Clean Getaway

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Title: Clean Getaway
Rating: PG
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Samantha Carter, Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, Teal’c
Word Count: 9526
Categories: gen, mild UST
Spoilers: Set between “Point of No Return” (4.11) and “The Serpent’s Venom” (4.14). Spoilers for the series to that point.
Warnings: none
Summary: AKA, That Time the Team Had to Go Through a Decontamination Shower Together in Order to Explore an Ancient Facility. The incident mentioned in Voyagers, that simply demanded its own story.


The Gate on PX1-934 was housed inside an Ancient facility. Exactly what the facility was for, they hadn’t been able to ascertain from the telemetry the MALP sent back, but Sam knew that Daniel was hoping they’d come across another repository and the colonel was hoping they’d find weapons. After so many disappointments and dangers, Sam had reached the point where she just hoped for something that would be interesting without being deadly.

She came through the Gate with her flashlight at the ready, but found she didn’t need it. While the MALP had shown a mostly dark room with only dim lights set high up on the walls, the space SG-1 walked into was brightly illuminated. She blinked a bit at the change—it was brighter than it had been in the SGC—and looked around.

The room was about the same size as their own Gate room, though the ceiling was much lower, which made it feel smaller. The wall directly across the room from the Gate featured two doors set equidistant apart. There was also a single door in center of the wall to her left, though it was a regular one with a door knob, whereas the other two more closely resembled sealable hatches.

The right wall was half glass, the large window looking in on what appeared to be a control room. Sam could see a few people inside it, watching SG-1 with looks of surprise and excitement. Daniel stepped forward and raised his hand to them in greeting.

“Hello! We’re a team of explorers. My name is Daniel, and this is Colonel O’Neill, Major Carter, and Teal’c.”

The people behind the glass just continued to stare at them, with no change in their expressions.

“Maybe they can’t hear us,” the colonel suggested.

“Or they may not speak English,” Daniel mused.

“Or maybe they didn’t expect anyone to come through the Gate any more than we expected there’d be someone here when we did.” Sam had been sure the facility was abandoned; instead, fully lit, it looked as though it could have been in operation for years.

In the control room, a woman suddenly moved, breaking the frozen tableau. A second later, her voice came through to the Gate room.

“We can hear you,” she advised. “My name is Sylla, and I apologize for our amazement; we knew some attempt at contact had been made, given the machine you sent through.” She pointed to the MALP, which was parked in a corner. “However, we didn’t expect that people might follow after it so soon.”

“And we apologize that we didn’t manage to make contact with you directly to advise that we planned to visit your world,” Daniel replied. “When we sent our machine through the room was very dark, so we thought this place was abandoned.”

“Yes,” Sylla said, her tone equal measures of amusement and intrigue. “Your machine came through at night, when operations are halted for the day.”

“Hence everyone’s mutual surprise,” the colonel quipped.

“We would still like to meet with you and explore your world, if that’s okay?”

Sam bit back a grin at the puppy-dog look Daniel was aiming at the control room window. It was clear that he desperately wanted to take a look around, and it looked like he’d be willing to grovel a bit if their unannounced arrival created any diplomatic issues that needing smoothing over. Luckily, though, it didn’t seem like that would be the case. Sylla was nodding enthusiastically in response to his request, her colleagues looking similarly pleased with the idea of welcoming SG-1 in.

“Of course,” she told them. “We are very excited to meet other explorers, and we would like to learn about your world, as well.”

“Great! Which way do we go to get out of here?” The colonel gestured around the room.

“You will need to leave your gear behind,” Sylla told him, “unless it is able to go through decontamination?”

She’d added the last bit with a tone of inquiry, and Sam could see her eyes scanning the team’s weapons and packs. Colonel O’Neill stared at her for a moment before turning to Daniel, who asked his unvoiced question.

“Decontamination?”

Sylla raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Surely as explorers who travel to other worlds you go through decontamination when you return home? To prevent anything dangerous you may have picked up from being spread to others?”

The colonel looked to Sam then, and she bobbed her head in agreement.

“We do kind of have a routine decontamination procedure, sir,” she confirmed. “Aside from the things we’re hit with or scanned by when we come through the Gate, there are the required medical exams after every trip. And we also have hazmat protocols when called for.”

He didn’t seem all that mollified by her answer, a faint frown tightening his features. “Yes, ‘when called for.’ It sounds like they do it every time. Does that seem at all concerning to anyone else?”

“Not really, no,” Daniel bluntly replied.

Sam could tell he was still determined to get into the facility, whatever he or the team had to do. But he also wasn’t wrong, and when the colonel turned to her again, clearly looking for back up, Sam could only offer him an apologetic shrug.

“Honestly, we’ve been really lucky so far that we haven’t brought home some kind of alien pathogen, sir.” She caught the sardonic look he tossed her, and corrected herself. “Some kind of alien pathogen that was deadly and highly transmissible. At any rate, I don’t think this precaution on their part is anything suspicious.”

“Everyone does understand that ‘our gear’ includes our weapons, yes? Or is it just me that gets a hinky feeling any time someone wants us disarmed?”

Everyone jumped slightly when Sylla’s voice came over the speakers again. Sam had actually momentarily forgotten that their conversation could be heard. She tried not to look chagrined by Sylla’s matter-of-fact tone.

“Unless your weapons are washable, Colonel O’Neill, then, yes, you will need to leave them in the Travel Room.” Sylla’s tone shifted to something gentler as she added, “But you don’t need to fear being without them. There are no weapons on Corvia; we do not need or use them. On my life, you will be perfectly safe here.”

