Originally posted in Gateways 1

Author's note: one of the problems for writing for a current series is that the series will add things that invalidate part of a story. I wrote this story before we learned the true fate of Teal'c's father.

This story is the prequel to my novella, Curses, which is available from Criterion Press.

"I do not like this place." Teal'c's observation broke the stillness as SG-1 collected themselves in front of the Stargate on P3K 665.

Daniel Jackson, who had drawn a deep breath of the fresh, crisp air and lifted fascinated eyes to the high-rise buildings on the other side of the park where the Gate stood, caught himself and turned to stare at the Jaffa. Teal'c's knowledge of multiple worlds had been of tremendous help in a variety of hostile places, but until he had spoken, Daniel had been speculating about the sight of a planet that might have been near Earth's level of technology. With only several notable exceptions like the Nox, the worlds the team had visited before this were much more primitive than Earth. His knowledge of ancient cultures benefitted the team. Except for the unusual corners and angles--most of the buildings were shaped like pentagons rather than rectangles--they might almost have been in a city back on Earth. Maybe back on earth several decades ago, but the people on this planet could be very interesting.

Except that there did not seem to be any people. The huge park where the Stargate stood had once been laid out in formal patterns, but it had run wild, maybe for decades. High on a hill, the Stargate offered almost a birds-eye view of the park. It was still possible to see the vague outlines of broad walkways and to guess the original shape of the riotous flower gardens. No one had tended the park for a long time, but once it had been lovingly cared for. Near the Gate Daniel spotted a five-sided barrel that he guessed was used for trash. The writing on it might have evolved from Hieroglyphics; it was a combination of pictographic and phonetic symbols, at least at first glance. He ran his fingers over the characters, trying to sense out a meaning. Near it, he noticed a sign with more writing and paused to try to read it, before using his digital camera.

"All right, Teal'c, why not?" Col. O'Neill demanded. His gun ready in his hand, Jack tended to be wary when stepping through the Gate into a new world even if reconnaissance had shown nothing alarming. The air was breathable, the temperature was 60 Fahrenheit, and there was no suggestion of dangerous predators.

Spotting the buildings in the preliminary photos sent back, General Hammond had expressed an interest in contacting a civilization which might be close enough to Earth in development that it could prove a useful ally in the fight against the Goa'uld.

"Something is very wrong here," the Jaffa replied. "I feel it."

"Oh, come on, you're not having some kind of weird premonition on me, are you?" Jack wasn't much for that kind of feeling. He liked things clear-cut and spelled out.

Captain Carter touched Jack's arm. "No, he's right. I feel something too," she said, "and I'm not psychic. But this place makes me uneasy." Samantha was too good a scientist to be spooked by a feeling. She looked around then moved carefully down the slope her weapon at ready. The thick undergrowth crowded in on the path leading down from the Stargate. "It's as if something is watching us."

"Something? Not someone?" Daniel asked, picking up the word and focusing on it. Now that she mentioned it, a creepy-crawly feeling prickled the back of his neck. It wasn't friendly. Not friendly at all. "I don't like this," he muttered.

Sam suddenly pounced on the bushes and grabbed something, bending down to drag it out of the tangled underbrush. It came slowly, tangled in the weeds, but before she had finished, the three men realized what she had found and gathered closer to help.

It was a Serpent Guard, helmeted, and obviously dead. When Teal'c reached forward to trigger the helmet open, a grinning skull met their gaze. Obviously he had been dead a long time. The uniform he wore held his body together, but it had collapsed in on itself as it decayed.

"He's been dead for years," Daniel said. "Decades, I'd say."

"There is another." Teal'c moved a few steps further down the slope and pointed into the undergrowth. "And more. These are servants of Apophis."

"How did they die?" Jack asked practically. "If something on this world is zapping Jaffa, I want to make sure it isn't about to take a few potshots at us."

Sam knelt beside the body she had found. Daniel crouched on the opposite side. "I don't see any marks on his armor," she said. "Nothing to indicate a physical wound, like gunfire or explosives. His body is neatly together and none of his bones seem to be broken."

"But he must have died suddenly," Daniel said, reasoning it out as he went. "Because if it were an illness that came upon him gradually, and he didn't feel well, he'd have just gone back through the Stargate. He wouldn't have simply flopped over in the bushes and died."

"That makes me feel soooo good," Jack replied, an edge of sarcasm to his voice. "You're saying something made these Jaffa drop over in mid-stride? A plague? That's all we need."

"We're as far from the Gate as they were," Sam said hastily. "If it were really a plague and still here, wouldn't it have affected us by now?"

"Unless they were on their way back to the Stargate after spending some time here," Daniel muttered.

"Thank you, Daniel," O'Neill muttered. "I needed to hear that."

"Colonel O'Neill!" Teal'c shouted. "Over here."

"More fun and games," Jack muttered and dashed over to a curve in the overgrown path. When he reached the Jaffa's side, he stopped so abruptly Daniel nearly cannoned into him. Teal'c had discovered a small, five-sided building like a shelter, open on each side, with rows of benches facing out from the center. Sitting on the benches were five skeletons--human skeletons. They didn't wear Serpent Guard armor. Two of them, male and female from the relative size and structure of their bones, were locked in an embrace as if they had seen death coming and had chosen to face it holding each other. There was no evidence of infant Goa'uld larva in the tangle of their bones and tattered remnants of their clothing. They were not Jaffa. They were most likely natives of this planet.

The sensation of being watched was far stronger here. Daniel shifted uneasily.

"Five of them," Sam remarked. She didn't go any closer to investigate, her restless posture suggesting she was as uncomfortable as Daniel.

"Yes, I noticed that, too," he replied.

"Meaning?" Jack turned to stare at them. "Okay, kids, what's the big deal about there being five? Is this some science thing?"

"The number five appears to be significant in their culture," Daniel explained with a gesture at the tall structures beyond the park. "Note the five-sided buildings everywhere, and here we have five bodies together. It could be coincidence, of course, but somehow, I don't think it is. I'd be willing to bet their numeric system is based on the number five instead of a decimal system."

"Oh, good." O'Neill grimaced. "I take it this means something?" He glanced over his shoulder uneasily. He could feel it too, the sense that they were not alone. It was obvious from the way he moved. It was also obvious he wanted badly to discount it, but was too good a soldier to do so. It could mean they were being watched by remnants of the planet's population.

