tomorrow he's going to send it

back through the Gate along with a shipment of the quartz mineral they

mine here.  Apparently, when the bomb goes off, this shipment will

detonate and cause an explosion a hundred times more powerful than that

bomb alone is capable of"

" He told you aB this?" O'Ned asked skeptically .

"Yes.

"AH right then," O'Neil stepped forward, reassuming command of the

situation ." I'll intercept the bomb before he can send it through ."

"Colonel, listen to me," Daniel pressed ." It's the other Gate, the one

on Earth that poses the threat.  Think about it.  As long as that one is

up and functional, he'll always have access.  That's the one we have to

shut down!"

o, Neil hissed back, "You're absolutely right, but thanks to you, we

don't have that option, do we?" He stood up, walked as far toward the

mouth of the cave as the sandstonn would allow, and sat down.

"I knew it aB along," Feretti broke the silence, "this was a friggin'

suicide mission."

It took more than an hour for everyone to calm down and remember that

they were on the same side.  Daniel was kept busy the whole time

explaining what he'd learned inside the pyramid, then translating

everything for Sha'llri and the new recruits.

When everything was quiet, Daniel approached O'Neil, who was still

sitting at the mouth of the cave blankly watching the sandstorm.

"So, you've accepted the fact that you'll never go home?"

O'Neil felt as hollow as he had the day General West's men arrived at

his house.  All he did was stare straight ahead.  Daniel tried again.

"Don't you have people who care about you?  Don't you have a family?"

"I had a family," O'Ned said in a quiet monotone ." No one should ever

outlive their own child."

Daniel didn't know how to respond.  Although he'd known plenty of pain

in his life, he still didn't know how to respond

to the pain of others.  It was a brute fact.  It was there, beyond the

power of words.  When his parents died, he'd had to put up with a long

line of fools coming up to him saying, "they're happy now" and "it's

probably all for the best." He wouldn't try to cheat O'Neil of his pain

with any sugarcoated platitudes.

At the same time, he had to do something.  O'Neil was sinking fast, deep

into some hopeless place within himself, and the team couldn't afford

that right now.

"Colonel, listen"-Daniel was quiet but urgent-"I don't want to die."

That caught O'Neil's attention ." Your soldiers don't want to die.  And

these kids helping us don't want to die.  It's a shame you're in such a

hurry to."

The words punched O'Nefl in the gut.  He was about to respond, to say or

do whatever it took to get Jackson out of his face.  But when he looked

up Daniel was already walking away, and Skaara was coming toward him

balancing a tin bowl of food for his commanding officer.

O'Neil watched him spill a few drops of broth over the rim of the dish,

his tongue poking between his teeth to help him concentrate.  During the

altercation with Kawalsky, Skaara had backed him up, telling the bigger

soldier in Egyptian that he'd better back off or else.

"Anasaar?" he asked, offering the bowl to O'Neil.

Still thinking about what Daniel had said, O'Ned turned and focused on

the storm.  Skaara was confused.  He sniffed at the bowl of stew and

decided it was pretty decent for cave cooking.  Completing his journey,

he arrived at O'Nefl's side and set the bowl down in front of him.

When the man in the black heret ignored him, Skaara playfully slid the

plate closer.  Then a little closer.  Then once more.  Then several more

times, he invited the colonel to eat.  It was the goofiest thing O'Neil

had seen for a long time, and he waved the boy off to make him quit. But

Skaara could see he was winning the battle and wouldn't let up.

When O'Neil turned his glum face to show the kid he was serious, to just

leave him alone, Skaara clucked like a chicken and flapped his wings.

Something Feretti taught him a few minutes earlier.

O'Neil caved in.  It was too ridiculous, he had to smile .

"Chicken, right?"

"Shickan!" the boy repeated with so much exuberance, O'Nefl couldn't

help but laugh.  He reached out and used his fingers to mess up Skaara's

hair in a spontaneous show of affection.  Then he leaned forward and

picked up the bowl, accepting the gift the boy had brought him.

Twenty minutes later, the bowl was empty and the colonel was gazing out

at the storm, his mind on the other side of the universe.  He was

thinking back to a particular afternoon in Yuma.  A clear day in late

spring two years ago when he'd pulled into the driveway, honked to say

he was home, then got the equipment bag out of the garage and threw it

in the back of the station wagon.  He got back in the car and leaned on

the horn, to no avail.  He didn't know what was taking the kid so long,

but whatever it was, it couldn't be worth showing up late for the very

first game of the season.  He slammed the car door and went to the front

door, which was locked.  He had left the keys in the ignition.  By the

time he was back and unlocking the front door, he sensed that something

must be very wrong.  The moment he swung the door open, he knew it for

sure.

He scanned the living room.  It was messy but normal.

"Son, you in here?  J.J.?"

He walked into the living room, but by the time he was in the hallway,

he was running.  He burst into the boy's room .

His uniform jersey was hanging on the back of a chair.  He went into his

own room.  The nightstand on Sarah's side of the bed was opened.  It was

supposed to be locked at all times.  That's when he heard the siren and

figured it all out.

For a minute he stood there like a statue staring at the open drawer

where Sarah kept the pistol.  He knew it was loaded, and knew if he

reached for the key taped to the underside of the bed it wouldn't be

there.  He kept hoping he was wrong, that the sound of the siren would

veer away to some other part of the neighborhood.  But it kept coming.

He checked Sarah's bathroom.  Nothing, clean.  He came back in to the

hallway and started toward the kitchen, but then turned and ran to the

back porch.  The siren was almost to their door when he looked outside

and saw two of the neighbor kids standing in the yard, leaning over his

son .

There was a long fan of blood spattered across the wall of the garage.

The gun was laying nearby in the grass.

He hardly recalled opening the door and coming outside, nor hearing the

two friends try to explain what had happened.  But he remembered the

image of the boy's crumpled body, half-dressed for the baseball game,

lying bloody and disfigured in the grass.  Before the paramedics arrived

to tell him what he already knew, he got down in the grass and did

something he hadn't done for years.  He cradled the boy in his arms,

rocking him back and forth.

One bullet right through the head.  After that, Jack O'Neil, Sr.  didn't

want to move anymore, didn't want to speak, didn't want to go through

the motions of grieving for the boy.  AH he wanted to do was lay down

next to his child and die.  That's how the paramedic team found him when

they came through the gate a few n-dnutes later, the same state Sarah

had to nurse him through while she struggled to deal with her own loss.

It was the same state of self-loathing and anguish O'Ned was in two

years later when General West's men came to visit.

He just wanted it to be over.

When O'Nefl reemerged into the present, Skaara was sitting next to him,

drawing in the sand on the cave floor and watching O'Nefl think.  He'd

never met a soldier before, but he knew O'Nefl was a good one.  He had

already made up his mind to be like this man, to become someone with the

skills and determination to protect his people.

As Daniel made his way to the remote area of the grotto where Sha'llri

had set up her camp kitchen beneath a natural ventilation shaft, he saw

something he took as a bad sign .

Feretti and Kawalsky were huddled in a conspiratorial conference.  When

Daniel came close to them, they turned and glared at him untu he was

gone.

Still looking back at the clutch of soldiers, Daniel came to the

makeshift "kitchen." Sitting around the fire, the shepherd boys were

holding their bowls, obviously ready to eat.

"Is it ready?" he asked Sha'll, who was busy stroking the fire below the

small pot.  She indicated that indeed it was, so Daniel took one of the

bowls and scooped out a measure of both broth and meat before returning

it to the amazed child.  AH the boys stared at him like he'd just puned

his tongue out of his nose.

"What?" he said in English.

One of the kids said something and all of them, Sha'llri included,

started cracking up.

"'Mat?!"

While the boys continued making jokes too fast and too colloquial for

Daniel to catch, each one apparently more sidesphttingly funny than the

last, Sha'llri took two servings of food out to the soldiers.  Daniel,

fed up, tackled Nabeh to the ground, pinning him.

"Why do you laugh?" he demanded in ancient Egyptian.

But by that point, everything was funny, and Daniel's question only

succeeded in knocking the boys over backward, laughing even harder.

Finally, Nabeh regained control of his breathing and explained,

"Bani time- ateru ani, hee na'a ani-ben ." Literally: The ones who are

husbands do not do this, this kind of work.

"Husband?" The short hairs on Daniel's neck stood up .

He refled off Nabeh just as Sha'llri returned to the room .

"Sha'llri"-he switched back to Egyptian-"crazy boy here just called me

your husband."

Daniel had meant it to be lighthearted even though he wanted an answer.

The boys busted their collective gut repeating the words "crazy boy" and

pointing at Nabeh .

Nabeh got the joke; he punched Daniel in the arm.  But to everyone's

surprise, the young woman fled the area, retreating into a dimly lit

region of the cave.  Like men of all galaxies, they looked at each other

understanding they'd done something wrong, without knowing exactly what.

Daniel stood up and, after a suitable pause, followed Sha'llri around

the corner.  He found her sitting by herself at the very back of the

cave.

"What is it?" he asked.  He realized that she wasn't angry, but somehow

ashamed.

Nearby the boys had snuck up to spy on them.  Sha'llri could hear her

brother shooing them away.  Only when they were gone did she speak.

"I'm so sorry.  Please don't be angry with me, but I didn't tell them."

"Tell them what?" Daniel asked.

"That you did not want me."

Daniel was puzzled untu he realized she meant the night

she came to his room in Nagada, the night the townspeople had offered

her to him.  Now she was turned away from him, this fragile creature he

understood so poorly, feeling ashamed and rejected.  He reached out and

took her shoulders awkwardly into his hands.  His pulse quickened and

his mouth started going dry, sitting there in the dark with this woman

he desired so badly, wanting to comfort and assure her.  Desiring

nothing more than to kiss her, but painfully aware of the many great

distances that separated them, how imperfectly they knew each other and

knowing that he would soon have to leave this place or die trying.  In

spite of all that, he pulled her closer, and when she turned her face to

his, began to trace her features with his fingertips.  He started having

that same sensation of ddj vu he'd experienced the first time he'd seen

her, but this time he understood why.  This upturned face he held in his

hands was the same face he'd loved on Earth, the same face he'd taken

with him to Colorado.  Sha'llri could have been the model for the

fourteenth-century statuette that had been his greatest treasure on

Earth.  Daniel felt like he should tell her, explain the whole amazing

coincidence.  But by that point their lips were too close for words, too

close to do anything but kiss.

The first thing Daniel saw when he woke up the next morning was

Sha'llri's face.  It was still peacefully sleeping only inches away from

his.  He thought about everything that had been said and done the night

before, and he couldn't help it-he bust out grinning.  He roned on his

back, put his hands under his head, and grinned at the ceding.  That's

when he noticed Nabeh was sleeping only inches behind him.  Still

wearing his helmet, his mouth hung open in a way that changed Daniel's

expression immediately.  Suddenly, sitting up seemed like an

irresistible idea .

When he did, Daniel realized that aB the shepherd boys had snuggled into

a limb-tangled circle around him and Sha'llri .

Obviously these folks had a slightly different sense of privacy than he

did.

He could see Skaara working on something at the mouth of the cave, white

smoke from one of the dying fires of waiting everywhere around him.

Stepping carefully over the ring of dreaming boys, Daniel tiptoed

through the cave to

see what Skaara was up to.  Inspired by the visual history he'd seen in

the catacombs, Skaara had decided to tell a story of his own.  He was

sitting on a stone-block stool, furiously sketching a scene onto the

wall.

Kawalsky, the first one awake, had posted himself to lookout duty, just

beyond the mouth of the cave.  He nodded a "morning" in at Daniel, who

sat down near the artist to watch him work.

Skaara was no Rembrandt.  He was using a soft red stone to mark down the

story of the rescue he had helped to plan.  The wobbly pyramid, drawn

small, was surrounded by gigantic stick-figure boys shooting dots into

the air.  Hovering above the pyramid, the planet's three suns hung just

below the pair of gliders maliciously spying on the whole scene.  A set

of confused squiggles represented the soldiers kneeling on the ramp, and

Ra, a big frown plastered across his face, sat facing them.  Daniel,

spiked hair and three long toes on each foot, was shown holding his gun,

blasting backward toward the pyramid.  Nabeh was visible, smiling

maniacally, his head shaped like a half dome.

As Daniel settled in to watch, Skaara was working on the image of

himself.  Drawn from his perspective, he became the largest figure on

the rough canvas.  With one hand, he held the long reins trailing across

the desert toward a trio of mastadges.  In the other, his airborne rifle

was shooting right through one of the suns.  The way he drew his own

face changed the meaning of everything else in the picture.  His mouth

was opened in a ferocious war cry.  Daniel watched, fascinated, as

Skaara repeatedly twisted his own face into an angry mask, then tried to

transfer the image onto the rock.

Next it was Daniel's face that twisted.  He suddenly realized what he

was watching and how important it was.  Skaara was writing, recording

the first history of these people done in many centuries.  Daniel, the

boyish historian could not help but love that.  For Daniel, wherever

there was writing, culture, and a serious attempt to understand the

lessons of history, there was hope.  The grin came back.  Daniel had

lucked out and was sitting here in a cave on a different planet watching

the dawn of a new "ancient Egyptian" culture.

