Daniel Jackson stood with his hood up in the broiling sun. In a few minutes he'd be taking part in one of the biggest meetings ever held on Abydos. His hand crept into his robe to touch a bar of heat-resistant chocolate. He'd found it left beside his clothes that morning— and the only place it could have come from was Sha'uri's MRE from that awful night. She was already off to work, preparing for the scientists from Earth.
But at least he had a peace offering as he joined the welcoming committee for Abydos' first summit conference. Sha'uri knew he was a chocoholic.
In the distance Daniel could just make out a mastadge caravan toiling its way over the dunes. A warning had come just moments before from the watchtowers of Nagada. So Kasuf and other town notables of Nagada stood to greet the arrival of Elders from the farming communities.
This was the one good result of the free-for-all in the market square four days ago. After Skaara's militiamen had dispersed the protestors, the Elders of Nagada had decided to talk with some of their opposite numbers from the farmer tribe. Messengers had gone out to the nearby farming enclaves with invitations for a joint deliberation on the farmers' complaints.
By good luck, Kasuf's counterpart among the farmers, an Elder named Nakeer, had been not too far away. As chief Elder of the farmer tribe, Nakeer spent his time traveling around the farm communes, somewhat like an old-fashioned circuit judge.
Hearing of Kasuf's call, Nakeer had summoned all the nearby Elders and set off for Nagada. Judging from local politics, Nakeer would probably have his positions ready and his people lined up by the time they arrived.
The mastadge cavalcade didn"T seem to be in any great hurry. Watching the leisurely progress of the great beasts with palanquins on their back, Daniel had lots of time to notice details.
The farmers' mastadges appeared pretty much the same as the big galumphing beasts Skaara and his friends used to herd. Their humpbacked bodies looked like spindle-legged crosses between musk oxen and bison. Then nature had added a face more like what you'd expect to see on a brontosaurus—and tacked on a beard.
To ride these elephant-sized beasts required a combination saddle and seat—with a sun shade on top. The outriders on the caravan had shades like moth-eaten army blankets. The VIPs in the middle of the group had silks and tassels to keep the sun off. As usual, rank had its privileges.
What really caught Daniel's attention were the weapons some of the caravaners were waving. Those guys were toting M-16 rifles!
Standing beside him, Kasuf spotted the weapons, too. He stiffened in his ornate robes. Before Nakeer had even arrived, the farmers' Elder was making a point.
The outriders parted, and the Elders they guarded rode through the gates. Their leader pulled up his mastadge before Kasuf and his entourage.
"Welcome to Nagada, Nakeer of the farmer clans," Kasuf intoned.
"And greetings to our mining brothers of Nagada." The rider was a villainous-looking character with a black beard marked on one side with a white blaze. Nakeer seemed younger than Kasuf, but his face was seamed from years of riding beneath the desert suns.
"We have arranged a feast of salutation," Kasuf said as the leaders of the farming clans dismounted. Maidens of the city advanced, carrying gourds of water.
"How refreshing," Nakeer said as he sipped the liquid. "But I would also like to cleanse the dust of my journey before settling to eat. Perhaps you would accompany me, Kasuf, while the others go ahead."
Attended by Kasuf and Daniel, Nakeer turned away from the arranged welcome. "There is a hall of bathing nearby," Kasuf said.
"Forgive the subterfuge, Kasuf," Nakeer said as they stepped within. "I wished to speak with you— away from the ears of that multitude."
The farmers' leader stared as Daniel slipped back his hood, revealing his blond hair. "And this must be one of the Urt-men," he said.
"Earthmen," Daniel corrected. "Earthman in the singular."
"Singular or plural, you've caused many changes on this world." Nakeer's voice was almost accusing.
"They helped us escape from slavery—and destroy Ra," Kasuf protested.
"And in doing so, they broke the bonds that had held our tribes together since our people were brought to Abydos," Nakeer said. "Always before, our people knew their roles. Now my people desert their fields. They come to Nagada, where they hear the streets are paved with these."
He produced a Susan B. Anthony dollar from inside his robes and held it out. "These are ill things. They make my people mad. In the days of Ra, we provided supplies for Nagada because of the fear of the Horus guards. If discrepancies were found between harvest and what was sent, a settlement suffered. Even so, we usually managed to hold aside a little of the best for ourselves."