"Colonel!" Sam's voice was sharp. "There are dead Jaffa all over this park. Look." She gestured expansively. Now that they knew what to look for, little pieces of Serpent Guard armor protruded from the undergrowth in many places.

Teal'c stood at her side, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the park. "I believe I have heard of this place," he said, casting his memory back, his expression hardening. "It was many years ago. I was a boy, no older than Rya'c, long before I became First Prime of Apophis. But the word came down that a world had caused the death of many Jaffa and even several of the Goa'uld. I did not know how this happened, but I do know the Goa'uld never returned to that world. They tried for several years, but no one ever survived the trip through the Stargate."

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. "That does it. We're out of here. I want us in medical isolation the moment we get back. I'm going to send a message through before we go to warn them to set up a quarantine area."

"I think that's a good idea, Jack," Daniel agreed. "I don't feel ill, but we don't know how long the Goa'uld and Jaffa were here before they were affected."

"I'll take samples of the atmosphere," Carter agreed, pulling out several little bottles from her pack and opening them. "And maybe some of the earth." She bent to scoop up a soil sample.

O'Neill composed a hasty message while Daniel advanced on the DHD and dialed Earth. Jack signaled and then tossed the message through. "I told them we would follow in fifteen minutes," he said. "It's possible they'll send another team through in environmental suits before then. In the meantime, we have fifteen minutes to find out what happened here. Carter, you're with me. Teal'c, you and Daniel check in that direction. Ten minutes only, then return here."

Teal'c nodded once, hefting his staff weapon, and gestured Daniel to fall into step with him.

Uneasily, Jackson complied. "Do you know any more about this world?" he prompted, driven by a brooding expression in the big Jaffa's eyes. He didn't want to pry if the memories were personal, but their lives might be at stake.

"I am not certain this is the planet," Teal'c replied. "But I remember much of the world I suspect this is. It had technology beyond many cultures in the system of Stargates. There was great grief at so many unexplained losses. One Jaffa made it back through the gate, only to die as soon as he reached the other side. The priests found his body in front of the Stargate."

"How did he die?" Daniel asked rather diffidently. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer, and there was a repressive tightness on Teal'c's face that made him uncomfortable to pursue the subject.

"They suspected a form of energy weapon, but there was no mark upon him. No one who examined him became ill. I believe it was the inability to discover the cause of his death that made the Goa'uld quarantine this world. If this is the planet I remember, it is called Garda."

"The Goa'uld must not face many defeats," Daniel said carefully, sensing something brooding on the face of the taller man. "Is that why you remember it so well?"

"The Goa'uld have been blocked from worlds before. Some, like Earth, buried their Stargates," he reminded the scientist. "Sometimes, the Goa'uld go in ships and destroy the planets in question. Sometimes they simply leave them alone. Many planets remain for them to enslave. I believe, in this case, they were uncertain of the range of whatever killed those who went through the Gate. One world was no loss--to them." He sounded bitter.

"But...it was, to you?" Daniel ventured. He had watched Teal'c's expression darken as they moved about the park.

"The Jaffa who returned only to die...." Teal'c was silent a long moment.

Daniel opened his mouth to speak then closed it again.

After a pause, Teal'c said quietly, "He was my father."

"Your father?" Horrified, Daniel stared at him. He had lost both parents early and grown up in foster homes. "I'm sorry." He put out a hand and patted Teal'c's arm. "And we came to the very place...."

"It was many years ago," Teal'c said stiffly, withdrawing into Jaffa formality, but the pain remained in his voice.

Some losses never stopped hurting, even if a person learned to go about his daily routine without thinking about them. Daniel knew that from Sha're. Sometimes, in a crisis, he went days at a time without thinking of her. Yet memory was always cruelly sharp when something reminded him. It only needed a little thing to call her to mind since she was never far from his thoughts. He suspected Teal'c had put the long-ago memory out of his mind and learned to live with it. But having it thrust upon him like this, it was bound to hurt.

"He was still your father." Daniel gave the rigid arm a quick squeeze and let go. Momentarily distracted by the presence they had all come to feel, he whirled abruptly, but no one was there.

"What is it?" Teal'c asked, all business.

"It felt like someone was standing behind me, watching me."

"There is no one here," Teal'c insisted--too stubbornly.

"You feel it too, don't you?"

The Jaffa was silent a moment, his grip tightening on his staff weapon. "I feel a...presence, but it is strange. I do not like it."

"It is unnatural," Daniel replied. "But...but it's also very sad." He glanced around wildly, looking for any movement. The stirring tree branches that stirred were disturbed only by the gentle breeze that played through the park. Nothing else moved.

"Sad." Teal'c frowned. "I sense...anger. Great anger."

Daniel thought it over. "Teal'c, they evidently killed Jaffa here. Maybe they know you used to work for the Goa'uld. They would have no way of knowing you came over to our side."

"They? To whom do you refer, Daniel Jackson?"

He caught himself. "I...don't know. But I feel a...conscious presence. And I think you do, too."

"Ghosts?" Teal'c's eyebrows lifted skeptically. "I know of such entities; there are worlds where we have seen them. But I see nothing here."

Daniel tried to imagine Jack's reaction if he and Teal'c told him the planet was haunted. He couldn't imagine Colonel O'Neill accepting the possibility of ghosts. "Jack isn't going to like this," he said.

"Colonel O'Neill is not the type of man to accept such a story easily," the Jaffa agreed.

Daniel checked his watch. "Not much time left. I don't see how we can hope to find out what happened here, not without an opportunity to study and examine the planet. I don't see any signs of damage or destruction, do you?"

"Just neglect," the Jaffa returned.

"So, what would kill so quickly and leave no mark?" Daniel frowned. "Do you think it really was a plague? Could the natives of Garda have done it deliberately to fight off the Goa'uld? Or would the Jaffa have brought it?"

"It would kill them as quickly as the Jaffa," Teal'c returned, gesturing at the structure where the bodies of the five natives sat. "And what good would it do the Goa'uld to destroy this world in such a fashion? If they did create a plague, they did not seem to understand the danger. I do not think the blame was theirs."