The colonel still seemed wary, but Sam could see he was more open to the idea of staying than he had been. She could understand his hesitation; she didn’t like being unarmed off-world, either. But she really didn’t get the impression that the team were in any danger on this particular planet.

“What do you mean by ‘washable’?” he suddenly asked Sylla.

“The decontamination shower is required for all travelers returning to the planet,” she calmly explained. “It’s where you will go next, should you decide to stay.”

He was frowning again, clearly weighing their options, and Sam wondered what could possibly worry him about having to take a shower before they were allowed to explore Corvia. They’d certainly had to go through much worse before to gain entry to planets. From Daniel’s impatient expression, it was obvious he also didn’t understand why there would be an issue.

“Jack—”

“Daniel.”

“Jack, it’s Ancient,” he said in a low voice, waving a hand around them.

“And how many times have you said that and we walked away with nothing?”

“It’s an intact Ancient building, Jack.”

“Ancient room, at least,” Jack countered. “We don’t know what’s behind those doors.”

“The facility is intact, gentlemen,” came Sylla’s voice again. “Would you like to see it or not?”

Sam turned to see Sylla watching them with an amused smile on her face. She seemed to find the ongoing banter entertaining, and—feeling a sudden kinship with her—Sam decided to add her weight to Daniel’s side. After all, the Ancients might have left some tech lying around, if the state of the control room Sylla was standing in was anything to go by.

“Sir, I agree with Daniel. We should do this.”

“We have come all this way, O’Neill.”

The colonel’s gaze shifted from her to Teal’c, and he conjured up a look of wounded betrayal before sighing only slightly dramatically. He turned to look up at Sylla with a resigned air.

“Where do we put our gear?”

“There is a room to your left,” Sylla advised. “Inside you will find bins and lockers where you can store your things. Once you’ve done so, return to this room and I’ll let you through to the next one.”

Daniel led the way into what was in fact a kind of locker room. There were two benches in the middle of it, with lockers on the wall opposite the door. On the two side walls were cubbies of various sizes. The team found a large bin to the left of the door and put their weapons, packs, and vests in it. Sam took a peek in some of the other bins in the cubbies; two held what looked like geology tools, while another was crammed full of radios.

Feeling slightly naked without her weapons, she followed the rest of the team back into the Gate room. As promised, Sylla was still in the control room and smiled when she saw them re-emerge.

“You will go through the left-hand door in front of you now,” she advised them. “It will lead you to the Disrobing Room. From there, you’ll proceed to the Shower Room, followed by the Dressing Room. No one in the facility will be able to see you in any of those rooms, but I will wait for you in the Preparation Room on the other side and assist you via speaker.”

“Got it,” Daniel said, with a nod. “We’ll see you there.”

Sylla gave them a final smile, and then walked to a door at the far side of the control room and disappeared through it. One of the men sitting at the window nodded, and Sam heard the hiss of a seal being released. Then the left-hand door popped ajar, and the colonel stepped forward to pull it all the way open. A man’s voice came over the intercom.

“Please pull the door shut behind you; I’ll make sure it reseals.”

“Right-o,” the colonel flippantly replied before stepping into the hallway behind the door.

Daniel followed on his heels, and Teal’c waved Sam ahead of him. Once she was far enough in the hall to allow for Teal’c to get in, too, she stopped and looked back at the door. The Gate Room side of it had been featureless, and she’d hoped this side would give more details into how it worked, but it was similarly flat. All of the workings must be internal, though she did notice a small cover on the wall beside the door that might have been a control panel. She turned and continued down the hallway, wondering if she could convince the Corvians to let her open one of the panels up and poke around inside.

The hallway led directly into the Disrobing Room. Similar to the room where they had left their gear, this room also had benches, lockers, and cubbies, no doubt where they could leave their clothes. It was also completely open, with no partitions or walls of any kind to provide privacy.

Sam glanced around hesitantly, and she caught the colonel doing the same. Or, rather, she caught him pointedly not looking at her. Daniel was shrugging out of his jacket and Teal’c had already peeled off his tee, but the colonel just cleared his throat.

“Ah, why don’t we let Carter go first, huh?”

Daniel glanced around in mild surprise, as if he had forgotten she was there. Sam thought he’d probably forgotten any of them were there and had instead been lost in speculation about what was waiting for them on the other side of the showers.

“Right, sure,” he quickly agreed, waving a hand at the door that led into the shower. “You go ahead, Sam.”

Sam gave him a tight smile and moved to stand near the door. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the rest of the team had politely turned their backs, letting her get on with it. Sighing silently, she pulled off her jacket and was just tugging her shirt out of her pants when the sound of a voice over the intercom caused her to jump hard enough that she banged her elbow against the wall. Hissing in pain, she glared up at the ceiling.

“Please let me know once you are ready to enter the shower,” Sylla’s voice said. “The decontamination process is automated, but I will need to trigger it.”

“I’m getting undressed now,” Sam said. “I should be ready in just a couple of minutes.”

“All of you will be ready, yes?”

Sam frowned at the ceiling, absently realizing she didn’t actually see a speaker anywhere, before throwing a look at the others’ backs. Teal’c appeared relaxed, but Daniel’s head was tilted as though he were listening with intense concentration. And the colonel—well, Sam would’ve said that he was standing at attention, but really his body had just gone rigid at Sylla’s words. Sam swallowed and took a breath.

“What do you mean ‘all of us’?” she tentatively asked.

“The shower must go through its own cleaning cycle after each decontamination,” Sylla patiently explained. “That cycle is part of the automation and can’t be skipped. If you each attempt to go through the shower individually, you will have to wait for the complete cycle to finish each time before another one may go through.”

“And how long does each cycle take?” Daniel asked, as though he expected an undesirable answer.

“Four hours.”