Nakeer scowled, looking like the villain in a Foreign Legion movie. "Then the strangers came through the StarGate offering these coins. Instead of supplying Nagada, the nearby farmers began selling all their crops and buying from the outlying communities. Then traders from Nagada came traveling, also bearing these coins. They bought up more crops. What we would have bartered or been forced to provide, we sold. There are towns where people are starving because they sold all their food—even their private supplies."
Pinning Kasuf with his eyes, Nakeer went on. "Yet with all this abundance of foodstuffs sold, our communities have received a flood of wanderers from Nagada. These folks say they're starving and have traveled to where food is to be found. Where are our crops going, Kasuf of Nagada?"
"Your harvests have not been appearing in the Council granaries, that I know," Kasuf said. "These traders you speak of—they're trying to exploit the coinage our Earth friends brought to us. They come to your communes to seek cheap food to sell dearly in Nagada. They store the grain to keep your payments low and our prices high."
He shrugged. "I argue with my fellow Elders, but for different reasons we cannot come to an agreement on what to do."
Nakeer nodded grimly. "I have the same problems with my fellows. The Elders whose towns are getting fat from this trade won"T vote to regulate it. And I have no desire to impose a settlement by destroying those towns."
"The same holds true in Nagada," Kasuf admitted. "I believe that our new lives of freedom call for new ways—like doing business with these coins. Yet I fear that the new ways will cause disagreements among the people and result in fighting."
"We've been able to keep the peace in our places," Nakeer said. "But not all those leaving the city have joined us in the fields. Some skulk in the dead lands and seize what they want. Caravans have been attacked in the desert for the food they carry."
He turned to Daniel. "And some of those raiders were using the weapons of your people."
"We can"T take the blame for that," Daniel objected. There's a battlefield full of lost weapons, which anyone could pick up."
"But most of those weapons have gone to Nagada," Nakeer said. "Skaara son of Kasuf has organized his own little army—"
"To fight for all of us who live on Abydos!" Kasuf flared. "Just as we battled against Ra and Hathor when they oppressed us. You yourself admit that the farmers were able to hold back something for themselves. But every khar of crystal we dug up was earned with our blood. We were the target of the udajeets—our people died fighting the Horus guards."
"A fine speech," Nakeer retorted. "But there were many farmer folk conscripted to work in the mines. They fought and died, too. And I will not have them die so that Nagada will dictate the future with guns and the aid of the Urt—Earthmen. We fought so that we would no longer be slaves of Ra. Nor will we become slaves of Nagada."
Kasuf frowned. "I have no need of slaves. What is it you want, Nakeer?"
"My folk need the new weapons. And we need to be able to speak with the strangers from the gate." Nakeer's voice was flat, outlining his bargaining position.
Kasuf's face grew intent. "Skaara has talked about how his new recruits need training. If they were formed into guard contingents for your caravans—"
"He must also recruit from my people," Nakeer said. "We must also learn the Earthmen tongue— rather than picking up some few tattered words here and there."
"Since I run the English classes, I think I can speak for that," Daniel said. "Send us your best and brightest—men and women. My best student is my wife."
Nakeer looked from the Earthman to his father-in-law. A slow smile came to his villainous-looking face. "These are things that we can agree on. And I think the others will agree, too."
Maybe they never got out of the Bronze Age here, Daniel thought. But they still know that politics is the art of the possible.
He could hardly wait to see the next round of wheeling and dealing.
Barbara Shore released a long-pent-up breath as she stepped out of the lens of energy that marked the StarGate's farther terminus. It seemed as though the realization of traversing all that distance hit her all at once—or maybe it was the aftereffect of that wild, bumpy ride. Her legs abruptly didn"T seem to want to support the rest of her shapely form.
She tottered, and the young Marine lieutenant awaiting her stretched out an anxious hand, But Barbara evaded him, aiming for the strapping Marine gunnery sergeant at the lieutenant's side.
"Sorry, darlin'," Barbara said in a broad Texas drawl, "but if I gotta fall into somebody's arms, I'm gonna pick the handsomest guy in the room."
Muffled laughter from the rest of the guard detail was cut off by a lethal look from the red-faced young officer. The poor gunny was red-faced, too, almost standing at attention as he supported the female astrophysicist. Barbara just grinned and snuggled as she got her balance back. The noncom's response was one she'd encountered often enough. Even extremely competent men—athletes, scholars... and a few Marines—somehow had their gears unmesh when they got an arm around her.