"Yes, but--but maybe they managed to smuggle most of their population through the Stargate," Daniel said, his speech quickening as the theory developed. "They found another world to settle, one the Goa'uld hadn't visited, and they went, maybe a few at a time. Maybe the ones in the shelter back there had to stay, to trigger the plague or whatever it was. They may have volunteered to die to preserve the safety of their people." He didn't know if that were the answer or not, but it did seem to fit the little they knew already, especially since Teal'c's memories implied that the deaths had originated here.

"That is a reasonable theory," Teal'c agreed. "This society would be able to understand more of how the Stargate functions than those on many worlds. It might have taken them years, decades, even centuries to understand it. But they evidently had that time. Come." He turned his footsteps back toward the Stargate. "These theories are for the briefing when we return, not for here and now."

They joined Sam and Jack at the Stargate--they had found no ready answers either--and Daniel dialed home. The sense of presence surrounding them was closer now, as if whatever lurked, invisible, on Garda wanted to make certain they departed. Daniel couldn't help glancing around to see if he could spot them, but there was not so much as a flicker in the air, just the sense they were not alone. Even Jack felt it; Daniel could tell from the way he rubbed the base of his neck and the way the muscles bunched in his jaw. Jack was the kind of man who liked things clear cut, and there was nothing clear cut about the sensations they all were experiencing.

As the Stargate opened and the team stepped through into the wormhole, Daniel shivered. He could still feel the strange presence as if it rode home to Earth on his back.

"They're fine," Dr. Frasier told General Hammond three hours later in the briefing room. The SG-1 team had been met with a hastily-constructed isolation chamber in the Gate room. No one wanted to repeat the crisis caused when teams had encountered the Touched, and brought a plague to Earth. They had managed to stop that one, but now, at the first suggestion of danger, returning teams were quarantined until they could be examined thoroughly. "I've run every test I can dream up, and there is nothing in their systems that was not there before, nor is there anything missing that should be there. They show no evidence of distress, no elevated temperatures, and their vital signs are normal. Considering the speed with which the Jaffa were affected, it doesn't fit that the condition has simply not yet manifested with SG-1."

O'Neill frowned, causing Daniel to wonder if he still felt the prickles of unseen observation. He knew he still did. Was that the first sign of a plague undetectable to medical science? They had to consider that their technology might be inadequate, that the illness might be outside the limits of Earth medicine. The Tollans had shown them that their science did not have all the answers.

"General," Daniel ventured tentatively, "There is something else you should know."

Hammond's eyes pinned him. "Do you want to explain that remark, Dr. Jackson?"

"I'm not sure I can," he replied, eyeing the members of his team, who wore varying expressions. Teal'c was impassive, as always, Sam encouraging, but Jack's mouth traced a tight line. "It isn't something I can prove or document. When we were on Garda, we all felt like we were being watched. We saw no one, heard nothing. But the feeling was definite and quite strong. And here's the part that worries me. It hasn't gone away."

"He's right, it hasn't," Sam put in hastily before Jack could make a comment. "Even now I feel like I'm being watched by an unseen audience."

Dr. Frasier squirmed slightly. "I don't know if that could be a symptom of whatever killed the Jaffa on Garda, General. Their deaths seem to indicate they were cut down in mid-stride. If they had felt a sensation of being watched, they would have taken action instead of simply moving back toward the Gate. I'm right, aren't I, Teal'c?"

"You are correct. They would have pulled together into a unit. If a Goa'uld were with them, they would have gathered around him to protect him. There was no evidence of that."

"Then you're saying this sensation we feel isn't a result of a plague?" Dr. Frasier asked.

"You feel it too?" Daniel stared at her. The prickles on the back of his neck had been constant since he returned to Earth. He had to fight to keep from continually whirling to study the corners of the room.

"Everybody's jumping on this bandwagon?" O'Neill frowned, reluctant to accept the sensation. "What about you, General? Got a feeling somebody's looking over your shoulder?"

Hammond's disgruntled expression proved he experienced the unwelcome phenomenon, too. "So what you're saying is that we're all contaminated even if medical science can't find any evidence of it?"

"It is possible, Sir," Sam put in, her brow puckering slightly. "When the Tollans were here, we learned there were things far beyond our technology or understanding. But this sense of being observed hasn't worsened since we returned. I find it unpleasant, but I don't feel ill. The Jaffa died quickly. We're still alive."

"Even if it has not affected Dr. Frasier and myself?" The General's voice rose slightly. He preferred an enemy he could see and fight.

Daniel hesitated. He had a suggestion he knew most of the people in the briefing wouldn't like. "What if it isn't a contamination, General?"

"What else could it be, Daniel?" Jack demanded impatiently. "We picked it up on a world just crawling with dead Jaffa. There was no evidence of life there. The Serpent Guards were strewn around like dead cockroaches after the Orkin Man dropped in."

"What is an Orkin Man?" Teal'c asked O'Neill in an undertone.

"Tell you later."

"There was life," Samantha disagreed. "I saw insects, birds, and all kinds of plants. Whatever destroyed the Jaffa and those natives operated quickly, too quickly for them to band together to fight a common threat. I think the natives had a warning, even if the Jaffa didn't."

"Where do you get that?" Daniel asked her in surprise.

"Because that man and woman had time to embrace before it happened," she replied. "We saw that. They knew what was coming and couldn't avoid it and chose to be together."

"That's a value judgment," the Colonel disagreed, determined to prove her wrong. "They might have just been enjoying a little nookie."

"With three other men watching?" Daniel objected. "I don't think so." Something about their pose had suggested what? Desperation? Love? Or were those thoughts put into his head by the presence he felt? "No, Jack, I don't think so. I think they knew what was about to happen. Maybe they even initiated it."

"A controlled plague?" Carter demanded. "What are you saying?"

"I don't know. I mean I don't know what killed everyone on Garda. But I think someone here does know."

Everyone else looked expectantly at Teal'c, who stared back in astonishment. "I do not. I only know the planet was quarantined by the Goa'uld because no one returned from it and lived. The death...lingered."

"I didn't mean Teal'c," Daniel replied, taking a steadying breath before he put forth a theory only the Jaffa might accept, a theory that might make the others think he had lost his mind. "I believe we're experiencing the sensation of being watched because we are being watched. I think we brought something back with us from the planet, but it wasn't a plague. I think it was the--" he hesitated, then took the plunge. "--the ghosts of those five people whose skeletons we found near the Stargate."