Sam heard the colonel sigh, and saw him rub his hands over his face. “Damn it.”

“So we must go through the decontamination shower together,” Teal’c summarized.

“Yes,” Sylla confirmed.

“Can—can we each enter the Shower Room individually and the last one in just tell you we’re ready?” Daniel’s tone indicated he was hopeful he had found a solution.

“Yes, you may do that.” Sylla sounded slightly bewildered over the team’s need to plan out how they could get into the room, but she graciously answered the question anyway. “The process cannot start until both of the doors into the Shower Room are closed, so you can enter the room in whatever order you please while the door remains open.”

“Okay, so Carter still goes first,” Colonel O’Neill advised. “Once she’s in the room the rest of us will finish undressing and follow. Last one in tells Sylla we’re ready.”

Everyone gave their assent, including Sylla, and Sam returned to stripping.

It wasn’t that odd getting undressed with the others in the same room. They’d spent enough time together on missions that they’d all shared quarters in some capacity multiple times over. They’d shared tents and bathrooms and beds and—on one very memorable occasion—even a four-person hammock. As a first contact team, they often had to don native regalia for one reason or another and usually helped each other into and out of the same. And there was the ubiquitous tending to of injuries, of which SG-1 had endured more than their share. With all that in mind, Sam knew her teammates’ bodies almost as well as she knew her own.

They’d never had to shower together before, though, decontamination or otherwise. It shouldn’t have been a big deal; all they probably would have to do was stand under shower heads for a few minutes while ignoring each other. She should’ve been able to do it without a second thought.

But she couldn’t. Not after she had stared into Jack’s eyes through a force field, believing they were both going to die, and read in them everything that had remained unspoken. Not after she’d heard him admit his feelings for her. Not after she had confessed hers for him. Not after they’d left it in that room, only to find comfort in each other’s arms while living another life.

She still dreamed as Thera sometimes, and woke up aching with longing and hollow with loneliness. She’d paved over the rawness of her emotions with projects and reports and missions, but it hadn’t healed yet.

So it was just a shower, but it was also a lot more than just a shower.

Having swiftly removed her clothes, Sam tucked them into a locker and then paused, debating her dog tags. “Sylla, can—can jewelry go through the decontamination?”

“It would depend on the jewelry,” came Sylla’s response. “Anything that is intricate probably wouldn’t get cleaned properly, and anything too delicate would likely get damaged.”

“Carter?”

“Our tags, sir?”

“Just leave them, Carter,” the colonel said shortly. “It’s fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sam pulled the tags over her head and set them on top of her neatly folded BDUs. She went to shut the locker door, then noticed she was still wearing her watch. Pulling it off, she laid it with the tags and then quickly double-checked herself. She was completely naked and she shivered, more from the reality of it than because the room was cold.

There was a button by the Shower Room door, and Sam pressed it. Again, there was the sound of a seal being broken, then the door opened. She pulled it far enough ajar that she could easily get it, but didn’t open it all the way to allow from some separation in the view between the two rooms.

“I’m going in now,” she called over her shoulder.

“Be right behind you,” Daniel replied.

Sam stepped across the bulkhead the door was set in and into the Shower Room. The entire space was one even surface, without any visible seams. The design was unusual enough that Sam momentarily forgot her discomfort, moving to one of the walls to run a curious hand over it. The material was smooth without being slick, and was a muted gray-green in color that made Sam think of moss. The ceiling was lower here than it had been in the other rooms—only about eight feet high—and looking at it more closely, it seemed to be very faintly textured. There were rectangular lights, about an inch and a half high and four wide, set at regular intervals around the room, just where the walls met the ceiling. These were mirrored by equally-sized openings set at the bottom of the walls where they met the floor, which Sam figured were drains.

She looked around, wondering where she should stand to ensure that she actually got showered, but didn’t see any signs of where water would come into the room. So she just took up a spot in the far left-hand corner of the room and stood facing the exit door. After a few minutes, she heard Teal’c call out.

“We are entering the room, Major Carter.”

“C’mon in,” she lightly replied.

She could see him step into the room from the corner of her eye, a dark shape that came to stand in the other corner across from hers, close to the exit. Daniel came next—she could tell it was him from how the blurry mass moved—and went the corner diagonal from hers.

Sam took a slow breath as the colonel stepped in. She saw his shadowy figure pause and poke its head back into the Disrobing Room to tell Sylla that they were ready, then she heard the door close. Since he moved out of her sight—and since it was the only place left—she knew that he had walked over to stand in the corner behind hers.

A few moments passed where they were all just awkwardly standing around in the nude, waiting for something to happen. Sam had started to wonder if maybe something had gone wrong, like the door not being completely shut, when there was a sudden, short hissing sound and then water began raining from the ceiling. From the entire ceiling.

Aside from about a six inch gap around the border, every part of the ceiling appeared to be perforated, as if it were a giant shower head. The spray was strong—definitely good water pressure—but not sharp. And though the temperature might be generously labeled ‘tepid’ at best, Sam didn’t feel cold. She slicked back her soaked hair and felt the water rush down her back. Well, the liquid. There was a faint scent in the air that reminded Sam of antiseptics; it was barely noticeable, but it was a clear indicator that whatever they were being doused in, it wasn’t water. At least not entirely.

She felt a momentary flicker of unease, wondering if it might be some sort of alien concoction that one or more of them would react adversely to. But then the deluge changed subtly, the cleansing smell gone and the temperature increased. Sam cupped her hands and sniffed at the liquid they captured; this time, it smelled like pure water.

Forgetting herself, she turned to glance around, wondering if the entire room was automated to the same steps, or if the Ancients had programmed any sensors into it. Could it tell if one person were more contaminated than the others and subject that person to a more thorough cleaning? Could there be specific steps for different types of detected contaminants? Could it detect specific contaminants?

