The Barque of Heaven Page 5

  "Jack, there's a ledge here," he said to O'Neill's boots as they bore down on him.

  Jack flipped himself onto his stomach mid-slide, whipped out his knife and rammed it into the soft soil, stopping his own descent just as his boots left the earth.

  "Daniel Jackson!" Teal'c hollered from the top of the hill.

  "Teal'c, I'm okay," Daniel yelled back. Looking up at Jack, he winced slightly at the glare coming his way.

  "Dammit, Daniel."

  "Sorry." He reached up and guided Jack down to stand next to him.

  "Don't make me ask why you're down here."

  "This ledge has been hand-cut," Daniel replied, as if that was a valid reason for throwing himself off a cliff. "It must lead...." He darted a quick glance to the left and right. "Oh. Nowhere. That's odd."

  Jack heroically restrained himself from commenting. "Oh, Teal'c?" he called out in that tone Daniel knew was a warning to tread carefully.

  "I am here, O'Neill."

  "Go get some ropes and the climbing harness from the FRED, will you? Better yet, bring the whole thing. It can pull us out of here."

  "I shall do so immediately." There was a pause, then Teal'c added, "Do not go anywhere, O'Neill, Daniel Jackson."

  Jack gently rested his brow against the cold rock and closed his eyes. "Jaffa humor and disappearing archaeologists. Great."

  Daniel dropped his pack at his heels and took one cautious step closer to the edge. He knelt and inched closer, searching for the answer he knew must be there.

  Vertigo swept over him in a nauseating wave. The mountainside fell away into a rocky gorge thousands of feet below, and the void caught him with a sickening fascination. Resolutely he focused on the rocks a few inches from his nose, lay down on his stomach and slithered forward to peer straight down.

  "Jack? Hold my legs will you?" He hoped Jack didn't pick up the shakiness he felt in his voice as he hung his head over the edge, one hand keeping his glasses in place, the other clutching the rocks by his side in a death grip.

  "What? Why?"

  Daniel heard Jack's boots scrape on the rock as he turned.

  "God, what are you doing? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" Jack grabbed his legs and hauled him back to safety.

  "No, wait, there's something down there." Daniel stubbornly wriggled forward again, looking for the shapes that had caught his eye.

  "Do I have to remind you of your little problem with heights?"

  "Oh, no. I'm well aware of it, thanks," Daniel said, groping around for another anchor. Jack grabbed his hand and snagged his belt for good measure.

  "Thank you."

  "What can you see?"

  "There are carvings down here, glyphs, and it looks like... like the whole side of the mountain has been carved into something."

  "Why on earth would anyone put a statue down there? Or on this planet for that matter?"

  Daniel shimmied another six inches out over the precipice, his hand cleaving to Jack's like a limpet. This was not what archaeologists were supposed to do-he was a whiz at crawling down hot, airless holes or being cramped like a pretzel in caves or tombs, but hanging like a kite over the edge of oblivion? No.

  "C'mon Daniel, if there's something there it can wait for Teal'c to get back with the climbing gear."

  "Hang on, Jack. I've nearly got it."

  Another wriggled-out inch brought a line of Goa'uld script into focus. "Sejem sesher hereh.... What the...?"

  He scrutinized the carved rock, twisting his head to get it in perspective, breathing in shallow gasps around the rocky edge cutting into his ribs. He followed the line of the rock up and out on either side, and suddenly what he was seeing coalesced from graceful carved planes and odd angles into a single entity of monumental scale.

  "Oh, he's got to be kidding," Daniel croaked in disgust. "Of all the egotistical...." He twisted halfway onto his side and tugged on Jack's hand. "Pull!"

  Jack heaved on Daniel's hand and BDUs and slid him back to safety. For a moment they sat together on the ledge, backs against the rock, staring out at the vista before them and rubbing life back into hands squeezed white by their mutual death grip.

  "Daniel Jackson? O'Neill? Do you need assistance?" Teal'c's voice drifted down to them, filled with concern as he listened to their acrobatics.

  "We're fine, T. Just Daniel doing a little exploration," Jack called. He slid a glance at Daniel. "Please tell me you got something worthwhile out of that?"