Barbara extricated herself from the man's hold and took a couple of experimental steps. "Looks like I can make it by myself now, Gunny. But it was fun while it lasted."
She patted the noncom's behind, then turned to the young officer. "Where to, Loot? Do I dump my stuff at my quarters first, or does that wait until Colonel O'Neil gives me the final okay?"
"I've detailed a man to move your baggage, Dr. Shore," the lieutenant said after clearing his throat only once. "The colonel is eager to see you."
"If you say so, sport," Barbara replied as they set off down stone hallways still festooned with cables for temporary lighting. In the distance she heard the echoing racket of a gasoline generator.
You're nervous, she told herself as they walked down a colonnaded corridor in what seemed to be a larger empty space. You always mouth off when you're nervous, and that's all you've done since you arrived in this crazy place.
Six months ago, if someone had told her that she'd actually step through the StarGate and land on an alien world, Barbara would have dismissed the idea as sheer fantasy—not even science fiction. In those dark days the StarGate had been an enigmatic portal that had steadily resisted all their efforts to open. Then cute, somewhat flaky Dr. Daniel Jackson had come along and produced the key.
The StarGate had actually worked! They'd sent a robot probe through what looked like a rippling pond of light and received information from another planet! Colonel O'Neil and his boss, General West, had promptly wrapped the project in top secrecy and fired all the civilian workers. Barbara had spent months exiled from the missile silo that housed the StarGate. Then one day the general's shadowy minions had contacted her, and here Barbara was on the other side of the interstellar portal.
It felt about as real as going to Oz.
But the young lieutenant had promised that she'd be going to see O'Neil, and that was all too real. Barbara was torn. One side of her wanted to kick the military man's ass for leaving her more unsatisfied than any male ever had. The other side was willing to kiss that same fundament if she could keep playing with the StarGate.
They reached the end of a hewn-stone passageway, and Barbara could see light at the end of the tunnel. But the next stage of her trip took her through a golden-walled hall at least a block long. No, it wasn"T gold, Barbara realized; it was that same glassy golden-opalescent material that made up the StarGate.
She could see corridors branching off from the one she was following. Barriers had been arranged across them, and young men in brownish outfits obviously stood guard. Equally obviously, they were not like the Marines at the StarGate. When they saw Barbara, they muttered among themselves in a language that sounded vaguely like Arabic but wasn"T.
Barbara stumbled out of step with her guide as the realization struck her like a blow. They hadn"T just found a planet out here. They'd found people!
Then they were outside, and the heat of the two suns overhead settled over her like a dry but very heavy blanket. Barbara was wearing a sky blue jumpsuit. She liked the functionality of the garment. Besides, with a little tailoring it emphasized the lilt of her butt when she walked. But they had hardly gone a few steps before she was aware of sweat staining her armpits and back.
"This is worse than a summer in the Panhandle," she groused. "You could have given a gal some warning about what the weather was like. Half of my wardrobe is going to be useless."
"Oh, wait till you see the nights," the young lieutenant told her. "Then it just about hits freezing."
They made their way through the organized bedlam of a military camp. Barbara noticed that the uniformed personnel seemed to be digging themselves out of the results of a sandstorm. At last they came to a larger than usual tent. The lieutenant gestured her in.
Colonel Jack O'Neil sat behind a simple camp table. He gestured to the only other empty seat in the tent—a folding chair. "It's very nice to see you again, Doctor."
"Hell," Barbara drawled, determined not to give an inch. "Here I thought I was the first woman through the StarGate. But it looks as though you brought your secretary ahead of me."
O'Neil didn"T rise to the provocation. He simply introduced the two women. "Dr. Barbara Shore, meet Sha'uri, who is, of course, not my secretary. Sha'uri lives here on Abydos, and will be serving as the chief interpreter for your team." He paused for a second, the only time Barbara had ever seen the man hesitate. "She was appointed to that post by her husband—Dr. Daniel Jackson."
"Really, now?" Barbara said, shaking hands. "You know, I had my eye on that little blond-haired honey once. But he seemed to have more of a thing for hieroglyphics than women."
Careful, now, Barbara warned herself. You're taking out your bad attitude on this woman when you should be saving it for O'Neil.
"So, Colonel," she said, turning back to her main target, "I'm heading a team, am I? And what are we supposed to be doing? West's people weren"T exactly forthcoming when they contacted me."
