CHAPTER SIX

Sam watched Grace blowing bubbles.  She envied the child's carefree attitude and wished that she could share it.  Sam was out of ideas.  She didn't know what else to try.  The ship's hull was gradually being eaten away by the corrosive gasses of the cloud, every attempt to create a hyperspace window had failed, and the sub-light engines still wouldn't work, probably also because of the cloud.  According to the computers' calculations, she didn't have much time left before the hull breached.

"Wanna try?" Grace asked.

Sam just shook her head.

"It's fun."

Sam thought back to her own childhood.  "I remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder how a bubble could exist.  You see there's this thing called surface tension, when molecules bind together in a certain way—"

"Boring!" Grace interrupted.  She walked over to Sam and held the bubble wand up to her mouth.  "Here.  Just try it," she insisted.

Giving into the wishes of the girl, Sam took the wand and blew a stream of bubbles.

"See?  Fun."

Sam smiled at her.  "Yeah."

Grace looked at Sam, her expression suddenly dead serious and much older than the child she appeared to be.  "He's still looking for you, you know."

"Who?  Who is?"

"He's special, different from you and the others."

"Grace, who are you talking about?"

"He knows now."

"I don't understand."

"Well, that's a first."

Startled, Sam turned to the source of the new voice.  Jack O'Neill stood in the doorway, darkened by shadows.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," Sam told him.

"Come on, Carter.  On your feet.  Or are you just gonna sit there?"

Sam thought about getting up, but she no longer had the energy.  "Too tired, sir."

Jack walked into the room and sat on the floor in front of her.

"Samantha, I'm a figment of your imagination.  You're gonna call me 'sir'?"

"Old habit.  Sorry."

"So, you gonna save yourself or what?"

"I'm tired."

"Just givin' up, then?"

"I just don't know what else to do right now," Sam admitted.

"You'll think of something."

"Came to give me a pep talk?"

"It's what friends are for."

Friends.  Yes, that's all they were and probably always would be.

Sam hadn't realized that she'd spoken that first word aloud until Jack responded.

"Hey.  This is you talking here.  Might as well be honest."

Honest?  Okay, why not?  There was a question she'd wanted to ask for a while now but hadn't had the guts to do so.  "What if I quit the Air Force?  Would that change anything or is it just an excuse?"

"I would never ask you to give up your career."

"Because you don't feel anything for me?"

"Carter, what I feel or, should I say, what Jack O'Neill feels isn't what's most important here.  It's what you feel," Hallucination Jack speared her with his dark eyes, "and if you were really, really honest with yourself, you'd already know the answer to that other question."

"Which one?  The question about if you feel anything for me?"

"No, the other one."

"Leaving the Air Force."

"That's the one.  Come on, Carter.  Would you really be willing to give up the Air Force for me?"

"I . . . don't know.  I've thought about it."

"And?"

"And . . . I love my job.  I love working at the SGC, being a part of SG-1.  I suppose that I could keep working at the SGC as a civilian, but I'd have to give up my position on SG-1."

"Which would be quite a sacrifice."

A sacrifice that Sam wasn't a hundred percent sure that she could make for the chance to be with Jack.

Jack leaned forward a bit.  "I think it's time that you take a good, long look at how you feel."

"What do you mean?"

"Sam, I'm a safe bet."

The blunt statement hit dead center.  "As long as I'm thinking about you, setting my sights on what I think is unattainable, there's no chance of being hurt by someone else."

"Jacob was right.  You deserve more.  You deserve someone who can give you everything you want without you having to sacrifice what you love."  Jack stared at her intently.  "And, if you weren't so blind, you'd already know who that someone is."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Jack gave her a smile.  "Yes, you do, Sam.  Stop being so obtuse.  That's my job.  Remember this, though.  I will always be there for you, no matter what.  Believe me."

Sam searched his eyes.  "So what now?"

"Go save your ass.  There are a lot of people out there who care a great deal about you."

Sam gave him a nod and a smile.  "Yes, sir."

The ship suddenly started shaking.  Sam hurriedly went to investigate.  Alarms were going off as she came onto the bridge.  The monitors showed that an inner hull breach was imminent.  She had run out of time.

The major looked over and saw Grace again.  The little girl was still playing with her bubbles.  Sparks flew everywhere as electrical circuits began to overload.

Deciding that enough was enough, Sam asked, "What do you want?"