  Daniel's eyes stayed fixed on the panorama before them as he began to articulate his thoughts. "There is a line of script just below us that reads, `From the mouth of Ra, god of all he surveys, will the opening of the Gateway be given'. Below that, there is something carved into the side of this mountain. Judging from the proportions that I could see, it's monumental, and if the pieces rising up on either side of it are the horns I think they are, it is probably a representation of Ra as the ramheaded god. I think we'll find the address and password we need by the mouth of the carving."

  He closed his eyes. The thought of going down the face of the mountain made his stomach chum.

  "Could you see a way down?" Jack asked quietly, watching him.

  "No. No, the scale of this thing, it's enormous. Jack, we're sitting on top of Mount Rushmore." Daniel stared at Jack, willing him to understand. "I don't know how I'm going to do it," he admitted finally.

  Jack raised his eyebrows, surprise turning to perception as he realized what Daniel was contemplating. He smiled and patted Daniel's leg. "Well, that's okay because I'll be the one going over the edge."

  "Jack, you can't. You can't read any of the glyphs. You won't know what to look for." He tried not to show the relief and denial warring inside him.

  "This is why we invented digital cameras with wide-angle lenses and notebooks. I'll record it all and you can translate it up here."

  "But...."

  "Daniel." Jack cut through his objections. "I trust you implicitly to translate any kind of squiggles we find, and you've done your basic training and refreshers admirably, but you haven't done the high-angle climbing course and the years of refreshers that I have. This is what I'm trained for. Let me do my job."

  "Oh." Daniel struggled not to cave too quickly. Lost. "Okay."

  Sam pulled off her jacket in the warmth of the sun and slid it under her backside, cushioning the lowest step of the Stargate platform where she sat. Scattered at her feet were the disassembled remains of the MALP. She stretched the sore muscles of her back, a remnant of her expeditious arrival. At least the headache was down to a dull throb. Taking another sip from the canteen, she watched Teal'c driving the FRED down to the end of the meadow to retrieve Daniel and the colonel.

  Maddening to have to sit here while the others had all the fun -but she knew the importance of tending to injuries quickly in the field. Something big was looming, and she needed to be in peak condition to face it.

  She surveyed the charred hunks of metal, the extendable sensor arm sticking up like a disembodied limb. The battery was fried, as were the optical array which had been active at the time the bomb hit the MALP, along with the atmospheric sensors. The casing and treads were torn and charred, useless now. What was left was a disappointingly small collection of electronics, and-vitally-the communication array, still live and useable.

  Looking down the meadow once more, she saw only Teal'c busy with the ropes. With the faint but comforting sound of her team's voices in the distance, she set to work.

  They padded the edge of the rocks with a sturdy tarpaulin to protect Jack's line as he made ready to abseil down the mountain. Braced on the precipice, Jack dropped the rope bag down behind him, and did one final check on the karabiners.

  Satisfied, he looked up at Daniel, standing on the ledge with an anxious grimace on his face that practically yelled the man was uneasy being there, but was too stubborn to stay with Teal'c. Jack wore a vox mic, the pair to Daniel's that would enable him to talk to Daniel hands-free. He looked further up, a
t Teal'c planted in the grass as strong and immobile as one of the ben-bens. He gave them both a nod, received a solemn acknowledgement from Teal'c and a jerky wave from Daniel, flexed his knees and launched himself backwards into the air.

  He covered the first twenty foot drop in three exhilarating bounds. Damn, but he'd missed doing this.

  The carved rock Jack landed on stretched out a good hundred feet to either side of him and arched forward into a curve. He stepped over the carvings, stopping for a quick practice run with Daniel's camera. A large patch of grass had sprouted in a dip in the rock and he elected to descend there, giving his rope a bit more protection from chafing.

  "Descending now," he said, the sound of his voice activating the microphone.

  Short bunny hops took him down the rock, worn smooth by uncounted years' exposure to what had to be some nasty weather. Thirty, sixty feet before he hit the first real contour- an inward dip of cavernous proportions. Jack rappelled slowly down another twenty feet before his boots hit rock once more. He stared up at the convex mound in the center of the cavern, liberally sprinkled with old birds' nests. It took a moment before he realized it was an eye, exotically shaped and still bearing some traces of gold and blue paint.