"I'm told you didn"T seem to be involved in any other research," O'Neil replied.
"Funny how hard it is to get a job during funding cuts and the last place you worked was a hush-hush government project," Barbara said. "And it's so much easier when you're not allowed to talk about anything you did while you were under wraps. Not that I would. I could just imagine the reaction if I told an interviewer that the last thing I saw on my previous job was a glorified version of one of those robot mail carts disappearing in one hell of a light show. The only position that would qualify me for was a spot in the rubber ward."
"This will be a somewhat more responsible position," O'Neil assured her dryly.
"Fine—but I don"T screw over as easily as the old StarGate team leader," Barbara said. "She was asking what, if anything, I'd heard about the project."
O'Neil's eyes were suddenly tracking her like a pair of radar-operated guns. "You spoke with Catherine Langford?"
Babara shrugged. "Just a little hi-how-ya-doing?—enough to know that she hadn"T been contacted by West. In my book, that stinks, Colonel. The woman spent her life trying to figure out the riddle of the StarGate. She hasn"T got much time left—and you intend to keep her in the dark."
Barbara glanced over to see how Sha'uri was taking all this. She could see the Abydan girl didn"T understand everything that was being said, but from the looks of things, she had a healthy suspicion of General West. That was a good sign. Hmmm. She was actually rather pretty, in a delicate way—like a fine-hewn Egyptian statue.
O'Neil actually seemed jolted. He took a moment before he answered her. "Formidable as Ms. Langford's organizational qualities are, they're not what's needed on this project," he finally said.
"She couldn"T come out and play anyway," Barbara said. "She's broken a hip and is afraid she's going to get stuck in a rest home. But she did something odd, Colonel. She sent me a present for Daniel Jackson—as though she expected me to see him."
Barbara reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and produced a gold chain and bronze pendant. The heavy medallion had been incised thousands of years ago with a symbol that fused a bird's body with a gigantic eye—the Eye of Ra.
Dumping it on the desk, she said, "Now that I've delivered it, can you give me one reason to stay?"
"You saw that pyramid built over this world's StarGate." O'Neil was obviously choosing his words carefully.
"Yeah," she replied. "A bit more gaudy than sheathing the place in limestone, like they did back home. Reminded me of Vegas."
O'Neil continued, refusing to respond to her jibes. "You no doubt noticed that this 'sheathing,' as you call it, is quite thick."
"I've seen streets that didn"T extend as far," Barbara admitted.
"The artifact was not there when my initial reconnaissance team came to Abydos," O'Neil continued.
"Wait a second," Barbara interrupted, her voice sharpening. "You're not telling me that whole pyramid—"
"Oh, the pyramid was there," O'Neil said. "But not this so-called sheathing. The stone construction is actually a docking station. But the rest—the section made of quartz material—is a starship. It's not operational now, unfortunately. Your job—" the edges of his lips almost rose in a smile—"should you choose to accept it, is to examine the systems on board. See how they work. We've found several functional sub-microcomputers on the ship. You'll be able to get information from them. Sha'uri and her assistants will translate for you. Of special interest are the power plant and engines."
O'Neil leaned back in his chair, studying Barbara intently. "The StarGate is a fascinating artifact, but if we disassembled it to see how it worked, we might end up destroying it. This spaceship offers a complete but nonfunctional stardrive. If you could determine the operating principles—"
"NASA will be going a lot farther than Mars in the next few years." Barbara gripped the edges of her chair to stop the room from spinning. "An honest-to-Pete starship. Why did—what—?"
"In this case, Doctor, the only relevant question is, 'How does it work?'" The colonel glanced at his watch. "The rest of your team should be arriving within the hour. You've already met my aide, Lieutenant Charlton. He'll serve as your liaison." For a second O'Neil looked almost human. "I understand you've been handed a lot to assimilate. Lieutenant Charlton will show you to your quarters, and Sha'uri will brief you on the local conditions. Good luck, Doctor. I'm expecting you to hit the ground running."
His eyes turned remote again. "And now, if you'll excuse me—"
Barbara found herself back in the charge of the young lieutenant. He conducted her and Sha'uri to another tent, this one in the shadow of the glassy-golden pyramid—the starship, Barbara corrected herself.
"I'm still arranging accommodations for the rest of your team, Doctor," Charlton said. "Would you prefer to be briefed—?"