It was one of those perfect moments, but one that brought with it a

sense of responsibility.  Whether Skaara's talents

as an historian would be allowed to flourish and infect the rest of his

people was still in question.  They still had to face Ra.

As Daniel sat there in the rising sunlight, his mind went blank.  He had

been staring at Skaara's large drawing for several minutes when it fell

out of his mouth.

"The point of origin." His first words of the morning caught in his

throat.  Kawalsky turned around in time to see Daniel digging through

the fire for a half-burnt stick.

"Jackson, what're you doing?"

"The point of origin!" This time his voice rang out clearly, tearing

through the cave like a wake-up bell.  Daniel fished a twig out of the

fire and using the charcoal end of it, traced over the top angle of the

pyramid.  Then, with another, he drew a line connecting the three suns.

The angles were parallel and congruent, like the stripes of a chevron.

It was a symbol Daniel remembered from the StaGate.  It had to be the

seventh symbol, the point of origin, the thing he needed to make good on

his promise to get them all home .

Neither Kawalsky nor Skaara understood why Daniel was messing up the

boy's artwork.

" I found it!  That's it, three suns above the pyramid."

Now everybody was waking up looking at Daniel.

"Here it is, the seventh sign.  We're going home!"

THE TROJAN HORSE

Standard procedure on shipment days called for every able-bodied person

in Nagada to come to the pit.  They worked for two or three easy hours,

no one climbing the eleven-story ladder more than twice.  When the carts

were loaded, a small contingent brought the ore to the pyramid and sent

it through the StarGate.  By the early evening when they returned, the

city was ready to celebrate the feast of Tekfaalit, marking the end of

the forty-day work cycle.

Prayers and songs thanking Ra for all he provided were followed by an

outdoor feast.  Celebrants moved from house to house, offering and

receiving food and drink.  This was the only day of the month to drink

the delicious Tabaa, a sweet liquor brewed from fermented desert shurbs

that when ingested in sufficient quantities produced states of

intoxication.  The Nagadans made sure to ingest the necessary

quantities.  By midnight half the two was upped to the gills, and the

party in the streets routinely lasted into the next morning.

But today, was no ordinary Tekfaalit.  Ra had been anticipating the

moves of his human subjects for thousands of years.  Although he could

be rash, he also knew how to be careful.  Less than a thousand workers

had been permitted to enter, and they were being driven zealously up and

down the ladder by Ra's most sadistic henchmen.  But it wasn't

physical fear of the guard that made the workers obey, it was because

they believed the myths they had been told since birth.  That was why Ra

needed so few guards to shepherd so many workers.

Strapped to his back was the tail staff weapon, but his tool of choice

was the leather whip.  He lashed at the fellahin almost continuously,

eager to bring the shipment to his master as quickly as possible.  A few

of the older workers had already collapsed under the strain, but they

had done so well away from the sharp eyes of the hawk-helmeted guard.

High above on the cliffs, ready to march in the direction of the

pyramid, four stately mastadges stood tethered to four-wheeled cargo

carts.  Each of the hairy animals had been painstakingly washed and

groomed, decorated with ornate prayer shawls, small bells, and long

braided garlands of dried desert flowers.  The rickety wooden carts

behind them each carried about a ton of quartz, and, with the workers

dumping the ore by the sack ' ful, were nearly full and ready to move.

By tradition, the first cart was filled only with the largest nuggets,

normally no larger than walnuts .

The last cart, the heaviest, was rifled with quartz powder.

Spread around the dusty floor of the pit were half a dozen processing

pavilions.  These workstations were marked by a small obelisk rising

through the canvas roof of a large tent .

This is where the raw quartz was sifted, sorted according to size and

purity, the cleaned.  Everything was saved, down to the last granulated

shavings, which were blended with other materials to produce valuable

alloys.

Loading their sacks full with the mineral, the feflahin carried them

across the hot sand to the base of the giant ladders running like a scar

up the side of the cliff.  Climbing these ladders was no easy feat.

Climbing them with one hundred pounds of deadweight on your back in one

hundreddegree heat was not only tiring, it was dangerous.  Since the

great majority of the Nagadans had been forced to turn around and march

home, those who were working had to make many trips up the wall.

Eventually, one of the laborers wilted and collapsed near where the

Horus guard had stationed himself.  He had been waiting his turn at the

base of the ladder when he apparently

succumbed to heat exhaustion.  Several nearby workers tried to help him

regain his feet, but before they could do so, Horus was jogging toward

them screaming for the man to get up and work.

When he came within striking distance, the powerfully butt young man

used his whip to put a stripe across the back of the fallen worker,

cutting right through the thick material of his robe.  The man tried to

stand but slumped once more into the sand, sending Horus into a rage.

The hawk-headed god unsheathed a seffated dagger, ready to teach the

others a gruesome lesson.

But at the last second, the rainer flipped nimbly onto his back, showing

Horus the business end of a pulse rifle, the very weapon Ra had handed

to Daniel.  Horus, frozen, stared at the exhausted worker, Colonel Jack

O'Neil of the U.S.M.C.  Staring right back, O'Neil methodically cocked

the weapon open and hopped to his feet.  At the same time, several of

the surrounding "miners" pulled rifles from beneath their robes and

trained them on Horus.

Slowly his fingers loosened around the whip handle, and he let it drop

to the ground.  Kawalsky moved behind him and took the pulse rifle off

his back.

Kasuf's voice came piercing down from the top of the cliff towering

above them.  Horrified, he came running along the lip of the ravine

toward the scene of the confrontation .

When he understood what was happening, he flew into an absolute panic,

pointing and screaming.  Hundreds of surprised miners began slowly

surrounding the ragtag commando squad and their prisoner, obviously

confused about what to do.

Whatever the old man was saying, it was working.  O'Neil saw Sha'llri,

Skaara, and the other amateurs in the group looking up toward the man,

listening.  He knew the old man was trying to scare everyone back into

obedience .

Something had to be done quickly.

"Jackson," O'Neil yelled, "what's he saying?"

Daniel listened for a minute, then tried to interpret Kasuf's apoplectic

rantings ." He's saying we're going to bring n-dsery to his people ...

uh, massacre-that Ra win slaughter everyone who disobeys.  And ...  now

he's telling them not to cooperate with us ...  not to anger the gods."

"Don't anger the gods, huh?" O'Ned looked at Horus with contempt.

Casually, he paced off the short distance between them, and peered into

the golden screen at the throat of the large hawk mask.  He was standing

face-toface with the dreaded, invincible deity and wasn't at all

impressed.  All attention was once again riveted on him.

Then, just as nonchalantly as he had approached, O'Nefl turned his back

on the hawk-headed soldier, standing well within his reach.  He knew his

men would take the man out if he tried anything cute.  O'Neil shook his

head in a display of noncomprehension.

"This guy ain't no god!"

He turned, pointed his rifle at Horus's chest, and pulled the trigger.

The blast hit the warrior square on his armored chest plate, knocking

him backward like he'd collided with a truck.  He landed in a heap

several feet away.

"Nghaaaaaah!"

Kasuf screamed out like he was the one who had been shot.  The scream

modulated into a long plaintive wail spifling into the long human-made

valley.  Kawalsky, O'Ned, and Brown, not knowing what to expect next,

concentrated on covering the crowd with their rifles.  No one on the

floor of the pit, could believe what O'Neil had just done.  Only a few

days before, they had felt the consequences of Ra's anger, cowered

helplessly as their city was hacked apart and burned for a crime much

less severe than this.  And now, this violent miracle, this impossible,

unimaginable crime had taken place without warningright before their

eyes.  A few of the miners immediately fell to their knees and,

following Kasuf's example, broke into ardent prayer .

But most were too stunned, too confused by what they had witnessed, to

react at all.

O'Neff was on the warpath now.  He turned to his troops and boomed out

his command ." Okay, let's get to the carts .

Now!" The very next moment he was leading the way, crashing through the

crowd toward the base of the cliffs.

Daniel knew something wasn't right.  Lagging behind the others, he

looked into the faces of the astonished populace .

Frightened and utterly confused, they avoided his glance .

He could see that they didn't understand what had happened.  Without

quite knowing why, he knew it was imperative for them to understand that

the killing was an act of tyrannicide.

"Wait a second!" he called forward.  He ran over to the helmeted

villain's limp body, and twisted the connecting tabs at the base of the

helmet.  The elaborately decorated metallic plates silently retracted,

folding themselves back into the golden collar at the top of his

breastplate.

Beneath the mask was the unremarkable face of Ra's darkest-skinned

warrior, the bald-headed young man who supervised the slaughter of

Nagada.  Except for his armor and the udjat, the Eye of Ra design,

tattoed on his shoulder, he looked like he could have belonged to any

family in the ancient city.

Daniel hoisted him up to a sitting position, displaying him to the

assembled miners.

"Take a look at your gods!" he shouted in Egyptian loud enough to be

heard over Kasuf's song ." He is a man like any other.

Soon both Kasuf and Daniel were drowned out by the excited chatter

spreading like a brushfire through the ranks of the workers.  It was an

amazing moment.  Daniel watched as the veils of illusion fell away from

the eyes of these downtrodden people.  With a certain amount of

showmanship, Daniel shoved the slack body forward into the dirt.  He

picked up the pulse rifle Kawalsky had given him, and moved to rejoin

the squad.

Most of the Nagadans were now firn-fly on his side.  As he passed, many

offered words of congratulation or encouragement.  Buoyed, Daniel

sauntered with an extra bounce in his step.  He felt he'd handled the

situation pretty damn well.

He spotted his beautiful Sha'llri beaming down at him proudly.  Her

expression quickly chatiged to one of horror as she looked again in the

direction of Horus.  Sudden cries from the crowd alerted him to an

approachin,, danger.

O'Neil's shot had hit nothing but armor.  It had knocked the man

unconscious, but now he had come around and woozily grabbed one of the

mining tools, a pickax from the ground.  By the time Daniel wheeled

around, the warrior was rearing back with the ax, ready to chop.

Without time to think, Daniel pointed his weapon and fired.  It was only

the second time in his life lied pulled a

trigger, but his shot hit exactly where it needed to-beneath the armored

breastplate-and ripped into the soldier's unprotected stomach.  The

pulse sent him pinwheeling backward through the air.  The gruesome

flight ended with his head finding the corner of a retaining wail.  Even

the professional soldiers grimaced at the moment of impact.  If the

crowd was stunned before, now they were positively stupelied.  But none

more so than Daniel, who stood with the gun quaking in his hands.

"Not so easy, is it?"

O'Neil had scrambled down the ladder and was easing the rifle out of the

shaken scholar's hands.

It was Nabeh's idea to replace the lead animal in the delivery train

with the Mthy slobbering beast that saved Daniel and O'Neil from the

sandstorm-an act of heroism that had earned her a place on the team.

Using the bangles and garlands from the lead animal, the boys did what

they could to improve the looks of their decidedly uglier friend before

harnessing him to the front cart.

As soon as O'Neil made the top of the ladder, he shouted the order for

the caravan to head out.  Skaara relayed the order to the other shepherd

boys.  With whoops and shouts, they spurred the mastadges into action.

Although the carts were piled high with the heavy ore, the powerful

beasts pulled them with surprising ease.  O'Neil had been expecting a

slow trudge across the sand, but found he had to jog along behind the

last cart to keep up.

In the shadow of the obelisks, Daniel saw an irate Kasuf holding

Sha'llri by the sleeve of her thick gray robe.  He was obviously

berating her for taking part in what he considered an act of suicidal

madness.

Kawalsky raced ahead to join the caravan, but Daniel fingered, watching

the scene with mixed emotions.  Sha'llri was an integral part of the

plan she had helped to design; the team needed her.  On the other hand,

it was incredibly dangerous.  Chances were that they would all be

killed, a fact the shepherd boys seemed not to understand.  Daniel was

witting to take the risk because he wanted to protect the Earth from Ra.

But why should Sha'llri risk her life for the good of a planet she

hadn't even imagined a month before.

As Kasuf continued to shout, the girl was visibly torn .

Trained to be blindly obedient, especially to this man who was not only

her father, but the Chief Elder and patriarch of her people, she felt

immobilized, her feet frozen to the spot .

When she looked up and saw Daniel, she gained the courage to try and

explain why she had to go to the pyramid, but this only incensed the old

one further.

Since before Sha'llri was born, Kasuf had preached unquestioning

servility to Ra, shepherding his flock away from conflicts they were

bound to lose.  He was among the very few who knew the whole secret

history of Nagadas ancient rebellions and he knew how painfully each of

the uprisings had ended.  His people thought they had tasted Ra's full

vengeance when the Horuses came to punish the city, but the old man knew

better.  He understood how venomously cold-blooded the sun god could be.

To Kasuf, it felt like the end of the world, the sky shattering and

crashing down around him.  And at that moment, Sha'llri seemed like the

only part of the world he could control.  He wouldn't allow this

ignorant young woman to tell him how to behave toward his unforgiving

god.