She was frowning at the ceiling, mind turning over the possibilities—and the possibility of Sylla letting her examine the shower control program and mechanisms, if they were accessible—when movement caught her attention. Reflexively, her gaze shifted in that direction and she found herself locking eyes with the colonel. Without realizing it, she’d actually turned all the way around while studying the ceiling, and was now facing him. The brief question flitted through her mind as to why he had already been facing her, but it wasn’t strong enough to take root before her mind went blank.

He looked as shocked as she felt. Sam could feel herself go hot and knew she was blushing—knew all of her was, the curse of pale skin—but she couldn’t move. She was torn between wanting to stand there and let things be what they were, and wanting to turn away since they could never be anything. As she blinked against the water running down her face, heart pounding, the colonel’s eyes—which had been boring into hers—finally moved. As they flicked away (down, something in her breathlessly noted), her mental stalemate was broken and she quickly spun back around to face the exit.

She had just gotten her breathing back under control when the water cut off. For a few minutes, it seemed like the room was getting warmer and, unless her mind was playing tricks on her, the lights were getting brighter. Then the exit door hissed open, and Sylla’s voice once again came over the air.

“You will all need to exit the Shower Room before you can exit the Dressing Room,” she was saying, “but once the Shower Room is closed off behind you, you may each exit the Dressing Room as you are ready.”

“We will await your signal, Major Carter,” Teal’c told her.

“I’ll call once I get a towel,” she promised. “I’m not going to make all of you wait here while I get dressed.”

As she left the room, the colonel spoke behind her.

“Take your time.”

Sam decided she wasn’t going to examine that comment any closer, and instead made a beeline for the neatly-folded towels that filled the cubbies on the left-hand wall of the Dressing Room. She pulled one off of the shelf, thankful and a bit relieved to discover that is was the size of a beach towel, and not some skimpy hotel version instead. She quickly dried herself before securing the towel around her and grabbing another for her hair. As she moved to the other side of the room, which contained shelves stacked with clothing, she called out to the others.

“Your turn.”

She kept her back to the room, trying to ignore the sounds of her teammates coming in and getting towels of their own. Collecting the components of an outfit—she was pleasantly surprised to find that female-specific needs were addressed by the offerings—she moved off to the side of the room near the lockers that lined the wall containing the door back into the shower. The clothing provided was basic, and appeared to have been designed to be one-size-fits-most, but the material was soft and similar in feel to cotton. Everything was in shades of deep blues or faded greens, and the loose fit reminded Sam of scrubs. As she got dressed, she could hear the others doing the same behind her.

“Did anyone see shoes?” Daniel asked.

Figuring that if he was asking about shoes, it was safe to turn around, Sam cautiously checked over her shoulder. Daniel was fully dressed, as was the colonel, and Teal’c was just pulling on the same type of short-sleeved shirt the rest them had already donned. Coast clear, Sam walked over to a cabinet that she hadn’t explored yet.

“Maybe in here?” she suggested.

The cabinet did, in fact, contain shoes, soft-soled slip-ons that were surprisingly comfortable. There was a little worry when they had trouble locating enough large pairs for all of the male members of the team, but they finally discovered larger sizes in a drawer beneath the main compartment. Everyone fully attired, the colonel led the way out.

Sylla was waiting for them, the slightly anxious expression on her face melting into relieved approval when she saw them.

“I worried for a minute that you might have changed your minds,” she confessed. “I didn’t expect you to have so many misgivings about going through decontamination.”

“We just aren’t used to such a… thorough routine,” Daniel explained, with a half-glance in the colonel’s direction. “We only do that kind of extensive decontamination when we know that there’s something dangerous that needs to be contained.”

“We were the same when we first began exploring,” Sylla said, regret in her voice. “But we had only been going through the Stargate for seven months when we paid dearly for our ignorance.”

“What happened?” Sam asked.

“A team had been sent on a first visit to one of our worlds. With no decontamination procedures in place, they left the facility still wearing the clothes they had worn to the other world. We didn’t know that they had brought a sickness back with them, but it was on that clothing.” Sylla’s voice was full of pain. “Dozens died before we realized what had happened and were able to implement a quarantine to find and isolate the afflicted.”

“I’m so sorry,” Daniel said, with a sympathetic look.

Sylla nodded in acknowledgement before she offered Colonel O’Neill a rueful smile. “So you see, Colonel, you truly are lucky if you’ve never had something similar occur on your world. We will never allow such a thing to happen again, which is why the decontamination procedures are mandatory.”

The colonel had been watching Sylla with a compassionate gaze, and he accepted her gentle admonishment with good grace.

“I can’t deny that we do seem to have pretty good luck,” he said.

“Mostly,” Daniel agreed.

“If you add everything together,” Sam added with a sigh.

“We do manage to survive impossible situations with surprising regularity,” Teal’c admitted, in a contemplative tone.

“And we managed to survive the decontamination shower just fine,” the colonel said. “So where to now?”

Sylla looked intrigued—and a little wary, if Sam was reading her right—but she didn’t ask any follow up questions. “Why don’t we start in my lab?” she suggested. “I was one of the scientists who first discovered this facility, so I can give you more information about that first. Then you can decide which part of the facility you would like to see next.”

“Lead the way,” Colonel O’Neill advised, gesturing for her to do just that.

Daniel fell into step with Sylla as she led them from the room they were in and into a long, softly lit hallway. The two of them chattered away as they walked, the colonel following a few paces behind. Sam paired up with Teal’c at the rear, and had to keep herself from stopping to peek into every room that had a door ajar, or to stare down the hallways they crossed paths with.