"Oh, for crying out loud," Jack exploded. "Come on, Daniel, that's ridiculous. You can't mean that. Where's your logic?"

Sam's face scrunched up in concentration. "I'm not so sure, sir," she offered. "I don't have any experience with ghosts, but we've seen so many strange things since passing through the Stargate that I'm inclined to...consider the possibility."

"Come on, Captain," Jack objected, in full skeptic mode. "The humans we've met through the Stargate came from Earth originally. If we were dealing with alien cultures, like the Nox, that might be different."

"There are people on earth who believe in ghosts," put in Dr. Frasier tentatively as if she did not, quite, want to claim to be among their numbers.

"Yeah, lunatics who sell their stories to the National Register," Jack objected. He was a skeptic through and through. Maybe he was afraid to believe, afraid he'd see his son Charlie's ghost if he lowered his guard even one degree.

"But they're lurking here," Daniel persisted stubbornly. "We all feel it, even if you don't want to admit it. They may have been the ones to kill those Serpent Guards. We've got Teal'c here and even if he's on our side, they may not know that. They may believe we're allies of the Goa'uld. We have to do something."

"Ya think?" O'Neill glanced sharply over his shoulder, then tried to pretend he'd done anything but. "Look, if your little ghosties are really here, why can't we just tell them we're not too thrilled with the Goa'uld? Let them know we're on their side? Send them back through the Stargate?" He made the suggestion frivolously, but it was a fair question.

"I don't think they'd go," Sam put in quietly. "General, I know this sounds ludicrous, but the sensation of a presence I feel is very strong. I could see you reacting before it was mentioned so you weren't influenced by our discussion."

"I did, too," Dr. Frasier admitted. "I thought maybe I was simply uneasy over the possibility of a plague, but it's more than that. It is a distinct presence. I've never experienced anything quite like it before."

"We have to do something," Daniel insisted.

"If they won't go and we can't even see them or talk to them, what precisely do you suggest, Dr. Jackson?" General Hammond asked.

"Welllll..... I've got a friend who knows something about ghosts," Daniel admitted cautiously, suspecting his words wouldn't go down well with the military members of the team. "He's an expert in ancient languages and I met him when I was working on my doctorate in linguistics. He's one of the leading experts in Sumerian in the world."

"Oh, that ought to help," Jack muttered in disgust. "More scientists."

"You think the language we saw there had basis in Sumerian?" Sam asked, interested. "I don't read Sumerian, but I've seen a few samples of the writing. That 'billboard' we saw, or whatever it was, didn't look anything like them."

"Possibly, but that wasn't my thought," Daniel remarked, his eyes on Jack O'Neill, waiting for the inevitable explosion when the Colonel realized where he was heading. "I just wanted to explain how I met him. We've kept in touch by e-mail except for the time I was on Abydos. I couldn't tell him about this project, of course, just that I've been working with various ancient languages. He's been quite helpful."

"In other words," Dr. Frasier said quickly, "You think he might be able to get a handle on the language of the 'ghosts' from the samples you brought back and communicate with them? That's a good idea, Dr. Jackson."

"He might be able to get a grasp of their written language; he's one of the most brilliant men I've ever met," Daniel replied. "But that isn't why I wanted him. His name is Dr. Egon Spengler--"

"I've heard that name somewhere before," Sam mused. "Was he one of the linguists proposed to help with the project before you were brought in?"

"For crying out loud!" Jack exploded. "I know who this character is. I've seen him on TV. He's one of the Ghostbusters! Give me a break, Daniel. You want to call the Ghostbusters? I never heard of anything so crazy in my life."

"We can't do it, Dr. Jackson," the General objected immediately. "Even if they are genuine scientists, I doubt they have a Level 1 Security Clearance."

"But they do have some level of clearance," Daniel defended. "I know they've had involvement with the space program and must have gone through security checks then. It may not be Level 1, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be. Egon Spengler is an honorable, ethical man. I'm sure he wouldn't do anything to endanger the secrecy of the Stargate Project. Besides, you've got a lot of pull, General. I bet you could expedite matters for them."

"I'd have to get Presidential approval for something like this," Hammond said. "And if I called the President and said the project was haunted, and I wanted the Ghostbusters called in, I'd probably be out on my ear and on the way to a padded room." He grimaced. "I think you're pushing it, Dr. Jackson."

"No, I don't think so," Daniel said quickly. "Egon said they busted a ghost at the White House last year. I think that might make the President more inclined to listen."

"Besides," Sam put in, "whatever the natives of Garda used to stop the Jaffa protected their planet for decades. If it was done with a technology we could adapt, I think we might get approval. The brass is always trying to get us to locate effective military technology."

"You like this idea, Captain?" O'Neill looked like the room's main holdout. "Four guys running around with high tech weapons, zapping ghosts like it was a video game? I don't think so."

Daniel's eyes focused on the General. Hammond was frowning thoughtfully. Whether it was the sensation of being watched that had convinced him or whether the possibility of obtaining a weapon that might cut the Goa'uld down in mid-stride that appealed to him more, Daniel couldn't say. But when Hammond rose abruptly and said, "I'll consider the matter. Dismissed," no one in the room knew what his decision would be. Daniel sighed. He had done all he could.

"I swear, Daniel, sometimes I think your brain got addled one too many times during Gate transfer," Jack lambasted him the minute they left the room.

"You never listen when I have an idea," Daniel returned. "Would it be so terrible if I was right once in awhile?" Jack was impatient with his scientific explanations and usually cut them off after the first few moments. Daniel had learned to live with it, but there were times when it annoyed him. "The Ghostbusters are legitimate scientists," he insisted. "I've been to their headquarters. I've seen their proofs, fully documented. They can repeat the tests and duplicate results. Only an idiot doesn't accept proof when it's right before his eyes."

"Thanks a lot."

Daniel heaved an exasperated sigh. "I didn't mean you," he defended himself. "I checked it out pretty thoroughly. I wanted to find out if they really were on track. I believe they are. I don't say they'll come out here and zap the ghosts, though it's possible they might be able to see them."

"When we can't?" Samantha joined in the conversation. "Why would they be able to do that? It doesn't make any sense to me. I'm a scientist too, and I don't get the logic of that."