"Sha'llri.

When she heard Daniel call her name, the decision was made once and for

all.  Slowly and deliberately, she twisted her arm free of Kasuf's grip.

After all, she was physically stronger than he.  Kasuf stepped back,

aghast at this act of insubordination.

Without rancor, Sha'llri said it was better to die on your feet than

live on your knees.  It was a hard thing to say to the old man she loved

so much, and then ran to catch up with Daniel.

As she came toward him, Daniel suddenly remembered the formula for power

Ra had blithely explained to him: Myth, Faith, Habit.

The people in the mining pit who had witnessed the confrontation and

then the execution had seen a crucial part of Ra's false governing

Myth-the immortality of the godxposed as a sham.  This new evidence had

severely undermined their Faith.  But, looking back at Kasuf, Daniel

realized that Habit, once it was established, would always be the last

of the three to die.

Ra sat draped sideways across a chair staring blankly out the great

window of his pyramid craft at the endless empty desert.  He was idly

stroking the black cat lying across his arm.  He called the cat Hathor

in honor of the female god who had once saved his fiefdom by drowning it

in the blood of the rebels.  Confficting versions of the story reached

Earth a few years before the StarGate was "sealed and buried for all

time." Recorded by scribes on papyrus and carved into stone by masons,

Daniel knew the bloody story well, but had always considered it merely

another episode in Egyptian mythology .

The boy-king, bare-headed and his skin showing its natural brown color,

spotted the caravan crawling across the barren sea of sand.  He stood

and watched for a few moments.  Nothing distinguished this caravan from

the countless others he'd observed.  Still, something about the scene

brought the barest smile to his lips.  He realized that he was glad the

fair-skinned one with the glasses had escaped .

It made everything more interesting.  There was even the possibility

that he was part of the delivery team, disguised no doubt as one of the

feflahin.

Swaying back and forth ever so slightly, Ra fell into a daydream.  When

he emerged from it several minutes later, his mood was completely

different.  He shouted a command, and a moment later, two of his Horus

guards were kneeling before him awaiting their orders with heads hung

low.

He told the nearly identical soldiers to transport the tray with the

captured American weapon to the StarGate room before going to meet the

shipment.  When the shipment was sent through, the bomb would be set to

go off and sent along with it.  Like a pair of waiters at an

unappetizing banquet, they marched the length of the throne room

balancing the large platter, laden with the disassembled nuclear

explosive.

They marched the length of the throne room and stepped onto the

medallion, wrapped in the black arms of Khnum .

Ra looked at Anubis and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, obviously

expecting something.  It was a sadistic game Ra played with his servants

when he was angry or bored-forcing them to guess what he wanted.

Guessing

wrong could, and often did, lead to bnital, painful punishment.  In this

case, Anubis had enough information.

Anubis pressed the jewel mounted in the scarab on the back of his thick

quartz and iron wristband, activating the medallion.  When the circular

wail of cloudy blue fight closed the Horuses and their cargo, they were

gently ferried down to the medallion below.

Young Skaara was in charge of the operation now.  During the long march

through the and desert, O'Neil and the boy rode atop the piles of quartz

locked in an intense discussion of strategy that went well beyond the

skill of their interpreter, Daniel.  After teaching them some basic

vocabulary, Daniel could only stand by and listen as the two of them

sped through one idea after the next.  With gestures, pantomime and

twenty-five words in common, the man and the boy pored over every detail

of the plan, occasionally breaking out of their huddle to explain a new

wrinkle to the others.

Long before they reached the pyramid's entrance ramp, they assumed they

were being watched.  There was a strict protocol to be observed before

the delivery could be brought into the pyramid.  The religious people of

Nagada, were, of course, scrupulous about practicing these rites even

when the pyramid was empty.  Skaara had participated in many deliveries,

and, as Kasuf's youngest son, had even led the ceremony before.  But

this he would be doing so under Ra's scrutiny while accompanied by the

four uninitiated visitors .

Anything wrong or unusual would arouse suspicion.

When they were assembled at the base of the long ramp, Skaara knelt down

between the obelisks and sang in a strong clear voice.

"Atema en-Re.  Hallam a'ana t'yon shaknom, assar Atem Re.  " (Ra who

comes from the sun, we now submit gratefully the results of our labor,

Holy Sun God Ra.)

When he was finished., he stood and looked at Nabeh for an opinion.  His

eccentric friend shrugged in return as if to say the song had been good

enough.

"What is that?" Skaara noticed something under Nabeh's haik.

"What is what?" he tried to act innocent.

"Under your haik.  It's the green hat, isn't it?"

Nabeh didn't know what to say, so he grinned nervously .

Everyone had told him he couldn't bring the helmet, but he didn't want

to leave it back in the cave.  He could tell from the way Skaara mas

talking to him, that he'd made a big mistake.

The next moment, Nabeh's lunatic eyes filled with dread as he looked

past Skaara's shoulder to the pyramid entrance.  Three Horus warriors

stepped onto the platform a the top of the ramp, each of them holding

one e deadly staffs.

Paralyzed, Skaara spent a moment visualizing what would happen to them

all if these guards discovered Nabeh, s beloved polyurethane treasure.

Not knowing exactly what to do next, Skaara ordered the delivery crew,

all of them wearing their hoods pulled low over their faces, to kneel in

respect to the gods.

After what seemed to him an appropriate amount of time, Skaara stood and

unhamessed Daniel's mastadge, Little Bit, pulling her aside and handing

the reins to Nabeh, speaking angrily under his breath.

"If they find the hat, they will kill us."

Nabeh, the simpleton, didn't quite realize that the helmet would

implicate him in the wild escape Sha'llri and the boys had engineered.

Hea,,y rope handles hung from the sides of the carts.  At Skaara's

signal, the hooded workers assigned to the first cart came forward,

grabbed onto the ropes, and slowly began to drag the vehicle up the

incline.

As it moved away, an unexpected problem reared its ugly, oleaginous

head.  Daniel's mastadge, jealous, began to moan and then to bellow.

Nabeh spoke to the dressed-up beast, trying desperately to quiet him

down.  But no matter what the boy threatened, the animal refused to stop

blubbering .

Frightened, fearful of being discovered, none of the hooded workers

turned to look back at the animal-a curious bit of behavior.

"Fa'al!" shouted the lead Horus, carefully eyeing the workers at the

lead cart.

"Hassim ni kha'an souf!" Without hesitation, all the workers held their

hands straight out in front of them.

Still suspicious, the hawk-headed warrior came several steps down the

ramp, staring straight at Nabeh, who was engaged in a nose-to-nose

discussion with the unruly mastadge.  He had calmed the animal and was

facing away from the ramp, but was still attracting too much attention

to himself.  Skaara felt sure the Horus was about to order his subnormal

friend to turn around, and then all would be lost.

The Horus came a few yards down the ramp, suspicious, but eventually

returned his attention to the first cart, where the six workers stood

stiffly looking forward, their heads bowed.  He toured the cart for a

moment before waving it through, past the other helmeted guards.

When the armored soldier turned and marched back up the ramp, everyone

breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Skaara stole a swift glance at Kawalsky

and Feretti, standing barefoot alongside the hindmost vehicle.  They

peered back from beneath the hoods of their itchy woolen haiks and

nodded.

As the first cart disappeared into the shadows of the Entrance Hall, the

mastadge made one last attempt to communicate with Daniel.  He erupted

in an earsplitting howl.

The chief Horus shot another look back at the animal and thought for a

minute before hissing an order to the other two guards.  They

immediately turned and trotted inside while their apparent leader

studied the reaction of those standing at the obelisks.  Again, no one

showed him any reaction.  A moment later, he too followed the cart into

the darkness.

"I knew this Tro an Horse plan was no damn good," Feretti whispered to

Kawaksky, as anxious and fidgety as ever ." Should we go in?"

"It still might work," Kawalsky replied.

Inside, all three Horus figures surrounded the cart.  The one in charge

shouted an order, but no one moved.  He stepped up to one of the

laborers and yanked the hood back, revealing the terrified face of a

redheaded young shepherd .

He threw the boy to the floor and moved to the next person in line.  He

grabbed on to the hood and pulled it back .

Sha'llri screamed as the man's powerful hand tore out a clump of hair.

Taken off guard by the sight of a woman, the three hawks looked at one

another.

But that surprise was nothing compared to the one that came a split

second later.  Erupting out of the quartz pile, Daniel and O'Neil lifted

their weapons, took aim, and began firing.  At the same time,

conventional guns flashed out from beneath the shepherds' haiks, and a

wild volley of bullets sprayed into the vast hallway, ricocheting

everywhere.  Unfortunately, both Daniel and O'Neil had chosen the lead

Horus as a target.  The combined power of their shots had shredded the

unarmored parts of the man's body, but left time for the other two to

retreat into the shadows.

The redheaded boy made a dash for the doorway.  A fistsize meteor from

one of the pulse rifles flashed across the room and caught him squarely

in the back of the head, killing him instantly.  Daniel jumped into the

no-man's-land between the cart and the pillars, successfully pulung a

pair of trigger-happy shepherds to safety behind the heavy tub of

quartz.

"Go, everybody, inside." Kawalsky led the charge up the ramp, moving at

top speed.  However, a door, a giant stone slab, started to drop down

from above.  Kawalsky was fast, but not fast enough to make it inside

before the monolith sealed the entrance.  When he realized he'd never

make it, he slowed to a trot and glanced over his shoulder.  Nabeh, legs

churning like rubber bands, holding his helmet on his head with one

hand, was trundling along at a surprising clip .

Kawalsky hesitated long enough for the boy to pull even with him.  He

reached up and snagged the helmet off Nabeh's head, then flung it like a

Frisbee, skittering up the ramp just as the door was closing.

Strike!

The helmet wedged itself under the heavy stone block at precisely the

right moment.  Though slightly crushed, it held the door open, a few

inches off the ground.

"Break off some wood from the carts.  We'll lever the door back open!"

Kawalsky must have been dreaming.  The slab must have weighed at least

three or four tons.  But Feretti didn't hesitate to sprint-limp back

down the ramp and join him in smashing five-foot planks of wood free

from the sides of the transports.

O'Ned was gone.  He had been there one moment before firing at the

Horuses, but when Daniel looked back, he had

disappeared.  Everything had gone dark and eerdy quiet inside the

Entrance Hail.  A murky light sifted between the pillars turning the

chamber into a chessboard of light and dark.  Daniel, clueless in the

ways of warfare, felt momentarry safe.  No bullets were flying, and he

had Sha'llri by his side.  He thought Ra's soldiers, outnumbered if not

outgunned, might have fled the scene.

Eventually, it occurred to him that the guards might be using this lull

in the action to move to new positions .

Suddenly realizing how exposed and vulnerable they were out in the

middle of the wide hallway, he silently gathered the attention of his

pathetic little battalion and signaled a retreat to the pillars behind

them.  Precisely the mistake Ra's soldiers were expecting them to make.

They reassembled in the darkest spot they could find in the space

between the pillars.  But with the safety of the wail came the danger of

the fight from the windows.  They were no longer invisible.  Whispering

her instructions, Sha'llri positioned the boys between the pillars,

giving each of them responsibility for covering a different angle of

approach .

When they were in place, everyone held their breath and waited.

Just as Daniel had imagined, the helmeted soldiers were on the move.  A

bright blade of sunlight was slicing through the gap kept open by

Nabeh's helmet.  Stealthily, one of the Horus guards found the narrow

ledge running along the bottom of the great door and stepped onto it.

Shuffling his feet careftifly along the narrow outcropping, he moved

toward the center of the room only inches above the light .

Although the raiding party was watching the area around the door

carefully, the soldier, working with the homefield advantage, had

correctly calculated that the sliver of blinding light would make him

invisible to anyone looking in that direction.

He came to the end of the ledge and stepped off, silently making his way

through the inky shadows to the first pillar, then advancing up the

hallway.

He leaned into the space between the pillars and the exterior wall,

catching sight of the team.  One of the young shepherds was staring

straight toward him, but the darkness

kept him hidden.  From his angle, Daniel's back was a wideopen target

barely twenty yards away.

Very slowly, he lifted his staff up to the firing position and took aim.

Sha'llri, sensing something, checked behind them once more.  The barest

glimmer reflected off the beveled quartz jewel set into the rifle.  Her

scream startled everyone, including the Horus.  He pulled back on the

weapon just enough to send the shot six inches over Daniel's head.  He

fired once more, but this time only to clear a path for his charge.  He

advanced all the way up- to the pillar behind which the team was

cowering.

An arm's reach around the corner, Daniel thought he could taste the end

of his life.  Sha'llri had already pulled the last of the boys behind

the next pillar.  Keeping his back pressed to the stone pillar, eyes

forward, every nerve in his body at ull alert, he waited for the first

sign of movement to come around one of the corners.