  He continued down in short, careful hops. To his left the rock rose in a graceful slope-what had to be the biggest nose he'd ever come across. Another fifty feet passed on the rope markers before the curves of the rock changed into the swell and gape of an open mouth.

  Jack locked off and dangled, taking a good look around.

  "I'm a hundred and fifty feet down. Looks like you were right about Mount Rushmore, Daniel."

  "Is it Ra, Jack?"

  "Can't tell for sure but I'm guessing yeah. Floppy ears, pointy horns, crossed eyes. Looks like that statue behind the ring transporter in Ra's throne room."

  "Okay, well the address should be near the mouth. Can you see anything?"

  "There's a long pointy thing hanging off its chin."

  "That's a beard, Jack."

  Jack rappelled down, past the cold stone lips to a smooth blank chin.

  "Nope, nothing there. Going down the beard."

  Several bands of faded gold paint slid past and then-there they were. Goa'uld characters carved deeply into the stone beard.

  "Bingo."

  "Really? What's it look like? Is it an address?"

  "Gimme a minute," groused Jack. He pulled the digital camera out of his pocket, carefully attaching the wrist strap to a d-ring on the vest. He braced his feet on the rock and started snapping shots, able only to fit one glyph in the viewfinder at a time.

  "We've got a line of Goa'uld writing," he said, then slid a few more feet down to a Stargate address carved inside a cartouche. "Write these down: Norma, Hydra, Lynx, Canis Minor, Equuleus, Mic, and point of origin is three small circles set at forty-five degrees to a larger oval."

  "Got it," Daniel replied.

  Jack looked back up at the line of script. Beneath him the mountain fell away in a jagged jumble of broken rocky valleys and pinnacles. He pulled out the notebook and began sketching the symbols.

  "I'm going to read out this writing too, just in case. I'm hoping it's the password."

  "Jack, just copy it and come back up," Daniel said quickly.

  "Believe me, Daniel, I plan on doing just that. Still, a little insurance never hurts. Ali, there are five symbols, first one looks like a shepherd's crook."

  "Is the loop on the crook short or long?"

  "It goes halfway down the length of the first side."

  "That's a fold of cloth then. Next?"

  "An arm, hand pointing to the left."

  "Forearm. Got it."

  "Third looks like a line twisted into three loops with the ends at the bottom."

  "Twist of flax. Go ahead, Jack."

  "Then there's a bird, not much of a tail. Looks like a puffin."

  Daniel snorted a laugh over the radio. "I don't think there were many puffins in Ancient Egypt or anywhere Ra might have been. It's a quail."

  "Looks like a puffin," Jack pushed off from the rock face for a better view.

  "Trust me, it's a quail. Any others?"

  "Last one is a loop, fat at the top, the two ends drawn together with a small oblong over them at the bottom. I still think it's a puffin."

  "Seal cylinder. That's all there is, Jack? And, it's a quail...."

  "That's all she wrote."

  "Come back up now."

  "On my way."

  Jack tucked the camera and notebook securely into his vest pockets. One final look around for missed carvings revealed nothing on the rock, but something past his dangling feet caught his eye. Using hands and feet to steady his body, he looked down, staring hard.

  He moved further down, a harder task now as the wind began to pick up; cross-directional updrafts pushed at him, threatening to send him spinning, and flapping his clothing madly.

  There-nearly a thousand feet below was a splotch of color against the rocks, fluttering in the wind. Cloth? He tilted his head and the thing resolved into human remains: broken bones and weathered clothing. As he brought his line of sight back up the mountain, he picked out another pile of bleached bones, and then another, shattered long ago on the uncaring mountain. Empty eye-sockets stared up at him accusingly. It would seem not everyone attempting Ra's Trial had come prepared.

  "Oh, my."

  "Jack? Are you alright?"

  "Fine and dandy. On my way up now."

  Jack turned his thoughts to the task at hand. He attached the etrier and began the arduous climb.