"What do you mean?" Grace asked in return.

"Whoever you are, I know why everyone else keeps showing up.  Why are you here?  What do you want from me?"

"I don't want anything, but you do.  Then the traveler in the dark thanks you for your tiny spark.  How could he see where to go if you did not twinkle so?"

As Grace resumed blowing her bubbles, Sam's eyes were drawn to them.  All at once, like a blinding flash, it hit her.  She just hoped that it wasn't too late.

Running to the operations desk, Sam sat down and frantically began typing as Grace watched her.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" the child asked.

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

"I'm going to try and save myself with a bubble," Sam explained.

"How?"

"The hyperdrive won't fully engage because of the cloud, but maybe it doesn't have to.  If I can dial down the power flow from the hyperdrive emitter, theoretically, I should be able to cause a partial shift into hyperspace, essentially taking the ship out of the cloud's space-time, hopefully just enough to eliminate its effects on the sub-light engines."

"Neat."

"Yeah."

Grace caught her eyes and again assumed that expression of great wisdom.  "Goodbye, Sam.  Thank you.  We've learned a lot from you.  And from him, too."

Sam stopped what she was doing and stared at the girl.  "What?  Who's 'we'?"

Grace smiled.  "Don't worry.  He'll tell you."

Having no more time for riddles, Sam turned her chair to the engine controls.  She glanced back over her shoulder to find that Grace was gone.  Figuring that the hallucination had served its purpose, Sam activated the hyperdrive.

The engine came to life, shifting the Prometheus slightly outside the space-time of the cloud.  Sam returned to the bridge and took a seat in Major Gant's chair, engaging the sub-light engines.  A moment later, the ship began moving forward.

It had gone only a short distance when Sam saw the alien ship, the one that had caused all this trouble.  Like her, it was inside the gas cloud.  Since, in all this time, it hadn't come after the Prometheus or left the cloud, Sam guessed that it was having the same problem she'd been having.  That realization gave her an idea.

Hallucination Daniel walked up to her.  "Sam, what are you doing?"  The major didn't spare a glance for him.

"I believe she is attempting to rescue her fellow crew members."

Ah, now Teal'c had joined the party.  Oh, wait.  Jack was here, too.  Great.  The whole team together again.  Too bad that three-quarters of them were figments of her imagination.

"Sam, be careful," Daniel warned.  "You already saw what they can do."

"Indeed.  The alien vessel is quite formidable," Teal'c intoned.  "Perhaps it would be best to flee and seek help from Earth."

"There's no time," Sam said.

"Will you guys shut up?  Just let her work," Jack told them.

Sam brought the Prometheus as close as she dared to the alien ship.  She then deactivated the hyperdrive.  Sam went to the command chair and switched on Ship-to-Ship Communication.

"This is Major Samantha Carter of the U.S. Air Force vessel Prometheus," she announced.  "Can you hear me?"  Her question was answered with only static.  "I'm thinking you've been stuck in here just as long as I have.  The only difference is I've found a way out."  Again no answer.  "Here's the deal.  Return my crew, everyone, intact, and let us go, and I'll help you get out of here.  Do we have a deal?"

For a long, tense moment, Sam waited.  If the alien ship decided not to take her up on her offer, she was dead.

Suddenly the bridge crew appeared all around her.

"What the hell just happened?" Colonel Ronson asked.

"It's a long story, sir."  Sam got out of his chair and into Major Gant's.  "Just bear with me.  I'm activating a hyperspace bubble to include the alien vessel.  We're going to bring it with us, out of the cloud."

"Major?" Ronson questioned uncertainly.

"I'll explain everything soon enough, sir."

As Gant watched, Sam increased the size of the hyperspace bubble until it had completely surrounded both ships.  Inside its protection, the ships moved out of the gas cloud, the Prometheus in the lead.

"Now what?" Ronson asked.

"We see if they keep their end of the bargain," Sam replied.

Everyone waited tensely as the alien vessel flew up over them, then headed away into space.  Sam and Ronson released sighs of relief.

"Well done, Major," the commander praised.

Sam nodded as her exhaustion hit her full-force.  "Sir, with your permission I'd like to relieve myself of duty now."

Seeing that she was in desperate need of medical attention, Ronson told her to take it easy and ordered some crew members to get her to the infirmary.  Sam was helped out of the chair and down the corridor, thankful that the ordeal was all over.

Consciousness returned to Sam in a rush.  Her eyes blinked open.