They made two turns on their way to Sylla’s lab—a right and then a left—and found themselves near another intersection of halls when she led them through a door on their left.

Sylla’s lab was about twice the size of Sam’s or Daniel’s lab back at the SGC, with the added benefit of having not only a window, but also a skylight. The window was set high in the wall opposite the door, but did allow them to glimpse a patch of smoky blue sky, which was mirrored in the skylight. A work table took up the center of the room, with packed bookcases on either side wall and a desk under the window.

Sylla stopped at the table and pulled something over to her that Sam recognized as a type of portable computer. She clicked away at it, then turned it so that the team could see the screen. A building map was displayed and after a brief scan, Sam saw that it was of the facility they were in. She made note of the rooms they had seen so far, quickly located Sylla’s lab, and then began searching for any other spaces that sounded interesting.

“We located this facility a little over five years ago,” Sylla told them. “Before that, we had found archaeological evidence of an advanced civilization existing on this planet prior to the recorded history of our own people. We had been searching for more of that evidence when we literally stumbled across this place. While exploring the hills near the area with the highest concentration of finds, I entered what I thought was a cave, but which turned out to be an entrance.”

“To the facility,” Daniel confirmed.

“Yes,” Sylla replied with a nod. “It was locked, and it took us a few months to figure out the code.”

“Only a few?” Colonel O’Neill mildly asked.

“We got lucky,” she told him with a grin.

Sam smiled to herself at the cheeky tone Sylla had taken with the colonel. It was exactly the way she and Daniel treated him, and she could tell by his expression that he was finding it endearing coming from Sylla, too. He did have an appreciation for an appropriate level of sass.

“Once we got inside, we discovered that the facility had actually been built within a type of valley atop the hills and not buried within the hills themselves.” She pointed at the skylight. “We’d always assumed the hills were solid rock and it wasn’t until we got out on the facility roof that we were able to see how it was positioned in the landscape.”

“Almost like it was being hidden or protected, but without going through all the effort of carving the entire thing into the rock,” Daniel suggested.

“Yes.”

“So I’m guessing what you’re showing us here is the entire facility?” Sam asked, pointing to the map on display. “Or is there more than one level?”

“No, it’s just the one level. We’ve assumed that the Ancients didn’t build up because that would have made the facility visible over the hills, and they didn’t dig down for the same reason they only carved an entrance through the rock.”

“So you know them as the Ancients, too?” Daniel asked.

“It’s what they called themselves,” Sylla said with a small shrug.

She pulled the computer back to herself and clicked around some more before once again turning the screen to the team. This time, it showed text even Sam recognized as the language of the Ancients. Daniel actually moved closer and bent over to squint at the screen. His eyes were darting over the text, and Sam knew he was reading it.

“This looks like a—a welcome statement of some sort,” he absently said, still reading. “Like a introductory page on the facility.”

“That’s what we believe as well.”

Sylla was studying Daniel with a sharp gaze, which he noticed when he straightened from his perusal of the computer screen. He did a slight double-take after seeing her face, and looked at her with a hint of worry.

“What?”

“Can you read this?” Sylla asked, pointing at the screen.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes,” Daniel repeated. “Can’t you?” he asked in genuine surprise.

“No. We’re able to understand parts, but we have limited examples of this writing system. And almost all of them are on the same limited subject matter, so it can be difficult to translate new words.”

“Ah, I may have had an advantage over you on that. We have a few different sources of this text, and it resembles a language from our planet called Latin. In fact, it was most likely the predecessor of that language and therefore I was able to use it as a reference point.” He paused, eyes flicking the colonel’s way. “I also had some first-hand help. Or some second-hand-by-way-of-first-hand help.”

Sylla frowned faintly, clearly puzzled by what Daniel meant. Colonel O’Neill waved his hand.

“He means me,” he told her.

“Don’t ask,” Daniel said, closing his eyes in a momentarily pained expression.

“But you would be able to help us translate this?” Sylla asked him.

“Yes. And I could help you build a basic grammar for it, too.”

Sylla’s eyes lit up. “That would help us more than you can understand. There’s an entire database here that we have been struggling to translate.”

Sam perked up. “A database?”

Sylla nodded. “Would you like to see it?”

“Yes.”

Sam responded the same time as Daniel, and she looked over to see her own excitement reflected in his face. They grinned at each other.

“It’s housed in its own lab,” Sylla told them. “Come with me.”

They retraced their steps, passing the door Sam recognized as leading to the Preparation Room. Two doors down from there, Sylla led them into a large room that was once again topped by a skylight. Seeing it, Sam momentarily pondered how any of the skylights had survived for so many years without maintenance before the Corvians had rediscovered the facility. The Ancients had left the Milky Way for the final time thousands of years before, and she highly doubted they’d weatherproofed everything before they disappeared. She wondered if the facility leaked when it rained. Then she wondered whether Corvia got much rain.

She shook the thoughts from her mind as Sylla brought them to a computer terminal that was clearly not of Corvian design. The screen took up most of one wall, with the interface to it standing near the center of the room. Sylla stepped up to it and tapped a few buttons. The screen flickered to life, and Sam saw a type of desktop configuration. Sylla clicked on an image that looked like scrolls to Sam, but which she was sure was a symbol that Daniel probably recognized. What the image opened was something Sam could recognize all on its own.

“Gate symbols.”

“These were the first things we had reference for,” Sylla told them, “since the dialing device in the control room also contained them, as did the Stargate. From that, we could guess that this list and the dialing device were connected in some way, though we didn’t know what the device did at the time.” She sighed. “We’ve been working our way out from here since then.”