"Egon explained it to me," Daniel replied, glad to have a reasonable answer. "He said they have encountered so many ghosts in their line of work and been exposed to ectoplasmic residue so often that they can often see what is invisible to the layman. They also have no lingering doubts that ghosts are real."

"Yeah, and I bet they can be convincing about it, too." O'Neill grimaced. "Sounds like a lot of hype to me. You think Hammond's gonna buy it?"

"I believe the general did not like the sensation we have all experienced." That was Teal'c's observation. "I do not doubt the existence of specters, although I have seen none on Earth. I am interested in these Ghost-busters."

"I've seen them on TV," Sam mused. "They aren't like any scientists I've ever met."

"No, but I know they'll be able to help us," Daniel defended his friend. He glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see movement. He didn't.

"If they get authorization to show up here, I'll eat my hat," Jack muttered.

"How do you want your hat served?" Samantha teased Col. O'Neill the following afternoon. The ghostly sensations had not departed, and many members of the SGC had reported the feeling of being watched. Hammond had spent much of the previous afternoon engaged in telephone calls, some to the president, others to various sources he did not divulge, though one of them had probably been the New York Police Department and another to the mayor of New York. In the end, he had gotten his way, and the Ghostbusters were due to arrive at any moment. Their clearance had not been Level 1, but with a little help from the White House and a lot of very hasty background checks, it had been bumped up, and the Ghostbusters had apparently signed anti-disclosure documents. The Colonel had not been happy with the news, but he had begun to look stressed as a result of the uncomfortable sensations all of them had felt since SG-1 had returned home through the Stargate. He wouldn't object if the Ghostbusters could do what they claimed this time, even if he didn't want to admit it.

"Barbecued, along with half the personnel of this base," O'Neill grunted. "Do you people have any idea how crazy this is?"

"A part of me agrees with you," Carter admitted. "I always thought they were just scam artists myself. I didn't realize you knew one of them, Daniel. But I'm feeling those sensations of being watched all the more strongly. I'm not sure those spirits, if they are spirits, can understand us. What if they're learning our weaknesses? What if they can manipulate our equipment and mean to destroy us like they did the invaders on their planet? All they know is that we came through the Stargate and brought a Jaffa with us. I'm sorry, Teal'c, but they'd have no way of knowing you're on our side now."

"They could tell we aren't Goa'ulds," Daniel objected, but Sam's concern was what had made him suggest the Ghostbusters in the first place. If the spirits had come through the gate with them believing they were coming to a world allied with the Goa'uld, then they could be extremely hostile--and a threat to the entire planet. He was sure General Hammond had considered that possibility in making his decision.

"No, but they couldn't tell we weren't allies of the Goa'uld," Carter insisted. "Here they come now."

Daniel looked around wildly, half expecting to see ghosts advancing on them, but Carter had meant the arrival of the elevator they were waiting for.

It came to a stop and the doors opened to admit two armed marines who had been sent to the surface as escort. They were followed by four men dressed in their working uniforms, jumpsuits, a different color for each. They weren't wearing their proton packs--portable nuclear accelerators--on their backs but a third soldier had a cart that held them, probably for safety. The particle throwers with which they blasted ghosts were holstered on the packs, where the traps they used to capture the entities they encountered were also mounted. Egon Spengler, clad in a blue jumpsuit, was in the lead, clutching a small device slightly smaller than a shoebox, mounted on a handle with antennae at the other end in his right hand. The antennae were extended and a tiny light blinked at their tips.

"Egon, it's good to see you." Daniel stepped forward, holding out his hand.

The man with the weird blond hairstyle switched the device to his left hand and shook Daniel's hand energetically. "It's good to see you again, Daniel," he said. "Although you are the last man I expected to work for the military." Taking back his hand, he pushed at the red-rimmed glasses that had a tendency to slide down his nose.

"Hey, let's not object to government contracts," said the dark-haired man at Egon's side. Clad in a brown jumpsuit, he had a cocky strut, and a twinkle in his vivid green eyes, and Sam perked up slightly at the sight of him. Worse, he knew it and was delighted at her reaction.

"Hello, Peter," Daniel said with slight resignation. Dr. Venkman was the least scientific of the Ghostbusters, even though he was a very competent psychologist in addition to being the team leader on a bust. The Ghostbusters were all parapsychologists, though Winston, who had joined the team later only had a bachelor's degree in the field. The others had doctorates.

"Hi, Danny boy. Introduce me to your friends," Peter encouraged, looking pointedly at Sam.

"I'll introduce you all," Daniel replied. "This is Egon Spengler, team physicist." He nodded at the tall, blond physicist. "Peter Venkman, psychologist. Ray Stantz, engineer and occult expert." He smiled at the auburn-haired man in the sand-colored jumpsuit who was looking around with wide-eyed interest, his gaze fixed knowingly on Teal'c as if the sight of the serpent guard insignia on his forehead had told Ray he was an alien to Earth. "And Winston Zeddemore, team strategy expert."

Winston, a tall, well-built black man in a pale blue jumpsuit, stiffened to attention at the sight of Jack's and Sam's rank. He'd been in the military during the last part of the Vietnam war.

"Pfc Winston Zeddemore reporting for duty, sir." Winston snapped a salute. Jack and Sam returned it automatically. "Well, I was in the reserves for a few years," he said. "I'm a civilian now. This brings a lot of it back." He gestured to the armed escort.

"Who are your friends, Daniel?" Egon prodded.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill," Daniel introduced, wincing slightly at the way Jack folded his arms across his chest and favored them with a laconic greeting and a skeptical look. He was sure to say something disparaging at any minute.

"Samantha Carter, Captain and Doctor of Astrophysics." Peter grabbed her hand and squeezed it warmly before letting go.

"And this is Teal'c."

Ray stuck out a friendly hand to Teal'c.

"Wait, Raymond," Egon said hastily, not with alarm but with sheer scientific curiosity. "I'm detecting very odd readings from him."

"He's not a ghost, is he?" Peter asked, leaving Sam's side and corralling Ray with a wary hand on his shoulder as if he was used to restraining his eager colleague and keeping him out of trouble.