"Actually, I think I'd rather prefer to get de-briefed," Barbara said, tugging at her sticky jumpsuit. She glanced apologetically at the young man. "Look, Lieutenant. You've got things to do, and when the others arrive, we'll both have people to see. What do you say you come and collect me about five minutes before the troops come through?"
"Yes, ma'am." At least the young snot didn"T salute.
Barbara stepped through the tent flap, beckoning Sha'uri inside. Her bags were parked neatly on the tent's single cot. "The first thing I want to do is get out of this suit and into something more suitable for the weather. I'm sweating like a pig."
She unzipped the front of her suit and shrugged it off before she noticed Sha'uri's expression. "I'm not embarrassing you, am I, darlin'?"
"N-no," Sha'uri said, looking embarrassed. "It's just that you're so—"
" 'Direct' is the word I think you're looking for," Barbara said, rummaging in her luggage. "Would it break any local taboos if I wore these?" she asked, holding out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
"Just that?" Sha'uri said, looking very young.
"I can see that you tend to wear a bit more," Barbara said, examining the homespun dress and shawl. "But I'm damned if I'm going to roast if I don"T have to. Are you ashamed of your bodies around here?"
"Ashamed? No." Sha'uri gestured upward with her hand. "It's just that the suns—"
"Oh, right," Barbara said. "Desert people don"T really go in for sunbathing."
"Bathing? In the sun?" Sha'uri's face showed bafflement.
"I guess that's a bit of English Daniel didn"T teach you," Barbara said.
"An idiom," Sha'uri enunciated carefully.
Barbara grinned. "Yeah, I'm just full of idioms. We don"T actually bathe in the sun. We lie out in the sun's rays—to get a tan. But I guess under those two babies up there, you could get a hell of a burn—or heat stroke. That's why you keep that pretty skin of yours wrapped up. Still having trouble following me?"
"Your words—they sound different—"
"That's because I come from a different part of the country than Daniel. I've got a Texas accent, darlin'."
" 'Darlin',' " Sha'uri echoed. "Not 'darling'?"
"Where I come from, they drop some of the final Gs," Barbara said. "And darlin' probably doesn"T mean as much as when Daniel says it to you."
Sha'uri's expression was unreadable, but she blushed.
"So how did you manage to hook that old boy? He always seemed like such a shy one."
"If you had tried to 'hook' him, you'd probably have scared him to death," Sha'uri said with a smile.
Barbara laughed out loud. She was beginning to like Sha'uri. "How did you two get together?"
"I first saw him at the mines outside our city of Nagada," Sha'uri said. As she continued with her story of gods, wars, and rescues, Barbara's eyebrows rose. "I see there's a lot the good colonel didn"T bother to tell me," she said. "So Ra kept your people illiterate? Daniel wound up teaching you hieroglyphics as well as English?"
"That's right," Sha'uri answered.
"So why isn"T Daniel running the show on the translations?"
Before Sha'uri could answer, Barbara went on. "No offense, Sha'uri, but even star pupils aren"T as good as the teacher. We'll need an expert in ancient Egyptian—especially if we're going to decipher hieroglyphics that describe high-tech processes." Barbara recalled how Daniel had blasted through the translation of the proto-hieroglyphics on the stone that had covered the StarGate. "I wish your husband was working with us."
Sha'uri gave her an unhappy smile. "So do I, Barbara. So do I."
The young Abydan woman was explaining the tense division of property between Earthlings and Abydans after the seizure of the starship when Charlton returned.
"West would have promised us the stars above to let you poke around inside Ra's Eye," Sha'uri was saying when they heard a male cough outside the tent. "I hope he means—ah, hello, Lieutenant."
"Ladies," the young officer greeted them. He turned to Barbara, a spark of interest in his eyes as he took in her tight shorts and T-shirt. "The rest of the technical team should be exiting the StarGate shortly."
"Fine, Loot," Barbara said as she headed for the tent flap. Charlton had to hustle to act like a gentleman and twitch it aside for her.
"Before we go back into the pyramid, I want to make a stop at the medical tent," Barbara said as she slipped on a pair of sunglasses.
Charlton looked alarmed. "You're not feeling ill, are you, Doctor?"
She shook her head. "I want to see if I can steal one of their lab coats," she said. "They're loose and white, so they'll help with this intense desert sunshine. And," she added, grinning as she brushed a hand along her bare thigh, "they'll help me look a little more professional when I have to greet the troops."