Sam had been studying the list and though she didn’t make a habit of memorizing Gate addresses, none of the ones on the screen immediately jumped out as familiar. Corvia was another of the planets whose addresses the colonel had entered into the Gate database, so it was possible that this was a related list of Ancient-seeded planets. She stepped over to Sylla and gestured to the control interface.

“May I?”

“Please,” Sylla said, moving to stand beside Daniel.

As Daniel asked about the early days of the Corvians’ exploration of the facility, Sam scrolled through the list of Gate addresses. There were only seven of them, and she instantly saw a pattern in the symbols they contained. There were an unusual number of shared glyphs between the addresses, often shared in the same slot in the address order. She frowned.

“Sylla, what can you tell me about these addresses, about the planets they connect to?”

“The first address is for this planet,” Sylla began. “The next four are for other planets, while the last two are moons associated with the last planet.”

“Does the database say where they’re located?” Sam asked. “In terms of distance from here or within their associated solar system?”

“They are all part of our solar system,” Sylla answered.

Sam turned to stare at her in surprise. “Do you know how big your solar system is?”

“We don’t have the exact size, but our astronomers estimate it to be between twenty and thirty billion kilometers in radius.”

“Twenty to thirty?” Sam weakly echoed, amazed.

“Is that big?” the colonel asked.

“Well, sir, depending on which method of measurement you choose, our solar system is roughly nine to twelve billion kilometers in diameter.”

“So that’s big.”

“Compared to other solar systems we’ve studied? Yes, sir. Extremely. It could also explain why the Ancients placed seven Gates within the same solar system: it has a large Goldilocks zone.”

“Come again?”

“Not too hot, not too cold?” Sam offered with a smile. “Within any solar system, there’s a small band of space within which a planetary body must orbit in order to be capable of sustaining human life. In our system, only Earth is within that band. These bands have the right temperature for water to be present and for life to have evolved.”

“Hence ‘Goldilocks,’” Daniel confirmed.

“Exactly. Now, the Goldilocks zone is based on distance from the system’s sun, as that controls all of the important elements for the development of life. A bigger system requires a bigger sun, and it’s likely that its Goldilocks zone would be correspondingly bigger, too. Which would mean that there could be multiple planets and moons that fit within it.” Sam pointed over her shoulder to the list on the screen. “I think that’s what we’re seeing here.”

“Sylla, are there people on any of these other worlds?” Daniel asked.

“No,” she replied, a little sadly. “We have been hoping to find others out there, or perhaps even locate the Ancients themselves, but so far our expeditions have not found any evidence of habitation on any of the other worlds.” She paused and looked around at them. “You are the first travelers we have met.”

“Are these the only addresses you have?” Sam asked, motioning again to the screen.

“Yes. We have speculated that the Stargate must go to other places than just these seven—otherwise why would it have so many symbols?—but so far the combinations we’ve tried haven’t worked.”

“Yeah, we had that problem, too,” Daniel told her with a faint smile.

“So what I’m hearing is that there are seven habitable worlds here with Stargates and no people?”

The colonel gave Sam a look, and she knew what he was thinking. This might be the perfect system for an off-world base. Or a refuge, if they ever needed to quickly evacuate people and couldn’t handle them at the SGC. He wouldn’t be considering it, but Sam was also running through the scientific possibilities: worlds that were habitable but that hadn’t been touched by humans? Who knew what might be found on such planets. Sam raised her eyebrows slightly, giving the colonel a look of agreement.

Daniel, however, looked slightly worried.

“Hang on, Jack, we don’t know why they’re uninhabited,” he said. “If the Ancients went through the effort of placing Gates on these worlds, it would follow that they planned to put people here, too. I mean, that’s kind of the point, right?”

“Maybe they just didn’t get around to it,” the colonel countered.

Sam suddenly had a thought, and she turned to Sylla. “Have you figured out what this facility was built for?”

Sylla nodded. “It appears that they were doing the same thing we are: exploring the worlds of this system and conducting scientific surveys of them.”

She reached past Sam to the control interface and pulled up a different program. It was once again in Ancient, but from the expression on Daniel’s face, Sam could tell it was interesting. Not taking his eyes from the screen, he came over and gently nudged Sam out of the way so that he could take over the interface. Sam watched as he almost intuitively got a handle on the controls and began shifting through files. Everyone watched him for a few silent moments, then the colonel spoke.

“Daniel?”

“Uh, these all appear to be logs detailing scientific research into the various planets and moons of this solar system,” came the distant reply. “There’s… a lot of information here. I would need some time to try to figure out a chronology to determine what the Ancients were doing.”

“You’re welcome to explore the database for as long as you’d like,” Sylla told him.

Daniel gave her a distracted “thanks” and Sam knew they’d lost him for a while. The colonel seemed to realize that, too, because he sighed and turned to Sylla.

“So what else is there of note in this facility of yours?”

“Actually,” Sam cut in, “I was wondering what else you have in the facility that’s Ancient. I know the facility structure is, like the hatch doors and the Shower Room, but I’m sure there’s more the Ancients left behind. Do you have the base schematics anywhere?”

“We do,” Sylla told her. “They’re most easily accessed from the control room.”

Sylla started for the door, Sam behind her, before the colonel’s voice stopped them both.

“Hang on.”

Sam turned back to frown at him. Surely he didn’t have a problem with her getting her hands on the schematics of the base? Or any Ancient schematics, for that matter. But he didn’t meet her questioning gaze, instead turning to Teal’c.

“T, you want to stay here with Daniel or go with Carter?”

Sam relaxed; he just didn’t want any of them going anywhere alone. That was standard procedure, even somewhere as seemingly benign as Corvia.

“I will stay, O’Neill.”