"No, but I'm detecting double life readings from him." The P.K.E. meter in his hand, the tool he used to detect ghosts, now aimed itself at Teal'c's stomach. "It's as if--"

"Don't tell me, he's pregnant," Peter teased irreverently, but his grip on Ray's arm didn't loosen for an instant.

"Of course not," Egon replied, disgust and amusement mingled on his face at the impudent remark. "But I suspect he has a symbiotic life form within him."

"Like a joined Trill. Then he's not from Earth," Ray exulted. "I knew it. This is so great." Eeling out of Peter's grip, he stuck out his hand to Teal'c a second time. "I'm glad to meet you," he said.

Startled, Teal'c returned the greeting. "The pleasure is mutual," he said, evidently having picked up the phrase from one of the television programs he watched regularly to learn about life on Earth.

"I'll say," agreed Peter, capturing Sam's hand again as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Do I call you 'captain' or 'doctor', or can I just call you Samantha? You can call me Peter." Even though he was laying it on thick, he watched Teal'c out of the corner of his eye as if he had to make sure the Jaffa was safe.

Both Daniel and Jack eyed Carter to see how she reacted to the blatancy of Venkman's pick up, and saw amusement in her eyes. "I've heard of you, Dr. Venkman. Peter. I know enough to be wary of you." She reclaimed her hand neatly.

Peter winked at her. "But not too wary, I hope. Did I ever tell you I like brainy women? Especially when they don't look brainy." Carter did a double-take, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Peter, you never get that particular line right," Egon chided. "How do you do?" His greeting was generalized. "You were right to call us in, Daniel. There are ghosts on this base."

"Under it, you mean," Peter objected. "How many levels down are we? The elevator didn't say."

"That's because you have no need to know," Jack said pointedly, but he, too, looked slightly amused. Skeptical, but amused. "You may have clearance to be here, but anywhere you go on the base except for your quarters will be with an armed escort."

"Oh, good," Peter replied. "I like taking armed guards with me everywhere I go."

"They have to, Pete," Winston explained. "Because they pushed our clearance through awfully fast. I have the feeling if we hadn't done such a good job for the president last year, we wouldn't even be here now." He turned to O'Neill. "Colonel, believe me when I say we won't do anything to compromise the security of this base or this project."

"Whatever it is," Peter muttered sotto voce.

"I think it's great," Ray put in eagerly. Daniel remembered how the youngest Ghostbuster faced the world and the threats of his job with total enthusiasm. That ebullience would probably drive Jack nuts in the first five minutes. The colonel wasn't fond of scientists at the best of times, though he'd come to accept Daniel and Carter not only as part of his team but as part of his family. His only family, now that his wife had divorced him; his son had died before Daniel had met him.

The occult specialist turned to Teal'c. "Do you really have a symbiont? Is it like Dax on Deep Space Nine?"

His questions might have been impolite, but his honest and genuine interest diffused any offense. Daniel remembered someone, possibly Sam, digging out several Trek episodes that dealt with the Trill and how the symbiont function worked and showing them to Teal'c, who had been somewhat disappointed to learn he was merely watching science fiction, and that the concept was not a genuine one on Earth.

"Not entirely," Teal'c replied. The Ghostbusters were here and did have clearance, but he rarely spoke of the Goa'uld he carried unless it was necessary for a mission. He had not enjoyed the early studies made on him by base personnel although he had understood their necessity. "I carry an infant Goa'uld larva. It preserves my health and is essential to my existence. I will show you, if you like."

"Wow," Ray exploded, beaming at the Jaffa. "That would be so great. I never met anyone from another planet before, even if we did see a ghost from outer space once."

Jack grimaced as if he realized to deny Teal'c's off-world origins would only convince the Ghostbusters of their reality. "Not now, Teal'c. I want to see if these Ghostbusters," and he accented the name with an edge of scorn, "can really do anything or if this was just another exercise in futility."

"A skeptic," Peter cried, although Daniel was sure he'd already realized that. Peter was quick, though he didn't usually let people know how quick until he was comfortable with them. "This will be fun, guys. I love proving skeptics wrong. I wish we coulda brought Slimer."

"Slimer?" Sam asked, eyeing him warily as if she were sure she was being conned. "Who--or what--is Slimer?"

Daniel chuckled. "I wish you could have, too. Slimer's a ghost; he's the Ghostbusters' mascot. He's called Slimer because that's what he does, slimes people."

"And you have seen this thing?" Jack demanded with heavy skepticism.

"I've seen it, touched it, and hope I never do again," Daniel replied.

"You never told me." Sam's eyes twinkled both at the unlikely story and the look of a man who believes he's being conned in Jack's eyes. "I wish I could have seen it."

"Come to New York when you get leave," Peter said promptly. "I'll be happy to show you Slimer, the city, an evening of dinner and dancing."

"I'll consider it," she replied, her eyes openly amused. "Now about our ghosts...."

"Yes, indeed," Egon agreed. "I have reconfigured the meter again--I altered it to take readings of all of you when we arrived at this level, which is how I detected Teal'c's symbiont. I've since readjusted it to measure for ectoplasmic readings, in other words, ghosts."

"I'll have your things taken to your quarters, but I think General Hammond would like to meet you before you...do whatever it is that you do," Jack cut in before Egon could expound on what he had discovered. "Come with me."

Disappointed at being cut off, Egon simply fiddled with the device he held and fell into step with the others. Daniel noticed that Ray walked beside Teal'c to engage him in conversation while Peter automatically moved to Carter's side. Thinking fast, Daniel joined Egon, leaving Winston, the vet, to walk with Jack. Winston was the least likely of the team to irritate the Colonel.

"We have copies of an intriguing new language I want to show you when this is resolved," Daniel said, remembering the shots he had taken of the sign on P3K 665. "A combination of symbolic and phonetic in a culture that was fairly advanced technologically, although not advanced to our level. I'd like you to see if you could translate it."

Egon's eyes lit up. "I would be very interested. I suspect I will not be allowed to ask you where you came up with such a language in a technological society, although such things are not completely uncommon here on Earth."