Knowing his armor protected him even from the powerful pulse rifle in

the fair-skinned one's hands, the Horus slid forward headfirst.  The

second before he came around the corner, a shot rang out, striking him

in the back of his helmet, throwing him across the floor like an empty

garbage can into the shadows.

By that point, Daniel was so wired, so pumped with adrenaline, he was

having trouble breathing.  One of the kids poked his head around the

corner and asked if Daniel was all right.  Daniel didn't answer, didn't

even look at the boy .

He knew there was at least one more of the armored killers lurking in

the dark.  Perhaps there were many more, riding the medallion down from

the pyramid-shaped craft above.

"'Okay, on three." Kawalsky looked at the boys ." One, two, three,

lift!"

Feretti and Kawalsky jammed their shoulders against their planks of wood

as the shepherds, working in pairs, did the same.  The eight of them,

hoisting together, were slowly lifting the door back up an inch at a

time.  When it was six inches above the top of the helmet, Kawalsky felt

his share of the weight suddenly increase.  Skaara had abandoned the

lever he and Nabeh were working, and was attempting to shimmy his way

under the door.

"No!  Not yet!" The Herculean Kawalsky, veins bulging in his forehead,

looked down and saw Skaara's head and shoulde .  rs disappear under the

door ." Get him out of there, damn it!" Kawalsky barked.

As though he understood the command, Nabeh dropped to his knees and

reached under the door, returning a moment later with his battered

treasure, the helmet.  He shared the good news, showing the helmet to

Kawalsky.

"Put it back!  We need that under there!" Kawalsky gestured with his

chin ." Put it back!"

Nabeh either didn't understand what Kawalsky wanted him to do, or

pretended not to.  He put the helmet back on his head, picked up his

plank, and rejoined the effort to rift the door.

Squinting into the darkness, Skaara looked for his companions.  He

spotted a figure moving through the shadows .

Skaara let out a sharp hollow whistle, a private signal they had used

since childhood.  Quickly Sha'llri rushed over to the remaining shepherd

boys, telling them to make a run for the doorway.  When the boys turned

to see what Sha'llri was talking about, they found an anxious Skaara

waving frantically for them.

Nervously, the boys looked at each other deciding who should go first.

Finally the first boy swallowed hard and jumped into the open, running

as fast as he could for the

Ii door.  As soon as he took off, the others were right behind him,

bounding toward the exit like scared jackrabbits.  Before Sha'llri could

even entertain the idea of trying to join them, she felt Daniel tug

urgently on her arm.  He had seen one of the sinister silhouettes huff y

past on its way to the door.  But before he could reach them, the last

of the children escaped.  Daniel and Sha'llri pressed flat against the

pillar as the Horus guard turned back into the hall, his armer's soft

rustling barely audible.

The weight of the immense door seemed to be growing as Kawalsky and

Feretti started to feel the fatigue.  Although they and the boys were

still lifting with the same amount of determination, the door began to

sink, sliding down an inch at a time.  Skaara helped the last of the

shepherds wriggle under the door just as the lifting crew was running

out of

gas.  Kawalsky was about to give the order to let the door down, when

Skaara crawled back under the door.

"Get back here!" growled Kawalsky, but Skaara might as well have been

miles away.

I can't hold it any longer," Feretti grunted .

"Keep holding."

"No, I can't.  It's too friggin' heavy."

"Keep holding." Kawalsky's voice was steady, playing for time.

Daniel and Sha'llri held their breath as the Horus guard slowly marched

past them, then continued into the darkness of the room.  Momentarily

safe, DAniel sighed and put his arm around Sha'llri.

Unbeknownst to either of them, a second Horus was creeping up from

behind.  Unlike the other attackers, this soldier was moving with a

great deal of patience, careftil to remain absolutely silent.  He was

close enough to get a good shot, but wanted to get right up behind them,

certain of killing them before he fired.

Slowly he lifted the weapon and aimed for Daniel's blond disheveled

hair.  With a swift movement of his hand along the bottom of the rifle,

he clicked it open.  Daniel spun at the sound, but before he could react

there was a tremendous explosion from a pulse weapon.  Unfortunately for

the guard, it was not his weapon that had discharged.  The explosion hit

him from behind rocketing him off his feet, twisting and turning him

into the shadows.

As the smoke dissipated, the image of O'Nefl holding the pulse weapon

appeared.  It was the first time Daniel had ever been happy to see the

soldier in the black heret.  O'Neil put a finger up to his lips, telling

them to keep quiet.  As O'Neil stepped forward to confer with Daniel and

Sha'llri, a scream came from the direction of the door.  It was Skaara

shouting at the top of his lungs.

O'Nefl hit the ground before anyone could blink and before the perfectly

aimed projectile flashed out of the darkness, nearly taking his head

with it.  Skaara had spotted the Horus lying in ambush near the cart,

just in time.  He had been guessing O'Nefl, the dangerous one, would

come to their rescue.

Daniel and Sha'llri pulled off to one side as O'Neil rolled

to another.  And while the shots had missed O'Neil, they sailed past him

and hit into the large stone door above Skaara.  A second later, the

door slammed closed with a thunderclap.

Thinking Skaara had been killed, a world of rage swelled through O'Ned,

all the anger he'd never been able to vent when his own son had died in

such a pitiful, useless way .

Now he would make the Horus pay for the deaths of both boys.  Firing

madly, he went on the offensive-a kill or be killed stratagem.

The Horus, calm as swamp water, waited for his best shot.  Twenty yards

before O'Ned was on him, he took it.

Whether by intuition or pure luck, O'Neil knew when the shot was coming

and initiated his dive just before the weapon's sizzling white payload

ripped toward him.  The shot never got close.  But it pinpointed his

enemy's position, and as he rolled out of his controlled tumble, he

blasted the hawk right between the eyes.  His helmet slammed backward

't" pulling the rest of him along in a long clattering skid into the

shadows.

"Colonel, let's go." Daniel ran into the light.  Sha'llri, holding a

pistol Feretti had kicked under the door, was a step behind him.

The sight of them instantly reminded O'Nefl where he was.  Avenging

Skaara's death wasn't part of his mission.  He tried to swallow his

feelings and head for the StarGate, but he didn't get far.  He turned

back and waded into the shadows searching for the fallen Horus.  When he

found him, he knelt down, took a pistol out of his waistband, and pumped

five slugs into the man's unarmored middle.

"AD right," he said, coming back into the light, "let's roil.

Outside, Kawalsky looked like the sweatiest, ang3iest pediatrician in

history.  Holding the recently delivered Skaara by one ankle, he lifted

the spindly fourteen-year-old as high as he could, until they were

face-to-upside-down-face.

"Don 't do that again ." Each word snapped at the kid like a verbal

firecracker.

The pulse blast had shattered the wooden plank Kawalsky was using as a

lever.  Without his strength, the door came

down in a huff v.  But not before he'd grabbed Skaara and yanked him

outside in the nick of time.

Still hanging by his heels, Skaara pointed into the air and shouted,

"Udajeet"-gliders.

Like a pair of swooping condors but several times more fleet, the twin

aircraft shot away from the upper part of the pyramid before banking

back toward the vulnerably positioned squad.

"Scatter!  Scatter!" Kawalsky realized there were going to be

casualties.  Whde the brigade scrambled for cover, Kawalsky put his back

against the huge door and waved his arms to give the planes a better

target.  He was hoping to draw enough firepower to open a breach into

the pyramid .

The silent fighter jets each sent a spray of power bursts rocketing down

at the platform, exploding close enough to shower Kawalsky with stone

shrapnel, but far enough to protect the integrity of the door.  They

knew what he wanted them to do.

As the gliders banked away and began looping around for their next

approach, Kawalsky broke into a dead run for the obelisks.

."&o more!  Take cover!" Feretti hollered the warning

from a ditch he'd found along the edge of the ramp.

Kawalsky, hustling down the stone incline, looked over his shoulder.

Sure enough, a third and fourth glider were scorching down from the

opposite side of the mountainous structure.  Capturing him in their

sights, both pilots fired at once.  As the twin power balls screamed a

long trail through the sky, Kawalsky veered and performed a full-speed

swan dive into the dunes a second before a large section of the ramp wa

s blown to smithereens.

"WAIT FOR ME!,*,*

When it amused him, Ra was a masterful player of games.  He had often

won, not only with his skill, but with something more important to them:

his tenacious will to control and dominate.  Ra was a very bad loser.

While the raid on the pyramid unfolded far below, the eternally young Ra

entertained himself by playing two games at once, both of which he was

assured of winning .

With his menagerie of children arranged around him in his sitting

chamber to bear witness, he distracted himself by playing an ancient

board game while simultaneously directing the destruction of the

renegade earthlings.

Sitting bolt upright on a hard wooden chair, an extraordinardy detailed

hunting scene chiseled into the arms, he seemed completely absorbed in a

round of Senet.  The game, once carred the chess of the pharaohs and

stdi played along the Nile today, required intense concentration.  His

opponent was a handsome thirteen-year-old boy who, like all of the

children brought to the ship, had been personally chosen by Ra because

of his outstanding physical beauty .

Ra admired this child above the others not only for the purity of his

skin and the lithe outline of his body, but for his intelligence.  He

showed promise of becoming the friend and companion Ra had never been

able to find.

The vastly superior player, Ra set himself the handicap of

glancing down at the pieces, pyramids and obelisks, only every other

move.  This added a psychological dimension to the game that Ra enjoyed:

he had to know his opponent's mind in order to anticipate what he would

do next.

But the elaborate handicap he'd given himself in his contest with the

Americans was the one that tickled him .

Deliberately selecting a shy, stammering child, Ra ordered her to sit on

the window ledge and give him a running account of the scene at the base

of the pyramid.  If she failed to mention anything of importance, he

promised her, she would be pushed outside.  Terrified, the girl's speech

became even more labored than usual.  Like a stuttering parrot, she

fought against the words and her fear, squawking her gibberish report

from her perch to her master's ear.

As far as Ra was concerned, these disadvantages turned a grubby chore of

police work into an artftil mental challenge .

Not content merely to kill the trespassers, he wanted to orchestrate

their slaughter like a piece of music.  And he was going to do it

blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back.

When the invaders announced their arrival by starting the gun battle in

the Entrance Hall, Ra didn't wait for the girl to spit out her choppy

description.  Everyone in the room could hear the shots echoing through

the desert's silence as distinctly as if someone nearby were slowly

clapping their hands.  He called for Anubis to seal the pyramid's

entrance.

Next he summoned the remainder of his security force, the last four of

his Horus soldiers and ordered all of them into the sky.  The pilots

were to smash the uncouth rabble gathered at the obelisks, destroying

them with aB the firepower the gliders had.  TWo of the udajeet would

have been enough, but as always, Ra sought to strike with all available

force.  Without a word, the soldiers turned and hurried to the glider

bays, activating their helmets as they went, transforming themselves

into a squadron of menacing hawks.

Absolutely delighted with himself, Ra leaned forward to take the boy's

pyramid with his obelisk, a move that would put the game squarely in his

control.  But, to his extreme annoyance, neither his opponent nor any of

the other children were watching him win.  Lured by the girl's report,

they had crowded to the window to see for themselves what was happening

below.

"Is this how you serve me?!" Ra shrieked, raking his arm across the

board, knocking the game pieces everywhere.  He got to his feet as if he

would hurt the child closest to him, the eleven-year-old boy, but turned

to Anubis instead.

"Set the bomb and send it through, now!" Ra ordered.

"I will make it happen," Anubis said, bowing as he moved toward the

door.  Turning back he added, "Or I will die in the attempt."

O'Nefl, carrying his last flare, led the advance toward the StarGate.

Arriving at the short hallway with the pair of quartz medallions set

into the floor and ceiling, he stopped short, alarmed.  Torches had been

lit and set into braces along the walls.  Near the StarGate, on a table

that hadn't been there before, the dismantled bomb was in plain view,

still neatly arranged on the silver tray O'Ned recognized from his visit

upstairs.

Daniel tried to march into the room, anxious to get to the Gate, but

O'Nefl straight-armed him to an abrupt halt.  After the many obstacles

they'd faced to arrive at the spot, O'Nefl couldn't believe Ra would

leave the finish fine unguarded.

He slid toward the door concealing the sputtering flare behind his back.

After lobbing the stick to the far end of the room, he flashed in behind

it, ready for snipers.

The room was empty.

"Okay, Jackson, fire it up."

Daniel, wanting to get the hell out of there, was only too eager to

oblige.  He released the grip he had on Sha'llri's hand, laid his rifle

down at the base of the huge quartz ring, and got down to work.

Sha'llri had heard about the StarGate all her life, but this was the

first time she had seen it, and she was just as surprised by its stern

beauty as everyone on Earth who had seen its twin.  More than her

companions, she felt like a trespasser, that she was violating sacred

ground.  She reminded herself of all she had learned in the catacombs

about Ra and this place, but she couldn't completely quell her feelings

of guilt for what they were doing.  As if this weren't confusing enough,

she knew that when the ring was called

to life, she would either have to dump herself into another world like a

load of stones, or face whatever fate Ra's soldiers had in store for

her.