The colonel nodded and moved to follow Sylla and Sam. When he met Sam’s eyes, though, he hesitated. It was only for a second, barely a hitch in his stride, but she caught it. She wondered if he was remembering—

Nope. She wasn’t going to remember, either. Mentally, she opened the door to the room they didn’t talk about, threw the memory inside, and slammed the door back shut. Pivoting on her heels, she trailed Sylla back into the hall, and she didn’t look behind her the whole way to the control room even though she could sense the colonel back there, following her.

Once in the control room, Sylla led her to a terminal on the wall opposite the observation window. Sam could see that almost all of the terminals and tech in the room were Ancient, though she did spot a few of the Corvian computers sitting around. It seemed that all of the Ancient ones were still operational, though, and those were the ones used to run the facility itself.

Sylla tapped a key to wake the terminal, then gestured Sam into the chair in front of it.

“Again, we don’t know everything that is contained in this database, as much of it is in Ancient.”

“I can’t read it, either,” Sam confided, “but that’s okay. I’m really looking for pictures.” She gave Sylla a grin, which Sylla returned.

“Those we have.” Sylla clicked through a few menus to pull up what looked like an inventory or an index. “These are the schematics for the base,” she told Sam. “They contain information on all the structures and systems. Most are very basic, I’m afraid. If there were things here that had more specific uses, they weren’t part of the facility structure itself and therefore aren’t listed in the data we have.” She anticipated Sam’s next question, adding, “Nor are they still here. When the Ancients left, they took everything that wasn’t structural with them.”

“So no technology or experiments left behind?” Sam sighed.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Probably more ‘fortunately’,” the colonel countered. He shrugged when Sam and Sylla both turned to stare at him. “Knowing the Ancients, it probably would’ve been dangerous.”

“Always possible, sir.”

“I have some duties that I must attend to,” Sylla told them, “but I will come back to check on you later. If you need anything before then, Vireen or Hyrom will help you.” She gestured to the two men sitting at terminals by the window, who both glanced around and gave Sam and the colonel smiles.

As Sylla left the room, Sam clicked on the first schematic in the list. It would up being the one for the dialing computer, which was slightly different than a standard DHD. She was itching to make notes, so she asked one of the men—she wasn’t sure who was who—for paper and a pen, which he gladly provided. Thus equipped, Sam began scribbling away. She sensed the colonel sitting down in another chair nearby, but she was too focused on the information in front of her to pay him any attention. In fact, she completely forgot he was there until he called her name.

“Carter?”

She blearily blinked her way out of her study of the Shower Room—it did have sensors—and back to reality, and turned to frown at him questioningly.

“Sir?”

“Anything interesting?”

She flashed him a bright smile. “Lots, sir.”

“Care to share with the class?”

“I’m still going through it all, sir.”

“You’ve been ‘going through it’ for nearly two hours, Carter.”

“Have I?” she asked, surprised. She stared down at her pad to find that she had covered five full pages with her untidy notes. “I didn’t realize.”

“I know, which is why I was checking on you.”

She gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, sir.”

“Not a problem, Carter. But we are due back soon, so we should probably go round up Daniel and Teal’c.”

They couldn’t leave, not yet. Sam had only gotten to the second schematic on the list, and there were several more. Ancient schematics. This terminal alone contained more insight into the scientific minds of the Gate builders than anything they’d come across before.

“But, sir—”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t come back, Carter.”

Sam snapped her mouth shut. She and the colonel both knew that while someone from the SGC might get to come back to Corvia, it was highly unlikely that someone would be SG-1. They were a first contact team; they didn’t tend to make a lot of follow-up house calls.

“Yes, sir,” she acquiesced through gritted teeth. She tore her notes from the pad and folded them in half, leaving pad and pen by the terminal as she rose from her seat.

“C’mon,” he told her, and she thought there was a hint of sympathy in his tone. “Let’s go collect the rest of our team.”

He led the way back into the hall and the short distance to the database room. Daniel was still at the controls, the screen covered in Ancient text that he was silently mouthing along to—or silently mouthing the thoughts running through his mind, Sam couldn’t be sure—as he read. Teal’c had taken up position on one of the benches that lined the walls, and looked up with a placid expression on his face as Sam and the colonel returned.

“Alright, Daniel. Time to wrap it up.”

“What?! Jack, no.”

“Daniel, yes.”

“Jack—there is so much information here; I’ve barely even scratched the surface!” Daniel pivoted and rapidly typed in a sequence which pulled up a different page of text. He pointed to it. “For example, this document explains that the Ancients did purposefully put Stargates on all the habitable worlds in this solar system.”

“We already knew that,” the colonel replied.

“But it also says that they purposefully put humans only on Corvia.”

“Does it say why?” Sam asked, curious.

“Yes, it does. Apparently the rest of the planets were set up as experiments. Like I said, I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but I think the Ancients used this solar system as a template for understanding the development of biomes on various planetary bodies.”

“That would actually make sense,” Sam said.

“And the reason is…?”

“The large Goldilocks zone, sir. Relatively speaking, the conditions that make a place habitable fall within a very small range. But within that range, there can be extreme variation. If the planets of this system fill the entire zone—meaning that they are scattered throughout it, from one extreme end to the other—they would most likely have very different climates. It would be the perfect situation to conduct the type of experimentation Daniel’s suggesting.”

“And given the size of this database, I think they fully completed their experimentation,” Daniel added. “Or at least many, many years of it.”

Sam felt herself getting excited. “Do you know what that means?”

“Enlighten us,” the colonel said.

“Sir, the data that the Ancients collected from these planets could be used to help us better understand our own. Maybe even build better predictive models for tracking, say, weather patterns or global warming. It could change what we know about and how we study everything from aerodynamics to geology.”