The smallest lab coat available swirled voluminously around Barbara's shapely figure—apparently in government issue, "small" translated as "medium large."
But Barbara simply buttoned a few buttons and rolled up the sleeves, and had a reasonable facsimile of a caftan as she, Sha'uri, and Charlton set off for the pyramid.
"Make a note—we're going to need coats like this for everybody," she told the lieutenant. "And hats. I don"T want anybody suffering sunstroke because they didn"T have a hat."
"Fifteen hats," Charlton muttered, jotting down a note.
"So we have fifteen people on the team?" Barbara said. "Does that include me?"
"Yes, Doctor, including yourself," the lieutenant replied. "But not including the Abydan interpreters."
Sha'uri had raised the shawl she was wearing over her head to avoid the beating suns.
"Quite right." Barbara smiled at the young woman. "They know how to take care of themselves. Oh, and sunglasses," she suddenly said. "We have to make sure my people have sunglasses."
Her own eyewear had to come off when she entered the crippled starship. The relentless glare outside made the directionless light aboard Ra's Eye seem particularly dim.
"It was worse when we first fought our way aboard," Sha'uri said. "The lights were hardly working at all, then they went totally dead. Since then we've wound up with this dim sort of glow. From what we've gotten out of the computer slates, this is emergency lighting."
Barbara glanced at the young woman, impressed. "So you were able, with Daniel's help, to make some repairs?"
Sha'uri shook her head. "Our best guess is that some of the circuits repaired themselves. There are references in some of the files we've accessed—"
Barbara walked on, frowning in thought. Circuits that repaired themselves? Stardrive could be the least of the things they uncovered aboard this tub.
They moved out of the ship and into the original pyramid. The metal temporary lights tacked onto stone walls and pillars seemed harsh, an ugly intrusion—lacking the seamlessness of the ship's high tech, or the clean lines of the low-tech stonework.
A deep throbbing tone seemed to reverberate through the passages. "That's the StarGate warming up," Charlton said. "We'd better hurry, ladies."
Barbara was not about to miss that show. They reached the hall of the StarGate just as the energy backwash billowed out of the energized torus, an auroral vortex of light seemingly turned liquid.
The field stabilized into a rippling lens of light like a pool of water somehow standing perpendicular to the pull of gravity. Then the surface of the pool became disturbed, as if somebody were diving in. A silhouette appeared in the shimmering field, turning into a human form in silvery bas-relief, then finally becoming a person as the star traveler stepped all the way through to Abydos.
"Well, that was intense," said the bearded young man staggering drunkenly as he tried to overcome the vertigo of his trip. With a beret cocked at a jaunty angle on his head, he looked like a road-company Che Guevara.
"Storey!" Barbara burst out, running to hug him. She had spent several months cooped up with Special Operator Technician Mitch Storey, and appreciated him both for his sense of humor and his expertise in electronics and controls.
He grinned at her. "If I'd known I would get this kind of a welcome, I'd have volunteered to go first all over again."
A new figure formed in the shimmering StarGate lens, resolving into a face and body that Barbara didn"T know. The man managed a shaky smile as he saw Barbara's arms around Storey. "Isn"T there anyone to catch me?"
"Dr. Barbara Shore, meet Pete Auchinloss. Or should I say Professor Peter—"
"I know who Professor Auchinloss is," Barbara said. "One of the hottest shots in the world of mainframe computing."
More men and women came through, a baker's dozen of experts from technicians to designers of exotic weaponry.
"Wait a second," Barbara said, counting. "Haven"T we got one more?"
"Your translation expert," Charlton said.
"Yeah, he was a little nervous at committing himself to the StarGate," Storey said with a grin. "Hold on, here he comes."
A bulky figure appeared in silhouette against the radiance of the StarGate. It resolved itself into a tall, stocky man with heavy features and an Oliver North haircut. Barbara instantly recognized pompous Dr. Gary Meyers, on loan from Harvard to the original StarGate project. Barbara always figured Harvard had given Meyers to the government to get rid of a pain in the ass around campus.
But for once the professor's face wasn"T set in its usual expression of complacent condescension. Meyers gulped, took a couple of shambling steps, then vomited all over the floor.
"Thanks, Gary," Barbara said as she jumped aside. "Nice to see you, too."