  While Jack took a breather and a well-earned drink dangling in front of the carving's eyeball, Daniel looked up from the notebook balanced on his knee as he sat cross-legged on the ledge. Squinting into the orange glow of the setting sun, he checked for the thousandth time that the rope had not suddenly unraveled or snapped. The rope was intact and, for the moment, still as Jack hung securely below.

  Too far below for Daniel's liking.

  He cleared his throat and yelled up to Teal'c, who stood guard over the ropes securing both Daniel and Jack.

  "I've translated the word Jack found. Assuming it was a quail and not a puffin, it reads `Sahu', which means the Oversoul."

  "And what, pray tell is that supposed to mean?" Jack's grunt floated over the radio as he inched his way upward once more.

  "It, er, well... actually, I don't know. I'm guessing it's the password we need to unlock the DHD, but in reference to the Trial its actual meaning could be anything."

  "The Oversoul may be a reference to one of the names of Ra," Teal'c called down. "Goa'uld System Lords take great delight in pretentious appellation."

  Daniel let out a snort of laughter. He settled back against the cliff and began to pack his gear away.

  Jack was getting to the hard part of the climb now, where the rope ran taut and close to the curve of rock forming the statue's headdress. With an undignified scramble, he pulled himself up onto the top of the carving.

  "Okay, I'm up on top of Fred's head here."

  He took a moment to stretch his back and leg muscles, relishing the bum in them. Methodically, he reeled in the climbing rope, re-coiling it into the drop bag.

  "Oh. Hi!" Daniel's head popped over the ledge above him.

  "Hey."

  Apparently satisfied Jack was in one piece, Daniel retreated to his place at the back of the ledge. Jack began the final leg of his climb, easier now with the natural surface providing extra foot- and hand-holds. He paused as he reached Daniel's ledge. Daniel was already at the edge, offering a firm grip to haul him up. They gathered up their gear and let the winch on the FRED guide them up the grassy slope to join Teal'c.

  Jack accepted the canteen offered by Teal'c. He took a long swig of water, then keyed his radio. "So, Carter, how are you doing back there?"

  " I'm good, sir. Head's clearing. I've stripped the MALP down -I think I might be able to jury-rig the transmitter to send a message into space. IfI
use the batteries from the FRED we just might get a signal strong enough to reach one of the Tok'ra listening arrays. It's a long-shot but you never know. "

  "Good work, Major."

  "Are we to understand that you intend us to continue on traveling through the Stargates of this Trial, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked.

  "I'm thinking we don't have too many options at the moment, T. There's no ready cover or food or water source here. If we stay, we might be forced a fair way away from the Stargate in search of supplies. We don't know how far we can go before these nanothings kick in and besides, I'm guessing the winter up here will be pretty nasty.

  "I think it's best we keep moving. We'll leave a message at each Stargate in case another team does manage to get through, but I'm betting our best chance is to go through the 'gate. We may find Ra's technology has broken down along the way and we can dial home, or we might find a more suitable planet to establish a long term camp, see if Carter's doohickey can make contact with the Tok'ra."

  Teal'c inclined his head in agreement with Jack's assessment. "It should prove a most interesting journey."

  Jack consulted the countdown on his chrono. "Five hours, forty minutes till zero hour. Food, some shut-eye andthen-we shall see what we shall see."

  Exactly five hours later, SG-1 stood before the Stargate platform, geared up and ready to move on. The moon hung brightly above their heads, so close its craters were clearly visible. In its bluish light, Teal'c had instructed the others on how to read the moon-clock, converting the Goa'uld marks into standard Earth time. They had the Stargate address and the password required to activate the wormhole, both carefully copied by Daniel into four notebooks. A message, sealed in a sample bottle and detailing all they had discovered, was buried at the base of the DHD, signposted by the small `SG-1 'carved into a rock half buried in the ground.

  The moment of silence was broken by Jack clapping his hands together.

  "Well. Here goes nothing. Daniel, if you will?"

  Daniel entered the Stargate address and pressed the center crystal. The chevrons glowed expectantly around the Stargate. Clearly and precisely, he spoke the password.