"Hey, Sam."

The major turned to see Daniel gazing at her from a chair at her bedside, a soft smile on his face.  His hand was covering hers.

"Daniel."

"How are you feeling?"

"Um . . . disoriented, and my head hurts."

"I can imagine it does.  You suffered a massive concussion."

"How long was I out there?"

"Four days, Earth time."

"Could have sworn it was weeks."

Daniel nodded.  "Well, you've been through a lot.  Jack just left a little while ago, and Teal'c was here earlier.  We're all planning a party for when you get out of here.  Jack mentioned something about cake."

Sam smiled.  "A cake?"

Daniel returned her smile with a big one of his own.  "You bet."

"Can't wait."

Daniel's smile died, and his gaze dropped to the hand he had laid over hers.  "I'm glad you're okay, Sam.  I've been . . . really worried."

"Daniel?"

The archeologist looked back up at her.  "Hmm?"

"Did you. . . ."

"What?"

"I know it's probably insane, but I could have sworn that . . . that you were trying to contact me out there."

A smile lit Daniel's eyes.  "Your sanity is intact, Sam."

"Then it's true?"

"Yeah.  I was trying to find you, figure out where you were and maybe contact you somehow."

Sam's expression was one of wonder.  "I felt you, one time in particular.  Daniel, that's incredible."

Daniel shrugged.  "I was just very determined."

Janet came up to the bed.  "Determined?  I'd say that's the understatement of the century."  She smiled down at her patient.  "How are you feeling, Sam?  You know, between you and him," she pointed at Daniel, "I could never get bored around here."

It was then that Sam noticed the bandages on Daniel's left hand.  "What did you do?"

He glanced at the hand.  "Oh, I, um, had a little accident.  I'll tell you about it later.  A few things happened while you were gone."

Janet gave an unladylike snort, which was all Sam needed to figure out that a whole lot must have happened.

"I'll be looking forward to it," she said.

Janet shooed Daniel away so that she could examine Sam.  Once she was through, she looked into the major's eyes.

"He's been through a lot since you disappeared, Sam, more than you can imagine," she said in a low voice so as not to be overheard.

"Is it something to do with his abilities?"

"Ohhhh, yeah, and more.  Try to convince him to go home tonight.  He hasn't been getting nearly enough sleep."

"He did look a little tired."

Janet smiled.  "I think that the longest stretch of sleep he's had was the five hours he spent snoring away in that chair right there after you were brought in."

The thought that Daniel fell asleep at her bedside while waiting for her to awaken touched Sam deeply.  She couldn't ask for a better friend than him.

"Well, I'll let Daniel talk with you for a bit longer," Janet told her, "but not too long.  You need more rest."

As soon as Janet had gone, Daniel was back in the chair beside the bed.

"So, Janet says that you've been really busy," Sam said.

"Uh, yeah, you could say that.  It's too long a story to go into now.  There is something that I need to talk with you about, though."

"What's that?"

"It's about that gas cloud you were in."

"What about it?"

Daniel watched her closely.  "It's a whole lot more than you thought it was, Sam.  I don't exactly understand it myself, but it's alive."

Sam stared at him in surprise, feeling a sense of deja vu.  This is what the hallucination of Daniel had suggested.  For an irrational moment, she wondered if she was still seeing things.

"Sam?  Are you okay?"

Sam blinked a couple of times.  "What?  Oh, um . . . yeah.  Sorry.  What makes you think that the cloud is alive?"

"Because I felt it.  I communicated with it."

Sam's mouth fell open.  "You . . . what?"

"After the second or third time that I tried to contact you, I began getting this odd feeling, but I couldn't figure out what it was.  Then, the last time that I tried to get through to you, I felt this huge alien presence.  I didn't know who or what it was.  Then, all at once, they got through to me."

"They?"

"Yeah.  The cloud is a . . . a collective of billions and billions of tiny entities.  I think that they're made of some kind of energy, but they generate a gaseous substance, which is the gas cloud you were in.  They live in complete harmony, almost like a single mind.  The closest thing on Earth that I can compare it to is the Borg in Star Trek.  They do everything as one.  Unlike the Borg, however, they are completely peaceful.  The cloud is their protection.  It fools other intelligent species into thinking that they're just a nebula or something similar."

Sam lay in the bed in stunned silence.  "Daniel, that is amazing."  Then a thought hit her.  "My God.  Grace."