Daniel reached into his pocket and pulled out the notebook with the six

symbols he'd copied from the cartouche in the catacombs.  He tore off

the appropriate page, then put a hand on the sliding inner ring of the

device, which turned with a minimum of resistance.  He spun the first

symbol into place.  The ring gave off a sharp click, and a second later

the top clamp split open to reveal the quartz jewel at its center .

As he was wheering the second constellation to the top, he felt Sha'llri

tugging on his sleeve.

"Nani?" he asked.

"Koner onio," she said.  When Daniel didn't understand her, she pointed

toward the table where the colonel was putting the bomb back together.

Daniel couldn't believe it .

They were on the verge of getting it all done, and O'Neil was going to

blow them up.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Daniel demanded ." I thought we agreed that

it's the StarGate on Earth we have to shut down."

O'Neil looked up, but didn't stop working.  Racing against time, he

wiped the sweat off his forehead and continued to reasse mble the

ghastly device ." Jackson, that's exactly what I'm counting on you to

do: get back to the sil destroy the Gate."

"But I thought we agreed to go back together and-"

"Change of plans, Jackson!" His tone of voice made it clear he wasn't

going to negotiate ." I'm staying here."

"You're staying what?  Why?!  What are you talking about?"

"I have to make sure this thing goes off okay.  I'm completing my

mission." With that, O'Nefl plunged the orange key into the slot between

the bomb's two canisters.  He then pecked additional instructions into

the device's miniaturized keypad.  As soon as he hit enter, blinking red

numbers popped up on the display panel: 12:00, 12:00, 12:00.

"What about Kawalsky and Feretti!?  What about her!?"

he said pointing at Sha'llri.

"Take her with you if you want, but get moving." He pressed the "ENTER"

key once more and the countdown

began: 11:59.  11:58.  11:57.  Daniel was flabbergasted.  He stood there

not understanding why O'Nefl was doing this .

"You're running out of time, Jackson."

Daniel looked at Sha'llri then back at O'Neil.  He was about to say

something else when a sharp click from the next room froze them all in

place.  The next second a sizzling white projectile rocketed into the

room and hit Sha'llri square between the shoulders.

Daniel grabbed his rifle, wheeled, and fired in a blind fury.  Three

successive shots exploded into the soldier's stomach, ripping him almost

completely in half.

Daniel raced over to where Sha'llri had fallen near the door and cradled

her in his arms.  She was bleeding pretty badly and had lost

consciousness.  He pressed his lips against her forehead and begged the

girl to hold on, to be strong enough to survive untu he could get her

through the StarGate to medical help.

O'Neil came over to see if Sha'llri's wounds were treatable.  He tried

to find a pulse but couldn't.  She was already dead.

10:45.  10:44.  10:43.

"They've got us, man, we're screwed.  They caught us out here with our

pants around our ankles, and now we're totally goddamn screwed."

"Keep it together, soldier," Kawalsky barked.

They'd jumped into a space between the sand and the side of the ramp,

too shallow to offer much protection from the gliders.  The lieutenant

lifted his head and surveyed the scene.  It looked like Feretti was

right.

The aerial assault had taken them completely by surprise .

The unit, hodgepodge to begin with, was now scattered on both sides of

the ramp, hiding in whatever passed as a foxhole.  They had no radios,

no common language, and, worst of all, no plan.

The gliders cruised overhead strafing the area with shattering explosive

pulses.  On each pass they met with less ground fire and, for the moment

at least, seemed more -intent on keeping the invaders pinned down than

in polishing them off.  Or maybe not.  Hurtling out of nowhere, one of

the gliders sent a shot whirring toward them.  It hit the ramp less

than ten feet away, blowing a pothole into the structure as if it were

made of Styrofoam.

"We're sitting ducks out here, man.  And these guys know it ."

"Don't worry, I've got a plan," Kawalsky mumbled absently.

"Plan!?" Feretti thought that was hilarious ." We're completely exposed,

under heavy visual-contact fire, our formation is broken, we're totally

outgunned, and nearest available backup is pretty damn far

away..Whatever you've got in mind, I'd think twice before using the word

plan to describe it."

Kawalsky tried to ignore the tirade.  He peeked over the edge of the

ramp and looked toward where the line of quartz wagons stood between the

obelisks.

"Okay, you wanna see a plan?  Watch this!" he shouted .

He jumped out of the ditch and hauled ass across the sand, dodging power

bursts as he went.

Jackson, the Gate." O'Neil put a hand on Daniel's shoulder and gave him

a friendly shake.

"There's no time.  We've got to get you back to the suo .

Jackson?" O'Ned was getting nowhere.

For a minute, he stood back and watched Daniel, his arms wound tight

around Sha'llri's body.  He understood what it meant to grieve like

that, to hold on long past the point when you knew it was over.  He'd

been holding on for more than two years.  But he couldn't let Daniel

have that same luxury.  He pried one set of fingers loose and then the

other, forcing Daniel to his feet.  Then he regurgitated the hollow,

reassuring advice he'd heard so often.

"It's over, Jackson.  She's gone.  Clear your min keep going.  We need

you to get through.

Daniel didn't need to clear his mind.  The shock of losing Sha'llri had

done that for him.  He stood unsteadily at the mouth of the StarGate,

unable to remember who he was and what he was doing there.

"Looks like we've got company," he heard O'Neil say.

A crisp sting of quartz blue light shot from the floor of the medallion

room up to the ceiling, then began to sp sideways.  When Daniel turned

and saw it, he could think of

only one thing-the sarcophagus.  If it had brought him back to life, it

could do the same for Sha'llri.

O'Neil moved to the edge of the stairs at the base of the huge ring,

toward the table to retrieve his gun.  But he didn't stop there.  Daniel

shoved him off the edge sending him crashing onto the table then

spilling, along with the bomb, off the other side.

By the time O'Neil jumped up and made it to the medallion, Daniel was

already standing behind the glittering curtain of blue light holding

Sha'llri in his arms.  Unaware of the danger, Daniel let Sha'llri's legs

dangle perilously close to the beam.  Where the light closed into a

transparent cylinder, a fold of Sha'llri's robe was hanging beyond the

perimeter.  The beam moved right through the cloth, slicing it off

cleanly.  O'Neil watched it drop to the floor.

"Jackson, what the hell are you doing?  The bomb!"

Beginning to disappear, Daniel spoke to O'Neil through the glittering

curtain of blue light.  No sound penetrated the barrier, but the colonel

was sure Daniel's lips had made the words "wait for me."

Then he was gone, disintegrating in an upward flare of light.

O'Neil turned to check the clock: 11:08.

Smash, O'Neil took a hard shot right in the chin that landed him on his

ass.  When he looked up, aB the short hairs on his neck sprang to

attention.  This was the moment he knew would come.  Standing over him,

poised for the kill was the gnarled fossil he'd meditated about in the

silo, the huge armored warrior with the jackal's head, Ra's champion

warrior, Anubis.

Somehow he needed to reach the bomb and abort the countdown to give

Jackson enough time.  Otherwise, Anubis would get there first and send

it through to Earth.

Kawalsky strained against the weight but couldn't tip the cart by

himself.  When the first two shepherds came out of the dunes to help

him, Kawalsky crouched against the side of the cart and explained his

strategy as quickly as he could.

"First, we're going to turn this cart over.  Then we're gonna go turn

that one over, drag it back over here, and build ourselves a little

fort, okay?"

"Oh-khay," they agreed enthusiastically.

Kawalsky looked at them again ." You didn't understand a word I said,

did you?"

True, neither of them had captured the finer nuances of the big man's

plan.  But they'd understood the gist of what he'd told them:

something's going to happen, and you're going to help.

When the sky was clear, Kawalsky jumped up, positioned the boys on

either side of him, and together, they tipped the vehicle on its side,

spilling the quartz into the sand.  After dragging the cart a little way

and fuming it belly-up, they dashed for the second cart.

Skaara and Feretti both arrived in time to helt).  They easily

jettisoned the load of quartz, tipped the g belly-up, then ducked

underneath to avoid the next barrag the gliders.

On his hands and knees, Kawalsky tested the weight of the cart, then

like Atlas, he slowly stood up, shouldering his end of the vehicle into

the air.  The others followed his lead and lifted the cart above their

heads.  Then they marched back between the obelisks, moving like a

gigantic Saharan millipede.

When the temporary command post had been established, Skaara called for

the rest of the shepherds to join them .

While Kawalsky and Feretti provided cover, several of the kids made it

in from the surrounding dunes, dodging the gliders.

" Nabeh!  Anda ni, anda ni, " Skaara yelled.

Nabeh was still at the top of the ramp, almost a hundred yards away.

After more encouragement, he started motoring bowlegged straight'down

the center of the ramp at full speed, no gliders in sight.  But halfway

home, one of the pilots spotted him and swooped down at the ramp.

Skaara tried to warn him ." Khem eem, khem een!" Jump off, jump off. But

Nabeh, feeling paralyzed within the motion of his run, continued to

come.  Skaara scrambled out into the open before anyone could stop him,

running and pointing for Nabeh to get off the open ramp.

Before he could do any good, the small plane fired twice in quick

succession.  The ground in front of Nabeh erupted m an upward shatter of

rock and dust.  Skaara felt the wave

of ambient heat roll past his cheeks a full second before he was hit by

the first flying chip.

The breeze moved the dust straight at the rebels.  When it finally

cleared, there was no sign of Nabeh or what had happened to him.  Their

only clue was the misshapen green helmet.  It came rolling out of the

smoke like a drunken spare tire.

Skaara called desperately for his friend, then suddenly found himself

moving backward.  Kawalsky's meaty hand was cuffed around the boy's

wrist, dragging him like a doll back to the barricade.

Kawalsky pinned Skaara under the cart and restrained him untu he stopped

fighting.  He conferred with Feretti about their options.  It only took

a minute to agree that they didn't have any.

"Well at least let's concentrate all our firepower at the same target,"

Kawalsky urged, holding up the grenade launcher salvaged by the

shepherds ." This baby's gotta be able to take out those toy jets."

Feretti rolled onto his back and pulled three grenades out of his long

desert robe.

"Under normal circumstances, I would explain why that is not,

technically, a plan.  I'd give you a list of reasons why it's reefly a

pathetic substitute for a plan.  But, at this particular moment, it

sounds like a plan.  So let's do it."

As soon as the plan was explained, one of the gliders came slowly

prowling toward them, squeezing off a series of carefully aimed shots.

The soldiers pointed to the glider, and the boys understood.

"Now!" Kawalsky gave the order.  Ten conventional rifles plus Feretti at

the trigger of the grenade launcher suddenly sprung out from the bunker,

took aim, and started blasting a hole in the sky.

The minnow-size jet took a grenade in the tail.  The shot did no

structural damage, but did succeed in knocking it slightly out of

control.  For a moment, it seemed the swerying udajeet would wreck

itself into the carts, but the pilot stabilized the craft and sailed it

a few feet above their heads .

A violent crash ensued when the plane's wing clipped one of the

obelisks, then spun like a ninja's throwing star out into the dunes,

demolishing itself into a firebah.

Daniel artived in the palace standing nose to nose with the polished

sculpture of the ram god Khnum.  He spun around ready to face whoever he

had to, but the room was completely empty.

He picked Sha'llri up and galloped straight ahead into the magnificent

throne room.  The colossal stone figures carved into the pfliars seemed

to follow his progress through the room.  The thudding of his boots

echoed off the walls as he turned down the short passageway leading to

the sarcophagus, that had somehow restored his own life.

It was open.

He lifted Sha'llri onto the hard bed at the center of the device then

stepped back as the machine ground into action .

He watched as Sha'llri was lowered deeper into the healing grave and the

thick wags of the lid slid to a close.  As she disappeared, Daniel

realized how stupid this was.  He had no idea how long the process would

takr even if the machine had to be switched on.  Now he was trapped in

Ra's stronghold with no way to get out.  As he had carried Sha'llri to

the medallion below, he had some vague notion of reasoning with Ra,

pleading with him, striking some sort of bargain.  Now, with more time

to think, he realized how ludicrous that idea was.

Hiding behind the golden box, he tried not to think about the

implications of what he had done.  He looked down and saw he was still

holding the scrap of notepaper with the coordinates for Earth.  He

banged his head backward against the sarcophagus.  He'd squandered the

chance to get back to the sdo and slam the fid on this Pandora's Box

before it could spill its demons into the Colorado mountains.

He turned to examine the side of the sarcophagus, hoping to find some

clue there.  Etched into the long gold panels was the story of Osiris.

Hacked to pieces by his enemies, his body was spread to the far corners

of the Nile.  His wife, Isis, wandered the land slowly gathering his

parts.  She put the body back together then wrapped it in cloth and

paper .

The last section of the etching showed Osiris reborn.

Daniel looked up and noticed Ra, blazing gold skin, standing calmly at

the foot of the mysterious coffin.  Daniel recoiled to the other end of

the box, then moved several

steps across the floor to the door.  Ra made no attempt to stop him.  At

the mouth of the passage, Daniel saw the children coming out of Ra's

chamber and down the stairs past the throne.  His first impulse was to

run, but then he remembered the bomb set to explode below.  There was

nowhere to go.