“So kind of important, then.”

“Yes, Jack,” Daniel replied, exasperated. “A little important.”

“Well then we’ll definitely have to come back.”

“Sir—”

“Jack—”

“This was only meant to be an recon mission,” he reminded them. “We aren’t equipped for an extended stay. Aren’t equipped at all, seeing as all of our equipment is still in the Gate room.”

“But—”

“Daniel, I will personally ask Hammond to send us back, once we work out how to get at least some of our stuff through the decontamination process.”

“Why do we even need to get anything through decontamination?” Daniel asked, a little petulantly. “They have paper here,” he said, pointing to the notes Sam was holding.

“And I’m sure Carter is itching to interface our own computers with the Ancient ones so that she can download whatever’s on there,” the colonel countered.

“It would be nice,” she admitted. “We could bring it all back with us and then take whatever time we wanted going over it.”

“Which would also mean that you would get all this lovely Ancient to translate,” the colonel told Daniel. “And you wouldn’t even have to fight to come back to the planet to do it.”

That seemed to sway Daniel. He knew as well as Sam did how rarely they got to follow up on the finds they made. If they got the information from this facility back to the SGC, then no one could stop them from spending their spare time pouring over it. He wavered, but narrowed his eyes suspiciously and pointed at the colonel.

“You swear we will get to come back?” he asked, emphasizing that by ‘we’ he meant them.

“You’re still the only one fluent in Ancient so, yeah, it’ll be us.”

Sam hadn’t thought about that, and she felt her hope rise. Since Daniel was the only person—possibly in the galaxy—who could read and speak the language, he would have to come back to help with any transferrals they did. And since Sam was the most knowledgeable about Ancient technology—not that they had that much to go on, in truth—it made sense that she would also come back.

Daniel seemed to realize the same, because he shared a look with Sam and finally stepped down from the control interface. Behind him, the screen remained on for a second longer before going dark.

“Okay,” he said, giving in.

“Let’s go find our lovely hostess and say our goodbyes,” Jack told them.

Sylla was in her lab, working on something on her computer, and startled slightly when Daniel tapped her on the shoulder.

“Oh! I’m sorry; I completely forgot to check in on you,” she said. “Is everything alright? Do you need anything?”

“Actually, it’s time for us to head home,” Daniel told her.

Sylla’s face fell. “So soon?”

Daniel shot Jack a smug look before turning a more regretful one on Sylla. “Yes, unfortunately. We only planned for a short trip this time, but we would like to come back.”

“Yes, of course. I would like to spend more time with you when you return; I apologize for not doing so this time.”

“It’s okay; we were able to learn a lot,” Sam advise, holding up her notes as evidence.

Sylla smiled warmly. “I’m glad. And I look forward to your return, this time with some references to help us with our translations?” She aimed this last part, along with a hopeful look, Daniel’s way.

“Of course.” He smiled. “I’ll start putting some resources together as soon as I get back.”

Sylla returned the smile and stood. “Let me take you back through. You’ll need to give me your return address so that I can enter it for you from the control room.”

“I can show you that,” Daniel said.

Sylla led them back to the Preparation Room, telling them that they could go back through to the Disrobing Room to collect their clothes. Then she and Daniel headed to the control room so that he could relay the address for Earth.

Sam led the way through the Dressing Room and Shower Room with Teal’c and the colonel following after. As she returned to the locker in the Disrobing Room where she’d left her clothes, she paused.

“Are we changing back, sir? Or are we just going to carry our stuff back with us?”

“It might be rude to leave with these people’s outfits,” the colonel drolly replied, plucking at the fabric of his shirt.

“Right,” Sam agreed.

For some reason, changing into her BDUs didn’t feel as awkward as getting out of them had. Maybe that was because she was going from one set of clothing to another, instead of getting naked. Either way, she swapped out everything, neatly folding the Corvian clothes and setting them in an empty cubby before sitting on a bench to pull on her socks and boots. Daniel joined them around that time, and Sam turned to face away from him when she saw him stop at a locker that was within her line of sight.

She kept her eyes on her feet until she saw him pass her. He put his Corvian outfit with hers in the cubby, and she saw Teal’c and the colonel do the same. Once they were all ready, Daniel called out to Sylla, who opened the door back into the Gate room. They passed into it, and then returned to the locker room to collect their gear. Once again resembling the team who had originally stepped through the Gate, they returned to the Gate room and stood along the wall opposite the control room.

“Are you ready?” Sylla asked them over the intercom.

“Yeah, we’re good to go,” the colonel responded.

“I will look forward to seeing you again soon,” she told them.

“We’ll send a radio message through first, this time,” Daniel said.

“You told her not to try to come through to our side, right?” Sam whispered to him as the Gate spun to life.

“Yeah,” Daniel whispered back. “She was a little surprised, but understood.”

“This is—it’s really exciting.” And it was. She could still feel the tingle that had raced through her when she realized what Daniel had found.

“I know!” he replied. “It’s not quite the repository, but it’s still more than we’ve ever had direct access to before.”

“The biology departments are going to be beside themselves at the idea of six untouched worlds to explore.”

“Twenty bucks says the botanists bring back something that tries to eat at least one person,” the colonel said.

“Twenty more says they name it Audrey the Third,” Daniel shot back.

Sam snickered as the wormhole established. Teal’c had moved to the MALP while the rest of them were talking, and they waited as he drove it back to the Gate and sent it through. The team paused before following it, and Daniel and Sam threw Sylla a wave, which she returned.

“Goodbye for now,” she told them.

Sam took one last, slightly longing look around the room, then followed Daniel back through the Gate.