STARGATE SG-1 29 Hall of the Two Truths (33 page)

As he half-turned away from her to shake out his tunic, Sam caught a glimpse of other fresh scars on his back. Two rows of stripes, like something sharp had raked across his skin. The tunic covered them as the colonel pulled it over his head and she quickly looked away so he wouldn’t catch her staring. He hadn’t mentioned getting hurt, but then, of course, he wouldn’t. At least they looked as though they were healing.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, when they could both finally speak again.

He brushed her comment aside. “We’ll call that one even. Come on. Let’s move, before this wall goes down and us with it.”

Sam gave a cursory look around her. Damn. She’d hoped that, if nothing else, the wall would give them a view of the maze that would help them navigate it more efficiently. Apparently the pattern the colonel had picked up on didn’t hold true for the entire structure, since he’d just led them into a dead-end. But there were so many dust and dirt particles suspended in the air that it was little more than an amber fog, even up here. Sam couldn’t see a thing.

“Carter?”

The colonel was already hanging off the other side, ready to drop to the ground. Right. No time to gawk.

With movement that hurt a whole lot more than it should have, Sam landed in a crouch next to the colonel. The crack in the wall was already waist-high. Beneath her she could feel the trembling of bedrock as the fissure pushed its way beneath the wall’s base.

The colonel tossed her a look she understood immediately. Keep moving.

“I thought I’d broken the damn thing.” Hammond watched as Dr. Cameron Balinsky carefully rotated the sections of the small statue of NebtHet that Anise had left with him. “But then I saw those, and I wondered if they meant anything.”

The last thing Hammond wanted was to explain how the statue might have been damaged. He rarely allowed his frustrations to show, and taking his aggravation out on inanimate objects was not his normal practice. In this case, though, it may have yielded an unintended benefit.

The newest addition to the SGC’s team of archeologists picked up the magnifying glass and squinted through it. Maybe he was getting old, but the red-haired young man didn’t look a day over sixteen. Hammond wasn’t even sure he’d started shaving yet.

Balinsky still hadn’t spoken, so Hammond kept talking. “I’m no expert, but it looked like hieroglyphics to me — or at least some kind of writing.”

The archeologist was examining the back of the statue now and gave a low whistle.

“Doctor? Any idea if it’s of significance?”

Balinsky blinked up at him. “Yeah, I’d say so.” He offered the glass to Hammond but held on to the statue. “This is very cool. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Certainly not this old.”

He positioned the artifact behind the glass so Hammond could see where he was pointing. “It’s really a puzzle of sorts. The statue is made up of different sections, all of which can rotate.”

Balinsky demonstrated by twisting the statue at various places. Because of the symmetry, it still looked perfectly normal — except the markings Hammond had seen earlier were no long distinguishable. “But, when you align them just so…” Balinsky twisted the statue again. “You’ve got a word. Or, in this case, a name.”

“What name?” Hammond was trying hard to be patient.

“NebtHet. She’s the Egyptian goddess of —”

“I’m familiar with who she is, son. Thank you.” It wasn’t much of a discovery after all, then. Anise had already told him who the statue was meant to represent.

“But sir, here’s what’s really amazing about this.” Balinsky’s voice went up a bit in excitement. “When you line it up to say ‘NebtHet’ on the front, look what happens on the back.” He turned the statue over and offered it back to Hammond to examine. At first it just looked like random indentations on the surface, but when Hammond held the magnifying glass to it, he saw something else.

“Doctor, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”

Balinsky grinned at him like a kid on Christmas morning.

“If you think you’re seeing gate symbols, sir, then yes. And there are six of them. It’s a gate address.”

THE COLONEL’S directive to keep moving was easier said than done. There was a definite uphill grade to this path. Sam felt it not so much in her legs, although they were getting fairly tired, as in her lungs. The same foul air that had been impossible to see through was just as impossible to breathe. She could even taste the dirt in her mouth, the grittiness of it scratching the back of her throat. It didn’t take long before she and the colonel were wheezing as they ran.

If there was any good news, it was that they seemed to have outpaced the fissure for the time being. The wall had slowed it down, or maybe it was the uphill climb. Although the more Sam thought about it, the less sense either explanation made. Regardless of what was causing it, the act of physically splitting open the ground shouldn’t require any extra effort in the presence of a wall or an inclined slope. That nagging feeling was back. It was almost as if —

“Sir, I was just thinking.” It took her a moment to get her breath. “None of this makes any sense.”

“That’s not exactly a news flash, Major.”

“What I mean is, why kill us now? They had plenty of opportunities before. Why bring us back together only to kill us this way? There’s no logic to it.”

Sam saw the colonel shrug before a fit of coughing overcame him. When it had subsided, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and she realized that he had a fine layer of dust covering his entire face — in fact, he was entirely coated with dust. Looking down at her own arms, she saw she was too. Little wonder they were having a hard time breathing.

“Maybe the experiment is over,” the colonel offered, finally. “Instead of outright killing us, they just open up the ground and let us fall in.”

“That’s an awful lot of energy and effort just to kill off four people.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who said it didn’t make any sense.” He spat out more dirt.

“What if they’re not trying to kill us?”

The colonel looked skeptical.

“What, then? It’s just playing tag?”

“Well, not tag, exactly,” Sam replied. How to explain what she was only just piecing together? “But what if this is still just part of the experiment? I’m pretty sure I saw the fissure slow down when we were trapped at that dead-end. It was almost like it didn’t want to catch up with us, like it wanted to give us time to find a way out.”

“How considerate.”

“What I’m saying, sir, is that we might be able to slow down without increasing our risk. If it’s intention isn’t to harm us, then it should keep a safe distance.”