Ra stepped between Daniel and where Sha'llri lay hidden, puzzled.

"Why?" he rasped softly ." Why come here now?"

Daniel didn't move, didn't respond.

"For this?" Ra looked over at the sarcophagus, then back at Daniel ."

Have you put something inside?"

Daniel lunged at Ra, but was quickly and violently subdued.  Ra opened

his palm to expose the lethal coin-size medallion he was so fond of

experimenting with.  Before he even got close, the small jewel knocked

him backward like he'd stepped in front of a bus.  It sent a stinging

burn across his skin, a sensation he remembered from his trip through

the StarGate.

Ra smiled and strolled to the machine.  He ran his hand over the lid,

fascinated to watch the anxiety rise in Daniel's face.  The coffin's Ed

slowly opened to reveal Sha'llri, sleeping peacefully.  The scab over

her eyebrow, earned when Ra's soldiers had invaded and burned Nagada,

was almost completely healed.

"Hana'i hana'e, " Ra whispered.  The phrase, which Daniel did not know,

translated to something like "how romantic." He reached into the

sarcophagus and ran the backs of his golden fingers delicately over the

girl's lovely features.

"Very, very clever." He seemed truly impressed with Daniel, adding, "Now

you can die together."

O'Neil's instincts took over.  Before his opponent could react, the

colonel had wedged the five-foot-long staff into the throat of Anubis's

helmet, driving him backward.  He slammed the bigger man against the

wall of the narrow hallway and yanked back on the rifle.  But Anubis's

grip was too strong.  The weapon rerised to budge, and the next moment

the jackal's iron glove came crashing down on the side of O'Nefl's face,

knocking him to the ground.

Even before he hit the floor, O'Neil was on the move to

avoid the pulse blast he knew was coming.  He rolled away with a sudden

change of direction.  Sure enough, the spot where he had landed exploded

a second later.

The hallway was just small enough for O'Nefl to plant his palms against

the watt and still reach back with his feet to kick Anubis in the head.

The impact drove the monstrous combatant a step inside the StarGate

room, but didn't knock him down.  He regained his balance and leveled

the rifle for another shot at O'Ned.

When O'Neil saw what was happening, he dove around the corner of the

hallway into the Grand Gallery.  The shot hit the stones of the arched

doorway and caromed off into the darkness.  Then O'Neil did the only

sensible thing: he ran away.

The Grand Gallery behind him was blacker than squid ink and the colonel

hoped it would allow him to get the drop on Anubis.  He ran as far as he

could into the vacuum of light before he started to lose his balance. He

turned and saw the big soldier calmly step into the StarGate room.  He

was probably checking for Daniel and the others.

Soon enough, Anubis came hunting for O'Neil, but not as quickly as the

colonel wanted him to.  Crouching fifty feet out in the lake of

darkness, O'Neil watched the large jackal head bobbing toward him into

the darkness.  After only a few steps, the hunter reached up to the

collar of his helmet, made an adjustment, then came deeper into the

hallway .

Just before he disappeared, O'Ned saw the helmet retract down into its

collar.

The barely audible scrape of annor against armor came closer, then

stopped.  O'Nefl fought to control his breathing, listening like he

never had.  Then suddenly much closer, a continuous scraping sound mied

the hall.  By the time O'Neil figured out what was happening, it was too

late.  The staff, raking across the floor like a blind man's cane,

knocked against the colonel's leg.

O'Neil found his feet and retreated a couple of steps, listening,

waiting.  With no warning, the blunt end of the staff poked him in the

mouth, splitting his lip open against his teeth.  O'Neil continued to

retreat in a new direction, moving his hands in frantic circles through

the air, trying to protect against the next invisible blow.  A whistling

sound

made him jerk his head backward.  The weapon moved past his face like an

ax at full speed.  As Anubis followed through with the swing, O'Ned

stepped in and brought his elbow down with a crack onto his opponent's

nose.

He heard the rifle clatter to the ground, and dove toward the sound.

Groping everywhere, he got a hand on the weapon just as Anubis reached

out to retrieve it.  O'Neil tried to twist the gun away, but the man was

too strong.

Knowing that whoever seized control of the weapon first would kill the

other, the two of them began a kicking, punching, head-butting gladiator

contest.  O'Neil was using every trick in his book, and just breaking

even.

O'Nefl finally decided that this game was too dangerous and too

time-consuming.  He waited for the right moment before suddenly

releasing the weapon.  As he sprinted toward the light of the StarGate

room, he heard Anubis falling flat on his ass.

5:20.  5:19.  5:18.

One of the planes came zipping around the corner of the pyramid, five

hundred yards away, and went onto an attack dive.  Kawalsky locked

everyone onto the plane and counted backwards from five real slow.

No one noticed his partner skimming in low over the dunes.  On the word

"go" they all came out blasting.  The boys, despite Kawalsky's

crystal-clear orders, strayed several steps away from cover.  The first

plane suddenly banked off, leaving them open to his partner's swift

attack.

The spray of white pulses killed five of the kids instantly .

Another died accidentally, when one of the boys wheeled around firing

wildly.  He mowed down the boy standing in front of him.  Realizing what

he had done, the boy fell to his knees while the more shells exploded

around him.  Feretti crabbed out to get the kid and brought him back

inside.  He was crying hysterically, the last thing anyone needed.

A few minutes later, the gliders tried the same trick again .

This time, instead of one decoy, there were two.  The second plane would

come in over the dunes as before but then accelerate over the carts, and

bank right to avoid the pyramid.

Bad idea.  The situation under the carts was so chaotic

that Kawalsky couldn't communicate with his untrained fighters.  They

jumped into the same trap they'd fauen into for only a minute before.

Feretti, however, understood what was going on.  He waited for the first

plane to barik to safety, then exploded out from below the cart with the

grenade launcher aimed.

The second pilot, concentrating on the sharp turn he had to make, never

fired a shot.  He accelerated over the carts just as Feretti let their

last shell fly.  The projectile erupted into the bottom of the craft,

cracking its fuselage like a cheap pair of eyeglasses.

"Back underneath.  Get down!" Kawalsky got them herded to safety before

the remaining third plane could swoop in for the kill.

The broken glider continued to speed forward, straight at the pyramid.

The plane raked into a vertical climb at the last second, narrowly

averting the massive wall of stone as it rocketed upward.  But it hit

the overhanging edge of the spacecraft perched atop.  The craft

disintegrated in a wicked roar of fire and crackling blue light.

As the flaming wreckage tumbled down the side of the pyramid, the boys

jumped out once more, cheering like mad men and firing at the firebafl

untu their guns were empty.

O'Neil raced straight for the contents of the overturned table.  He

began searching everywhere in the jumble of captured supplies for the

access card.  He glanced at the bomb: 3:39, 3:38.

From the doorway ewne the distinctive metallic click of a pulse rifle

cocking to the ready position.  Totally exposed, there was nowhere to

hide.  No time to even turn and look .

Just as the shot was fired, O'Neil lifted the big silver tray as a

shield.  The platter's mifforlike surface deflected the brunt of the

power bail, bending the shot back in the direction it came from.  O'Nefl

stood and whipped the tray like a flying saw blade toward the door.

Anubis, easily stepped behind the door, but when he ducked back in for a

second shot, he was welcomed by both of O'Neil's boots delivering a

flying stomp to his chest.

The jackal crashed belly-first to the ground.  He tried to push himself

up to his feet, but two knees landed between

his shoulder blades, forcing him back down in a heap.  The next moment

he felt the snout of his helmet being yanked violently to the side.

O'Nefl was trying to break his neck, not realizing that the quartz-based

helmet prevented this from happening.

O'Neil saw the long rifle laying nearby and made a decision.  Without

leaving Anubis's back, he reached out and kicked the rifle into the

darkness of the Grand Gallery.  He would defuse the bomb and deal with

his opponent later.

As swiftly as he had attacked, O'Neil was gone.  Anubis stumbled up to

his feet, his neck throbbing from the kick and spun around to confront

O'Neil.  But he had disappeared once again into the StarGate room.

Before following him inside, Anubis adjusted the scarab mounting on the

back of his hand armor.  Four razor-sharp claws spit out of the pad

following the natural curve of his hand.  Like his helmet, the knives

were made of powdered quartz held to shape in a gaseous membrane. Anubis

turned his wrist bracelet, focusing the claws, then marched into the

StarGate where O'Nefl was on his hands and knees.

Both men looked up when they heard the explosion.

Ra was patiently coaxing Daniel closer to the sarcophagus, promising not

to harm Sha'llri if Daniel would only come a little closer.  The game

was interrupted by the ear-piercing explosion of the glider into the

side of its mothership.

Everyone inside was badly startled, but none more than

Ra.  He dropped down behind the sarcophagus shrieking and cowering, his

head buried between his arms for several seconds.  When he finally

stopped, he looked at Daniel strangely.  His expression seemed to be

asking for sympathy, as if this frightening attack on his citadel should

naturaily be a cause of concern to everyone.

When he came away from the sarcophagus at a shuffling run, Daniel darted

away to the other side of the room.  But Ra wasn't interested in him. He

posed no threat and could be dealt with later.

Daniel saw the strange golden man run up the stairs and go into the

doorway behind his throne.

Seizing the opportunity, Daniel raced to the sarcophagus where Sha'llri

was beginning to stir.  The sarcophagus had

F

done enough to bring her back, but it hadn't finished the job.  Daniel

scooped her into his arms and bulled past the children out into the

throne room.

From his window, Ra could see both the fiery wreckage of the glider and

the tiny figures celebrating between the obelisks.  As he watched them

exult, he realized he would be forced to spend much more time than he

wished in this desolate, insignificant corner of his empire.  The entire

population would have to be exterminated and another brought to replace

it.  He looked out over the rolling desert and.remembered why he hated

this colony, his first: it reminded him too much of home.

When he was sure the pilots were still in command, he turned with new

purpose and strode off to kill Daniel.

Kawalsky and company were fresh out of ammo, and the glider pilots knew

it.  Prowling slowly overhead, they practicafly invited ground fire. The

only resistance they encountered was angry shouting from the boys.

The udajeet, flying in tandem, coasted out across the empty desert. Just

when it looked like they were leaving, they gently touched down on the

lip of the vast amphitheater of sand surrounding the pyramid.  A minute

later, the large hatch doors opened and the two Horuses stepped out.

They retrieved pulse rifles from their planes, then began marching

toward the obelisks.

O'Neil heard the footsteps and knew Anubis had followed him into the

room, but he kept working.  Exhibiting nerves of steel or perhaps his

old suicidal recklessness, he had just begun to punch in the command to

abort when he looked up to see Anubis's death claw swiping down at him.

The claws cut deeply, but not into the colonel.  They sunk into Daniel's

1931 edition of Aegypticus by Sir A.  E.  Wallis Budge.  Anubis looked

down at the shredded book, his claws buried deep within its tortuously

dull chapters.  O'Ned allowed him no time to read.  With a violent

twist, he forced Anubis to turn, then jacked his arm up behind him.  He

brought the bones almost to the breaking point, then leaned forward and

whispered into the jackal's ear.

"Bad dog."

There was a wet hollow pop as the arm said good-bye to its socket.

Howling in pain, Anubis felt O'Neil's boot in his back.  Anubis spun

back around just in time to eat a fist full of knuckles.  Like a power

punching heavy-weight contender, O'Ned drove Anubis backward with a

rapid flurry of punches.  Snapping Anubis's head from side to side,

O'Neil kept the pressure on till Anubis had stumbled back into the

medallion room.

Teetering on weak legs, Anubis tried to shake it off .

O'Neil, bending him over, snapped his own knee up into Anubis's already

dazed head.  He wrapped a leg behind Anubis and slammed him down to the

floor, hard.

O'Neil fell on him, pinning him down, his body laying half on the

medallion on the floor, half off.

Daniel had Sha'llri slumped over his shoulder as he carried her over to

the palace medallion.  Gently he laid her down on top of the medallion

as he began searching frantically for some way to turn it on.  He ran

his fingers over the sinister statue of Khnum searching for a hidden

panel, a button, anything.  Frustrated, he turned to the children who

had trailed after him down the hall, curious to see what this amazing

visitor would do next.

"Help us," he urged them, his eyes wild with terror.  The children only

looked at him like a circus freak and backed farther away ." Don't be

scared," he stepped off the platform moving closer, trying to show them

a kinder face.

"Semmoun, " he said gesturing to himself ." Semmoun, friend.

The children understood what he was trying to say, and a couple of them

giggled nervously at the way his pronunciation butchered the words.

"Ya'ani!" Ra's scream filled the hall.  At once, the children scattered

in every direction away from the spot.

"The time for games is over," he said, already moving toward them.

Like a grim image from some long-forgotten dream, Daniel watched the

golden pharaoh, this brutal and immortal child, stalking toward him, his

golden sandals clicking across the cold mosaic floor at an even,

inexorable tempo .