"Who?"

"While I was trapped in the cloud, I suffered hallucinations.  All but one of them were of people I knew: you, the colonel, Teal'c, my father.  But there was also this little girl who called herself Grace.  I didn't understand why I was seeing her, what her purpose was."  Sam turned excited eyes on the man beside her.  "Daniel, I think that Grace was the cloud.  You were right about her!"

Daniel's brow knit in confusion.  "What?"

"You, or, rather, the hallucination that looked like you theorized that Grace was the physical personification of the cloud."

"I did?  I mean, it did?"

"Yes, and you . . . it was right.  There were some things Grace said that makes sense now.  She told me that you were looking for me.  She also said that you were special, different from me and, I'm guessing, the rest of the Prometheus crew.  Maybe the crew of that alien ship, too.  She told me that you 'knew' now and that you'd tell me who they were.  She also said that they'd learned a lot from the two of us."

Daniel nodded his head.  "That's what they said to me as well.  They don't have much close contact with other lifeforms, preferring not to.  They had no clue about what's been going on in the galaxy, the Goa'uld, the Replicators, the fight we've been waging to save humanity.  They said that the time they spent watching and learning about you was enlightening.  Oh, and they apologized for the problems with the ship.  They had no idea that their gas emissions would adversely affect ships like that.  They tried to give you a hint on how you could get out.  I guess

you finally got the message."

Sam smiled.  "Yes, I did.  I used a bubble."

"A bubble?"

Sam explained what she did.  "Grace had been blowing bubbles with one of those bubble wands for a while, and it just suddenly hit me."  Sam then realized something else.  "'Then the traveler in the dark thanks you for your tiny spark.  How could he see where to go if you did not twinkle so?'"

Daniel looked at her in confusion.  "Excuse me?"

"It's a variation of a line in the children's rhyme 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.  I think that Grace was giving me a clue that I needed to let her guide me out of the cloud."  Sam looked up at Daniel.  "Why didn't she, they, just tell me who they were?"

"Their survival depends upon secrecy, Sam.  Like I said before, the cloud they generate fools others into thinking that they're nothing more than a collection of gasses.  They didn't know if they could trust you enough to let you know of their existence, so they created Grace."

"Why use the image of a little girl?"

Daniel shrugged.  "Maybe because a child, especially a female child, would be the least threatening image that they could create.  You would have no fear of a little girl."

"So, what changed things?  Why, at the end, did they decide to reveal that they were more than a hallucination?"

"Uh, well, that was because of me.  They had sensed me before, but were puzzled about who and what I was.  When they finally realized that I was of the same species as you, it surprised them since neither you nor any of the Prometheus crew showed signs of being able to do what I was doing.  When I became aware of them and we made contact, they knew that they didn't need to hide from us anymore.  You were in the middle of a crisis, though, so they didn't want to hit you with the knowledge that the gas cloud you were inside was actually a community of living entities."

"So, they just gave me a few little hints and let you be the one to tell me."

Daniel nodded.  "Yeah."

Sam gave a little laugh.  "This is so incredible, Daniel.  I'd love to find out exactly what they are, what they're made of, how they exist."

"We need to leave them be, Sam," Daniel told her gently.  "They wouldn't want to be poked, and prodded, and studied like that.  You, me, Jack, Teal'c and the general are the only ones who know about them, and it's going to stay that way.  General Hammond has agreed not to report this to anyone since these entities are not a threat to Earth or anybody else.  They just want to live in peace and be left alone."

Though Sam's scientific curiosity was driving her to learn all about the entities, she agreed that they had the right to their privacy and to not be subjected to the testing and scrutiny that would occur if word of their existence got out.

"I can really identify with that wish," Daniel added.

Sam looked at him closely.  "Yes, I guess you can, can't you."  She smiled.  "So, are you going to tell me what's been going on around here while I was gone?"

Daniel smiled and stood up.  "Later.  I promise.  Right now, you need to get some more sleep."  He reached down and touched her cheek, his eyes gazing into hers deeply.  "It's really good to have you home, Sam."  Then, to her surprise, he bent over and gently kissed her forehead.  "Just because we're friends," he whispered in her ear.  Then he walked away.

Sam lay still in the bed for a long time, surprised at how that kiss and the whisper in her ear had made her feel.

Choosing not to think about it, Sam closed her eyes.  Moments later, she was asleep.

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