Daniel felt a rustle of unease. Meeting Teal'c, Egon was far too astute a scientist not to realize that the SGC had a way of interacting with other worlds that did not involve departures from Cape Canaveral. It was clear he knew, or believed he knew, that the language had not come from this planet. Of course Egon was utterly ethical and wouldn't dream of mentioning anything observed here to anyone besides the other three members of his team, who had also been cleared at the highest level and signed promises to reveal nothing of what they had seen. Jackson had a feeling the Ghostbusters would need to know something of the Stargate in order to deal with the ghosts. The idea of blasting and trapping spirits who had struggled to fend off the Goa'uld did not quite sit well with him. But he knew the Colonel would want them to learn the bare minimum to do their jobs.

"Chinese languages..." Daniel began hastily, only to fall silent as they reached General Hammond's office.

"Here we are," O'Neill said and ushered them all in. The guards stepped aside to wait outside the room, but the one wheeling their proton packs brought it inside with him before retreating. "The Ghostbusters, General," Jack said, lifting an eyebrow as if to share his skepticism. He introduced each man in turn.

Hammond bore the look of a man who had been briefed. Casting one doubtful glance at Egon's flip of hair, a wary one at the irreverent Venkman and a doubtful one at Ray's enthusiastic face, he seemed reassured at Winston's coming to attention in the presence of a general. "At ease, soldier," he said automatically.

"Former soldier, sir," Winston admitted, falling back into the military speech patterns he had once used. But he did assume the 'at ease' position.

Peter hadn't even tried to stand at attention. He simply grinned. "Hi, General. Thanks for sending for us. We love government contracts, don't we, guys? Egon says he's picked up ghosts here. You'd think they'd know better than to bug the military."

"Yes, you would," Hammond said, casting a rather reproachful glance at Daniel for putting him in such a position. "Sit down, gentlemen, and I'll explain why you are here."

"There are at least five class-three apparitions here," Egon said, taking a chair opposite the general and displaying his meter. "They are not in this room, but they are on this base, that way." He pointed in the general direction of the Gate room.

"Gentlemen, I realize your equipment is powerful and possibly destructive," Hammond began. "I have researched your 'busting' process. Let me warn you there is delicate equipment here that cannot withstand the force of your proton streams."

"We understand that, General," Egon replied. "We don't know very much yet, but Daniel explained when he talked to us yesterday that the ghosts may not be evil, and may, in fact, be on our side. Busting them may not be the solution unless the danger they present is too great for us to do anything else. Let me reassure you that our first thought is not always to bust a ghost. Sometimes, we can work with troublesome spirits to help them to disperse peacefully."

"How do you do that?" Carter demanded, an intrigued expression on her face. Daniel suspected she was remembering the sight of the two skeletons locked in a fond embrace. He knew that sign of caring had stopped him from believing the ghosts were evil, even if they might be a threat to the base. Other planetary governments and individuals had suspected SG-1 because the presence of a Jaffa had led them to believe the team worked for the Goa'uld, so why not these spirits?

"Usually we talk to them," offered Venkman. "Find out why they turned into ghosts. Something unfinished, a violent death, things like that, kinda keep ghosts hanging around instead of going to the great reward in the sky." He grinned. "If we can figure out what's holding them behind, we can sometimes work through it with them."

"Peter's a psychologist," Ray Stantz offered, smiling at his teammate. "He's good at things like that."

"I admit, an alternative to blasting would be my first choice," Hammond replied. "But it's possible the ghosts might believe we are allied with their enemies. We're not. In fact, we share a common enemy."

"Evil aliens," Peter said instructively to Ray.

Hammond's eyes narrowed. "Aliens, Dr. Venkman?" he asked in a voice that would have warned any of the SG-1 team to proceed cautiously or else not to proceed at all.

"Well, Teal'c is," Peter said, with a hasty gesture at the Jaffa. "Egon's meter could tell. We already figure he's one of the good aliens. We know what we see here is confidential and we could get locked up in the Black Hole of Calcutta if we gave it away. But if we're supposed to help these ghosts go away peacefully, we have to know something about them."

"Peter is correct, sir," Egon put in. "We don't know what you do here, and we were unable to gain any appropriate information prior to our arrival. Unless we have permission from our clients, we never speak of our work. A lot of them like the publicity and some of our jobs are done in the public eye, so the public know a great deal about us. But there are other jobs that no one will ever hear about because they are confidential. And we would never risk our country's security. But we might need further information to bust these ghosts."

"Possibly, Dr. Spengler," Hammond replied. "But let's try it without any information first. We operate on a need to know basis and we are not yet certain you do need to know. I can't even tell you that certain areas are off limits because we don't know where the ghosts will be, but certain factors of our work here do not need to be explained to you."

"Gosh, we won't tell anybody," Ray replied. "We even told Janine--that's our secretary--that we were just going on vacation. We're going to send postcards from Pike's Peak and things like that so no one will ever guess. We planned it all that way."

Daniel had to smile as he pictured Ray excitedly planning to deceive all their friends for the sake of the job's confidentiality. "I believe them, General," he said.

"That's good, Daniel," put in Jack, who stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded against his chest. "Can you say 'gullible?'"

"Can you say 'paranoia'?" Peter challenged him instantly. Carter struggled to bite back a smile.

"Enough," Hammond instructed. "Gentlemen, go out and try to 'bust' the ghosts without damaging any of our equipment. If you need further information to do it, let me know. I'll evaluate the situation. I'll order guards to accompany you."

"I'll handle that, sir," O'Neill volunteered.

"I'm coming too," Daniel decided. "I've never seen the Ghostbusters at work, and I'd like to. Besides, we may have a linguistic problem."

"The ghosts don't speak English?" Peter asked brightly. "This just gets better and better. Good thing Spengs speaks a bunch of languages."

"He will not speak this one," Teal'c put in. "However, it is possible that I will. I, too, will accompany you." He turned to the Ghostbusters. "I have seen you on television."

"Sam? You gonna join this party too?" Jack asked.

Carter cast a quick look at the general, who gave her a resigned nod. "I think so. I want to know how this comes out."

"Good," Hammond replied. "SG-1 will guard you. He rose to signal the end of the briefing. "Carefully, gentlemen. You could do damage that might cost the taxpayers billions."

"And you'd take it out of our allowance?" Peter said frivolously. "Gotcha. Really careful aim, guys. I don't think our budget could fix NORAD."