Daniel turned back to Sha'llfi, who barely stirred up atop

the medallion.  Somehow he would buy enough time to get herthrough.

Ra was almost to the medallion when Daniel plowed forward to attack.

Effortlessly, Ra reversed the man's momentum.  He simply opened his hand

and sent Daniel crashing backward, tumbling down next to Sha'llri on the

medallion.

Undaunted, Daniel turned back to Ra, attempting once again to rush him.

This time, the consequences were more severe.  Ra caught Daniel with the

full paralyzing force of the device.  His head and arms snapped backward

in pain as Ra lowered his hand onto Daniel's head, forcing him down

submissively to his knees.  A moment later, Daniel's face began to

ripple like the reflection in a liquid mirror.  Every bone and organ in

his body began to swell and contract, warping into new shapes as the

quartz jewel, a weaker version of the StarGate, began to break him down

at the molecular level.  In a matter of seconds, Daniel would be dead.

Stiff pinned over the medallion below, Anubis tried to buck the colonel

off of him.  But as O'Neil pressed Anubis back down, he noticed the

wrist device on the back plate of Anubis's hand and remembered seeing

him use it to activate the medallion when they had been captured before.

This was his chance to end this once and for all.

"Give my regards to King Tut, asshole ."

Quickly O'Neil lifted Anubis's wrist up and slammed it back down, hard

to the floor.  The impact activated the device set into the scarab

mounting.  Immediately, the cold blue laser pierced into the air, inches

from Anubis's head.

When Anubis saw the beam spreading around the disk on the ceiling, he

forgot the pain shooting from his arm and went absolutely wild.

Tillisting and bucking and screaming in pain, he desperately tried to

find the leverage he needed to throw O'Neil aside.  O'Neil remembered

the way Sha'llri's haik had been sliced away and held Anubis down,

partially over the medallion.  He concentrated on holding Anubis and

waited to see what would happen when the blade of light completed its

circuit.

When the blue beam speared into the air next to him, Ra reacted, easing

up, ever so slightly on the torture to Daniel as Ra attempted to

retreat.  Even through the intense pain, Daniel realized what was

happening.  O'Neil.  He was at the medallion below, trying to show him

and Sha'llri the way to safety.

With every once of energy Daniel had left, he reached up and grabbed

Ra's hand, holding it in place.  Ra couldn't understand.  Why would

Daniel hold him there, continuing the torture?  He pressed down and

increased the intensity to force Daniel's hands open, but it was to no

avail.  Daniel held on tight.

Ra was in more trouble than he knew.  The cylinder of blue light was

three-quarters complete.  When Daniel saw how close they were, he

started thinking he might win.  He raised both hands and locked on to

Ra's wrist.

"Release the hand!" he commanded.  Ra was so startled he'd shut his hand

before trying to yank it free.

Daniel's head began to clear.  When he saw the laser only a foot away

from completion, he tightened his grip on Ra's arm, picturing himself as

a pit bull, his teeth deep into the soft part of a bone.  As his

eyesight refocused, he blinked up at the devil and saw something

swinging from Ra's neckthe sun disk Catherine had given him for luck.

When Daniel saw it, his hand shot out and snapped the disk away, ripping

it from Ra's neck just as the curtain completed its are and sealed. Once

in place the wall held Ra's arm frozen in place, held perfectly

immobile.  Daniel backed away, staring at Ra, who was held tight against

the medallion, struggling in vain to free himself.

As Daniel and Sha'llri began to vanish, so did part of Ra's arm.  The

beam cut a clean path through his forearm.  Ra tumbled backward and

looked like he was shrieking over and over again, pain blistering

through the stump of his arm, as he watched.

In exchange, the machine delivered the freshly severed head of his one

truly able warrior, Anubis, the muscles in hisjaw still twitching with

life.

Ra collapsed and began calling for help.  He had to get to the

sarcophagus.  He knew from his experiments the machine would eventually

grow back severed limbs.  But it was

knowledge that would do him no good if he bled to death on the floor.

Again, he screamed for his servants.  But the children had either fled

the room or were keeping themselves well hidden .

Enraged by this unsubordination, Ra got to his feet and wrapped his arm

in the folds of his golden skirt.  He staggered toward the throne,

shouting angrily as he went.  Over and over, he promised that he would

severely punish all who had ignored his call.

SUPREME POWER

O'Nefl instantly recognized the severed hand as Ra's; the torturing

device still clutched in its palm.  But as O'Neil looked away from the

headless Anubis, he discovered that Sha'llri and Daniel were out cold,

exhausted and beaten.

O'Ned turned back to the bomb in a panic.

03:46 and counting down.

Even if Daniel were conscious, it would take him longer than that to

activate the StarGate.  O'Neil knew he must shut the bomb down and

revive Daniel.

Sprinting, O'Neil raced over to the bomb and quickly punched in the

abort code.  With the last of the numbers activated, O'Neil punched the

"ENTER" button and breathed a sigh of relief.

His respite was premature as the counter continued to click downward.

03:22 ...  03:21 ...

Shocked, O'Neil searched through his memory.  What could he have

forgotten?  Why didn't it work?  Again he tried the abort codes, and

again they failed to work.

Frustrated, O'Neil grabbed for the electronic key snapped on the top of

the bomb.  Violently he yanked it out of its housing.  Yet still, the

bomb ticked down.

Ammunition out, scattered casualties, and down to the knives and

bayonets, Kawalsky was out of options.  With the exception of Skaara,

who wanted to fight to the finish, the rest of the shepherd boys were

beaten and exhausted.

The gliders had already landed, and the two Horus guards were marching

closer.  Kawalsky knew any attempt to resist them would be futile.

"We've got to surrender," Kawalsky groaned.

"Say what?" barked Feretti.

"We'R lose any fight we start out here.  We've got to surrender and hope

O'Neill's still alive."

"If O'Ned's still alive, he's in Colorado by now."

"I'm not worried about us, Feretti.  It's the kids.  If we don't resist,

they may just take them prisoner."

This was the one option Feretti was never willing to accept: surrender.

It had been drilled into his head ever since his early Special Forces

training days, no surrender .

But when Feretti looked over at the wounded children, he realized that

Kawalsky was right.

Kawalsky tossed his empty rifle aside and marched out past the obelisks

into the sand toward the two Horus soldiers.  Skaara couldn't believe

what he was seeing.  Feretti, too, tossed his weapon away and followed

Kawalsky, raising their arms in the air.

One by one the shepherds followed suit, walking away from the barrier,

arms in the air.  Tried as he might, Skaara could not convince them to

fight to the death.  As the last of the boys passed him, Skaara finally

resigned himself, tossing away his pistol and reluctantly following the

others out.

They walked several yards away from the barricades and dropped to their

knees.  Kawalsky hoped this would save them from execution.  The Horus

guards were over fifty yards away when suddenly they snapped the

housings of their weapons open, ready to fire.  In desert silence the

action sounded much closer.  The hawks leveled their weapons, ready to

execute the team on the spot.  Maybe if the boys saw the soldiers fall,

they'd finally run.  Kawalsky strode forward to take the first shot, but

the next second his heart and his feet stopped together.

It was the sound of drums.  The soldiers looked around at the ring of

dunes, empty as the deafening sonic mayhem

pounded the desert.  It sounded like thousands of drums, all being hit

with excessive force by people uninterested in tempo or rhythm.

One of the Horuses turned and fired twice at the survivors and their

carts.  They ali hit the deck a full second before the pulse burned a

crisp hiss over their heads.  By the time they looked up again, a

thousand men from Nagada were standing on the hillside, looking down on

the scene.  About a hundred more came up behind them as the noise

continued to build in volume and in fury.

The two Horus soldiers held their ground, staring back at these new

intruders, their unease growing.  The hawk heads turned as another group

of a hundred came over a ridge, and formed a human wall between the

pilots and their planes.  Hundreds more came banging kettles with

spoons, waving mining tools in the air, brandishing knives and brooms

and paving stones.  They came to the top of every dune, not in hundreds

but in thousands, each one making their share of the noise.  Exuberant

young men danced from side to side, laughing and screaming, feeling the

exhilaration of becoming a mob for the first time in their lives.  Like

a strong animal held in reins too long, they were surging with energy,

ready to explode into action.

Suddenly Kasuf appeared at the top of the highest dune .

All attention was riveted to him as he raised his arms .

Kasuf's order for the drumming to cease was sent through the crowd, and

a few seconds later everything began to fall quiet.  Kasuf got out in

front of the giant horde.  If he wanted to stop them, he would need a

miracle.  He walked halfway down the big slope and turned back to the

crowd, signaling for them to be calm.

One of the Horuses used the moment to invoke the fear of Ra.  Repeating

a catechism he and the people both knew well, he shouted:

"Aten-Re, tiyi harukha khare na'aran sa, Henten-Re."

Ra, Lord of the Sun, repays both piety and disrespect many times over,

Ra, Lord of Justice."

Kasuf responded by lifting his staff high above his head and shouting as

loud as he could, "Bani dharam Ka!"

Supreme power!

At once, the people spilled down the dunes from all sides,

crashing like a tidal wave into the empty basin of sand .

Both Horuses squeezed off deadly shots as quickly as their weapons would

fire, doing nothing to slow the mad rush.  A long sustained battle cry

rose out of the crowd.  No one had planned it, but now that the whole

population was screaming the same note, it became a source of strength.

The fierce song reminded them that they were one people, swarming to

achieve a common goal.  They came in overwhelming numbers, like a

vengeful sea.

Ra hurried to the sarcophagus and threw himself onto the stone table

inside.  Trembling uncontrollably, he reached for the shroud and covered

himself as the lid slowly closed above him.  The hushed hum of the

machine sounded as soothing as a lullaby.  It meant the ghastly pain in

his arm would stop, that he would wake up with a healthy stump that

would in time grow to be a hand.  But there was more .

Being in the machine meant undisturbed comfort and the voluptuous sleep

of the dead.  The sarcophagus was the nearest thing he had to affection.

He crawled inside when he needed treatment of his chronic ailment,

loneliness.

Ra had no peers, no relationships.  He mistrusted everyone except the

children, who were so poorly educated, they made terrible companions.

They were his pets.  But there was no one to talk to.  He hadn't lost an

argument for thousands of years, even over something small.  On his

master's advice, he'd prohibited all writing and all organized study

preslavery culture.  Less than a hundred years into his rule, his

subjects were effectively lobotomized.  Commander of his own fate, the

world around him reflected who he was.  And the world around him was

barren.  There were consequences to being so old.

Just before the lid closed above him like an infant reentering the womb,

he heard the giant noise of voices erupt outside.

Alarmed, he climbed out of the sarcophagus and staggered back to h'is

private chamber.  He went to the giant window and saw the ferocious

spectacle being improvised in the sand.  When his soldiers fell to the

stampede, Ra had seen enough.  Now it was a matter of escaping.

He went to a control panel and readjusted the instruments.

At once, the lifters began to whistle, the huge quartz hoops pushing

more and more adr down the sides of the pyramid .

As the great golden sections of the spacecraft's wall began rumbling

closed, some of the children had gathered in the arms of Khnum, stomping

on the medallion as they had seen Daniel do.  They were trying to escape

before Ra could make good on his promise to punish them.

Like a swam of piranha, the crowd flooded in from all sides and fell

upon the soldiers, tearing them limb from limb.  The attack continued

until the gods were nothing but bloody stains on the people's hands.

At the same time, a thousand others crowded up the ramp and rushed for

the massive stone door.  Working together under Kawalsky's direction,

they easily lifted it high and stacked loose stones into piles to prop

it open.  Most of those who went under the door hovered near the

entrance, not yet bold enough to rush into the pitch-black for a

confrontation with Ra himself.

There had been no particular plan of attack, only a running march across

the desert to stop Ra from harming Sha'llri, the shepherds and the

visitors.  Once the obvious target, the Horus guards, had been

dispatched the scene outside the entrance quickly devolved to chaos.

Kasuf huddled in urgent discussion with the other Elders.

A loud crack shot from the sky, silencing the crowd in a heartbeat.  It

was followed immediately by the deep rumbling of the spacecraft's

internal machinery jolting into action .

The long claws of the stabilizing arms unanchored themselves while the

megalithic window panels rolled to a close.

Ra was running away.

The Nagadans had won.  As they slowly realized, a wild joyftil cry

exploded out of them, the celebrate shout of unintended conquerors.

Unintended because they hadn't come here today expecting to win a

victory.  They came to protect the visitors and the shepherd boys, all

of them heroes of the town.

But at a deeper level, they came because they could.  For the first time

in their collective memory, they felt they had a choice.  When Ra's

soldiers had come to the city indiscriminately killing and burning, no

one had challenged

them.  Not even the strongest man, seeing his child killed before him,

had imagined striking back.  Then the visitors, the first in their

history, had arrived and turned everything upside down.  Along with two

of Kasuf s own children, they had killed the vicious Horus, then bravely

set out to confront Ra in his temple.  If a miracle is an event that

unexpectedly and massively expands the definition of what is humanly

possible, the arrival of the Dan-yer and the soldiers qualified as a

miracle.  As news of their exploits spread, an exhilarating feeling

swept through the City, the feeling that suddenly, anything was

possible.  They had come in order to hit back at Ra.