The ground shifted beneath them with no warning and a loud crack reverberated like a single gunshot. She’d forgotten about the earthquakes. It was as if someone was still determined to shake the whole place into nothing but a pile of ruins.

Sam heard the colonel shout, but it came a split-second too late. The silhouette of the falling wall darkened the ground in front of her a heartbeat before it came crashing down. She’d half-turned, a reflex to both the colonel’s warning and the looming shadow, which was all that saved her from being crushed. Instead, a chunk of rock clipped her left shoulder, spinning her around and knocking her into a section of wall that had already collapsed. As she landed, Sam half-heard, half-felt the sickening crunch of bone just before her left side went momentarily numb. Her vision dimmed for a few seconds and a freight train roared in her head.

Through the fog she saw movement. Strong hands were lifting her off the rocks, guiding her to her feet. A face resolved into focus, close in front of hers.

“Come on, Carter. No lying down on the job.”

She shook her head and instantly wished she hadn’t. The numbness was replaced by a sharp, piercing pain, stabbing her left side. Each breath Sam tried to take felt like inhaling shards of glass. Cracked ribs. Maybe a punctured lung. It was hard to tell with the air already being so hard to breathe.

“Sorry, sir,” she muttered, finally. Something flickered in his eyes for a moment — concern, maybe? — but it was replaced by a critically assessing gaze. He’d had enough broken ribs himself to recognize the symptoms, she was sure.

“We’ve gotta —”

“You go, sir. I can’t run. I can hardly —” She took a deep measured breath in order to get the last word out. “Breathe.”

“Good thing we caught a break then. Come on. I’ve gotcha.” The colonel positioned himself on her right side and brought her arm up to his shoulder. Sam felt his left arm go around behind her, supporting her back, his hand careful to avoid the tender spots on her left side. She appreciated his gesture, but there was still no way they could outrun the fissure like this. She would only slow him down.

The ground was still trembling with aftershocks. But it wasn’t until the colonel guided her away from the wrecked wall that Sam realized they weren’t continuing through the passageway. Instead he was carefully picking their way over the very rocks that had nearly killed her. When she looked up, Sam saw why.

It wasn’t just the wall next to her that had collapsed. It was as if someone had tipped over a row of dominoes. Wall after wall had tumbled down, knocking against the wall in front of it. The entire maze, or what was left of it, had been destroyed. Across the piles of rubble, no more than an eighth of a klick away, was a small building that had to be their destination. It was the only thing still standing.

“Look, company.” The colonel nodded off to their left. Sam could see two other people working their way through the ruins toward the building.

Daniel and Teal’c.

The colonel called out and both men turned toward the sound. They seemed to have fared slightly better. At least they were both walking unaided.

Sam could breathe a little easier now. As long as she didn’t try to talk too much, the pain in her side was tolerable. She disengaged from the colonel’s shoulder and tried a few tentative steps on her own.

“I’ll be okay, sir, thank you,” she said in response to his questioning look. “I just had the breath knocked out of me, that’s all.”

Whether he believed her or was just letting her save face, Sam had no idea. He nodded and moved off, but only a little way. Close enough to be ready in case she went down again.

Not that she’d let that happen.

It took a lot longer than it should have to reach the building, but finally they staggered up to the last debris pile. For something as impressive sounding as The Hall of the Two Truths it was a lot smaller than she’d imagined. It was relatively plain, too, made out of the same stone they’d found in the rest of the maze. One single, tall doorway stood right in the middle, flanked by two massive stone pillars which rose up to a flat canopy over the entrance. The large wooden door was closed, giant hinges on either side suggesting that it probably opened inward. There was no sign of a lock.

Daniel and Teal’c were still working their way through their own labyrinth of broken walls. Both of them were covered with umber dust, not a single glimmer of gold visible on Teal’c’s forehead. Flecks of shattered stone clung to Daniel’s hair.

Another strong tremor sent everyone staggering. Daniel nearly lost his balance, but Teal’c steadied him before he went sprawling. Sam took a moment to appreciate the scene. It was only hours ago that she’d thought she might never see them again.

“Uh, Carter?”

The tone of the colonel’s voice brought her back from her momentary lapse of attention. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the ground. Pebbles and tiny bits of dirt were vibrating around his feet. The low rumbling, which had never really stopped, was getting stronger again. But it wasn’t the sound she’d come to associate with the quakes.

It was the other sound. The one that had been chasing them for the better part of an hour.

She and the colonel both looked behind them.

“Crap.”

That was an understatement.

“It’s a legitimate gate address, sir. The computer matched it with one from the Ancient database. We just can’t get it to connect.” Harriman had dialed the gate three times already. Hammond was about to order a fourth attempt.

“The Goa’uld will keep a gate open during an attack so that no one can dial out,” Colonel Reynolds pointed out. His team was geared up and standing by in the gate room. “We’ve seen that happen before.”

“Or the gate could have been destroyed,” offered Harriman, immediately looking like he wished he hadn’t spoken.

Hammond turned to Reynolds. “If someone’s keeping the door jammed open, that only works for thirty-eight minutes.” It might be the very last straw he had, but Hammond was going to grasp it. “I want that address redialed every five minutes for the next hour. Maybe we’ll get lucky and beat them to the punch.” With a sigh he clicked on the microphone. Seven heads swiveled in his direction at the sound.

“SG 3 and 16, stand by. This could take a while.”

The fissure had returned. And it seemed to have met up with its other half, the part of it which, Sam guessed, had been pursuing Daniel and Teal’c. The two rifts had devoured everything in their respective paths, and now, as they rejoined, they made an enormous arc across the maze.