A blindfold had been torn away, and the people's habit of obedience was

quickly overwhelmed by an instinct for justice.

Daniel's entire face was a huge purple and blue bruise.  So were his

hands and shoulders, all the areas that had taken the brunt of the

jewel's painful, atom-shifting power.  The blood coming from his nose

and ears indicated the likelihood of internal hemorrhaging.  But aB his

vital signs were normal .

The injuries appeared worse than they actually were; there wasn't enough

time for the device to achieve its critical mass and liquefy Daniel from

the inside out.  Once he had broken free of the small medallion's dark

magic, the damage had ceased.

The rumbling of the spacecraft taking off woke Daniel, and his eyes

creaked open, bloodshot.  He smiled over at Sha'llri, who was just

stirring to consciousness herself.  They looked like hell.  She smiled

back at him, grateful they were still alive.

Suddenly Daniel's memory rushed back at him.  Where was O'Neil?  The

bomb?  Daniel sat up and looked across the room at O'Neil standing over

the bomb, working every control panel he could find.  The bomb was still

counting down.

00:41.  00:40.  00:39.

Daniel jumped to his feet and rushed over to O'Neil in a panic,

stumbling as the room began to shake ever violently.

00:32.  00:31.  00:30.

"T'llm it off!  He's leaving!  We've won!" Daniel demanded.

"I'm trying!  It's been rigged.  It won't abort."

"Rigged?  By who?"

A grim and ugly truth that O'Neil wished was just a joke.

"Military intelligence," O'Neil explained.

00:22.  00:21.  00:20.

Both men looked at the bomb, stunned.  Then they looked at each other

and began speaking at the same time.  They both had the same idea.

The moment the massive spacecraft lifted away from the pyramid, the

thousands in the crowd went berserk with joy, they went completely

stark-raving lunatic hog wild, dancing insanely, jumping headfirst into

the sand, singing, taunting the ship with their mining implements.

People were jumping on each other, hugging, tackling each other.

Anything to express the wdd physical joy erupting from within.

The only person in the entire triumphant crowd who just couldn't enjoy

the victory was Skaara.  He knew they'd won and knew it was all worth

it.  But he'd lost his friend, Nabeh.

Through the throngs of people, Skaara spotted the helmet laying near the

base of the ramp.  Skaara decided he must have it as a last momento.

Aggressively he pushed through the crowd, attempting to make his way

over to the helmet before one of the jubilant Nagadans picked it up.

The man didn't get two feet before a burned-up hand reached out and

locked on to the helmet.  Skaffa pushed closer to get a better look.

When he found was Nabeh, scorched and bloodied, but alive, wrestling

with the last of his strength until he retrieved his coveted helmet.

Skaara knocked people aside to get to him.  He grabbed his big friend

and squeezed him tight in his arms.

"Did you see me, Skaara?  I was flying."

Skaara smiled through tears of happiness.

" I saw you, Nabeh ."

The other victorious shepherd boys spotted Nabeh and came rushing over.

Kawalsky and Feretti, both caught up in

F'

the excitement of the moment finally saw young Nabeh and ran over.

Quickly Kawalsky checked Nabeh's injuries.  Trained for battle injury

medical care, Kawalsky examined Nabeh closely.  Feretti looked over to

Kawalsky, worried.

"It's not as bad as it looks.  He's going to be okay.

Skaara and Nabeh both looked back at Kawalsky, not understanding. Though

they didn't understand the words, Kawalsky knew they'd understand the

tone in his voice.

"You're going to be fine.  You're a tough little guy."

Enjoying the victory, Kasuf had nearly forgotten about Skaara when he

saw the boys gathered around Nabeh .

Kaisuf rushed over and saw that the young Nabeh was still alive.

Returning his attention to Skaara, the old man's plan to be stern with

the child suddenly melted.  He grabbed the boy and wrapped him up in his

arms, lifting him like he was still a baby, whooping along with the

others.

Ra's children came running from every direction.  The oldest girl made a

mad dash for the bathing room where she knew the young ones were hiding.

She ,rathered them quickly and hurried them to the medallion.  The last

of the children jumped onto the medallion just as Ra came out of his

chamber and slumped against his throne, his proud form was bent over the

severed hand in pain.  He knew it was too late to stop the beam. Slowly,

he straightened up and came down the stairs toward the children, tears

welling up in his yellow and amber eyes.

"You cannot leave me!" he screamed, the light flaring from deep within

his eyes.

It was partly a command, partly a plea.  But it was too late.  The

merciless wail of blue light was about to seal, and as soon as it did,

the children disappeared in a downward rush of light.

In their place, O'Neil's bomb materialized.  It was the last thing Ra

would ever see.  The red countdown numbers were blinking on the twin

canisters, impudently sending Ra the news of his own destruction.  In a

futile attempt to escape, the creature within the boy wrenched itself

free from it's human host.  The body of the boy Ra collapsed, lifeless.

As it hit the ground and without the creature within, the skin,

bone hair, and teeth aged instantly returning to its natural state.

Within the time it took to fall to the ground, Ra's body finally looked

it's age.

00:09.  00:08.  00.07.

Free of its shell, the creature wanted to rush past the bomb and beam

away through the rings.  If he was quick enough, he could attach himself

to another host body before his natural one would expire.  But before he

could move an inch, the bomb ticked down to its final count.  The

creature screamed out one last ghoulish howl.

00:02.  00:01.  And in a flash, it was over.  The light-like creature

turned solid, then burst into a million tiny particles.

Daniel, Sha'llri, and O'Neil stumbled out of the pyramid entrance just

in time to watch Ra's craft disappear from view.  The crowd below

staring intensely at the craft as it began to vanish.

"He's gone," Daniel announced.

The craft was already miles away, speeding toward the vanishing point

when the timer flashed to zero.  Even at that distance, if it hadn't

been moving away at such terrific speed, the white burst of light would

have blinded everyone on the ground.  What they got instead, after that

initial brilliant pulsation, was a fireworks show like none ever seen on

Earth.  Not only from the nuclear reaction itself, but as a result of

the temperature climbing past the meltdown point of the quartz.  It

shattered charneleon into long fiery arcs across the sky.

"And he's not coming back," O'Neill added.  When the people realized

that Sha'llri, Daniel, and O'Nefl had made it safely back outside,

another roar spread through the crowd.

Following them onto the landing were the thinly clad children, Ra's

young slaves.  They looked and felt desperately out of place among the

rough-hewn people of the mines.  O'Ned wanted to send a signal to any

who might want to attack these kids as a symbol of Ra.  He carried one

of the youngest on his hip, his pistol prominently displayed in the

other.

Kasuf and his entourage knelt to offer a prayer, but Skaara ran past his

father until he was halfway up the ramp, facing O'Neil and the others.

Wearing a big grin smeared

across his face, Skaara slowly lifted his hand to his brow in a pretty

decent military salute.  Something about this simple pleasure got to

O'Neil, who stared at the boy, speechless .

Slowly, one by one, the entire team of shepherd boys walked up behind

Skaara and saluted.

Kawalsky and Feretti ate it up.  They loved these kids for all they had

done for them.  Kawalsky, then Feretti, joined the shepherd boys as they

all saluted the colonel.

O'Neil found himself choked up.  He knew it was silly, yet it still got

to him.  Ever so slowly O'Neil, lifted his hand and returned young

Skaara's salute.

Sha'llri turned and took Daniel's hand and raised it high in the air.

The thousands roared back, each and every one of them raising their

fists in solidarity with the fair-haired one they once feared as a god,

but now respected as a man and a friend.

Daniel turned to Sha'llri and kissed her.  For the first time in

Daniel's entire life, he felt like he belonged.  That someone had needed

him and that he came through for them.

The noisy throng stood and cheered Daniel for several minutes, until,

swept up in their adulation, they lifted him and Sha'llri onto their

soldiers and paraded them away from the scene.

As they buoyed the couple out into the desert, Daniel saw, with mixed

emotion, his favorite smelly mastadge, Little Bit, pacing back and forth

on a dune top waiting for his turn to congratulate the hero of the day.

Sha'llri saw Daniel's expression turn sour as he looked at the mangiest

beast he'd known on either planet.  Sha'llri saw this and shouted

instructions over the din to the man caffying Daniel on their shoulders.

Laughing and cheering, they ran Daniel straight toward the bad breath

and slimy affection of the braying mongrel.  Just before the beast's hot

tongue slothering up the side of his face, he shot a look at Sha'lln', a

look that translated the same way in any language: "I'll get you back

for this."

*'4'IT BROUGHT ME

LUCPCI*

Daniel held a flare in one hand, his notebook in the other .

Under his direction, Kawalsky turned the heavy inner ring of the

StarGate, sliding the appropriate constellations up to the top in their

prescribed order.  As soon as the final symbol was wheeled into place

and registered with a click, the strange machine began to operate under

its own power .

Daniel tossed the flare, and the two men hightailed it to join the

others waiting in the medallion room.

The narrow medallion hall and the giant sloping Grand Gallery behind it

were crowded with spectators, lit by the torches brought from Nagada.

Even though they'd seen it before, Daniel, Feretti, Kawalsky, and O'Neil

were peeking around the corner like a bunch of boys who'd snuck into the

movies.  The show was fantastic.

The light came pouring from the ring's seven hooded clamps like ropes of

water spilling upward against gravity, slowly filling the ring's center,

becoming the shimmering white surface of a turbulent pool.

But this time it wasn't the ring's light show that was the star of the

show.  It was the music.  They'd heard it before in the antiseptic silo,

from behind safety glass and computers and asbestos doors.  This time,

sitting in mellowing torchlight surrounded by the stone cathedral walls

of the pyramid, they understood that the ring's music was more than a

sharpening of a sound frequency.  It was a song of slow vari ations and

rising power, a twelve tone rhapsody pro duced by this naturally

occurring organic synthesizer.  Here in the StarGate's natural setting,

the ring's music was truly awesome.

As the song reached the top of its power, and the seething pool of light

began sloshing over the rim of the Gate, Daniel puffed Sha'llri safely

behind the doodamb.  A second later came the moment the Americans were

waiting for: the sudden and violent eruption of energy,.the liquid fight

splashing out into the room, like the grasping hand of God.  Or gods.

Even the people far back in the Gallery gasped and jumped backward at

the terrifying power of the mysterious machine.  When they peeked out

from around their corners, or lifted their arms away from their eyes,

the light had already been sucked back through the ring, the energy

tearing off the perimeter of the device like a wind sock one hundred

yards from a nuclear explosion.  The circular tube of energy disappeared

into the thick stone pyramid wail less than thirty feet behind the ring.

The Americans stood up and came into the room.  It was time to go.

Skaara moved from the crowd over to O'Ned .

Skaara lifted his hand, but unlike the first meeting with Colonel

O'Neil, this time Skaara didn't run shrieking when O'Neil took his hand

and shook it.  In fact, Skaara would never run shrieking from anything

ever again.

As O'Neil stood there shaking his hand, he understood that.  He also

understood that somehow, in his own way, he too had been running.  And

now, partially through the courage of this young man, he'd never run

away again, either .

O'Neil sanded a good-bye.

As the team walked to the short flights of stairs that led up to the

Gate, Feretti turned to Daniel.

"Hey, by the way," he said over the StarGate's sublime humming, "did you

ever get those books back?"

"Actually I did.  One of them got a little mauled"-he glanced at O'Nefl,

then back-"but yes I did, thank you."

"And I want you to know"-Feretti leaned in with a conspiratorial

whisper-"I always knew you'd get us back," Feretti said, badly

stretching the truth.

"Yeah, right," the big lieutenant commented dryly.  He

"Thanks.

soldier in the black heret.

the answer.

night next to him, understood more or less what they were

"Yeah.  I think so." Pointedly, Daniel returned the quesO'Neil knew

exactly what Daniel was referring to and money when they were in the

cave.  O'Ned was not in a

%yasn't too late.  Maybe there was still time to save their mar No

matter what, O'Nefl was at least ready to try.  To try

"Yeah.  I'll be okay," he answered.  And just with those to be okay.

be down in those catacombs for the next six months."

left his lips, Daniel felt funny saying them.  How casually he

light-years away from home.  Amazing.

won't be made by me.  That'll be up to my superiors."

'Goddamn contradiction in terms." O'Neil smiled.

hon-"tell Catherine it brought me luck."

tional, O'Neil turned away, walked up the steps directly into

Kawalsky and Feretti followed suit, their images hanging blur.  Each

time one of the men stepped into the intensewhite streaking pool of

light, the assembled Nagadans

Skaara, Daniel, and Sha'llri watched long after the soland the bowels of

the pyramid returned to the darkness of mid and out into the desert

where the last of the three suns

As they began the long walk back to the city, Little Bit Nagadans and

the beautiful planet's oblong moon, she sounded a melancholy groan