Peter Venkman knew that Winston hated an unsolved mystery and could figure out the endings of most detective novels before the last page. But this mystery bugged Peter enough to make him curious. If Teal'c was not human, or not the normal type of human, then the people on this underground base must have access to other worlds. Since Peter had never heard of rocket ships blasting off from the Colorado Springs area, he figured there was another way. A giant underground transporter sprang to mind. 'Beam me up, Scotty.' And from what he'd picked up so far, there were some nasty bad guys out there. The ghosts might think the SG-1 team--and what did 'SG' stand for anyway?--were on the other side even if Jackson and his buddies, including the unfriendly Colonel O'Neill, didn't think so. Was that because of Teal'c? Except for that gold tattoo thingy on his forehead, he looked human. Yet if Egon said he had a symbiont inside him then the odds were he wasn't. So there were aliens hanging around somewhere out there, and they had a way to get to Earth. Peter would bet good money that the weird language Jackson had to show Egon had come from another planet. Maybe these guys had even been out there exploring and brought the ghosts home with them. It was hard to believe, but Peter had seen so many unlikely possibilities since he and the guys had started up the business that little could faze him these days. Anybody who had been busting ghosts as long as he and the guys had seen it all.

Or thought they had. Egon was having a ball over his readings. "They're different," he explained to Ray, for once sounding as eager and excited as the younger man. "They're class-threes but there's a difference, one I can't quite make out. They are well within the range for normal class-threes, but the shading is different."

"What are class-threes, Dr. Spengler?" Samantha asked. She was just the kind of woman Peter liked, brainy and gorgeous at the same time. He'd always had a weakness for blondes, too. Okay, so he liked brunettes and redheads, too, but blondes....

Egon went into Official Lecture #27. "Class-threes are ghosts of living beings, people like us. We have a whole classification system including entities that were never human, up through demons and mega-specters."

O'Neill snorted under his breath. One eyebrow lifted in skeptical amusement, a man listening to a good story and not believing a word of it.

"I have seen such beings," Teal'c admitted. "On many worlds...." His voice trailed off as he realized he had said too much.

"Wow, ghosts on other planets!" exulted Ray. "This is great. I know you can't tell us about it, but it really is cool anyway." That was Ray; as much as he wanted to know, he wouldn't push further and get Teal'c in trouble.

"I think the ghosts we have right here are enough for us, Tex," Peter reminded him. "How many, Egon?"

"Five," Egon replied. "I am making out five distinct entities. We are moving toward them now."

Peter saw O'Neill and Carter exchange a dubious look. They didn't like where the P.K.E. meter was leading the Ghostbusters. But that was where the ghosts were, so that was where they had to go.

What Peter didn't expect was the room they entered through a door to one side. Ahead of them, at an angle, was a huge circle made of what looked like stone or metal, but an unfamiliar type. It had triangular little projections around it, markings on it in a language Peter didn't recognize, and a ramp leading up to it. There were armed soldiers in the room who tightened their grip on their guns when they saw the Ghostbusters, though Col. O'Neill waved the weapons down. To Peter's right and high above his head, a broad window revealed what must be a control room. Peter could see technicians manning banks of computers up there.

"So this is your big teleport device," he said with a gesture at the huge circle.

O'Neill looked at him sharply. "You have a good imagination, Dr. Venkman."

"What, no 'beam me up, Scotty.'?"

"Only on Star Trek," The colonel replied.

"The ghosts are here," Egon said, pointing toward the circle. "See?"

Peter didn't see anything at first, then he realized there was a faint disturbance in the air in front of the huge circle. If he squinted hard, he could make out five distinct quivers in the air.

"Hey, I see them! I see them!" He pointed in their direction.

"Wow, look at them," cried Ray. "They do look human."

Peter narrowed his eyes still further. He could see them a little better now. Four men and a woman, wearing unfamiliar clothing, strange, wrap around trousers tight at the ankles, with cords at the knees and baggy from the knees up, with short waist-length tunics over them. The woman's tunic was longer than the men's but not so long as to suggest a skirt. Her hair was braided down the back in one thick rope. The men had more braids, including a topnotch that fell backward, and short ones at their temples. Aside from that, they looked completely human with the flat cheekbones that suggested Native American origin and rather receding foreheads. Peter wondered if that meant they had evolved from a primitive species or if, like the ancient Mayans, they had created that look because they found it esthetically pleasing.

Ray took a step toward them, causing them to bunch together, studying him. Typical of Ray, he hadn't even drawn his weapon. Peter reached for his only to have a hand grasp his wrist in a steely grip.

"You can't fire in here," O'Neill told him. "And I hate to break it to you, but I don't see anything there except the Gate."

Peter filed away the term 'gate' to think of later. 'SG'. Something-gate, maybe. Space Gate? Star Gate? He'd deal with that when he had a minute to think. "We've been around ghosts so long we can usually see them even when no one else can," he announced smugly.

"That must make it easy for you to pad your bills," the colonel snapped.

Egon opened his mouth to defend the team's ethics, but before he could speak, the ghosts did. They spat something at Ray that sounded like no language Peter had ever heard before and held out their hands, palms-outward, in a gesture that might be universal to keep others at bay.

"Wait a minute, Raymond," Egon cautioned, fiddling with his meter. "Don't go any closer. They appear to be hostile. Interesting. They don't speak English."

"Did you hear anything?" Jack asked Teal'c whimsically.

"I did," Teal'c replied, winning stares from all his teammates. "I do not know their language, but I can recognize the tone. They do not like the Jaffa."

"I heard that word, 'Jaffa', too," said Egon, turning to regard Teal'c with interest. "Can you see them?"

"Evidently not as clearly as you. I see...a disturbance in the air, no more than that."

"I think I can see that, too," Daniel said, squinting. " There's a fuzzy pattern in front of the gate. I didn't hear anything, though."

"What is a Jaffa?" Winston asked. "And why shouldn't these ghosts like them?"

"I am a Jaffa," Teal'c replied.

"But, gosh, you haven't hurt them," Ray said. "If you're friends with Daniel, you must be one of the good guys, because he sure is."

"My people are...different," Teal'c said with some difficulty. "They may have hurt these people. They have no way of telling I would not. I represent the destruction of their world to them. It is no wonder they cannot trust anyone here."

"The destruction of a whole world?" Ray looked shocked and unhappy. "Gosh, that's awful. Is that why you left and came over to our side?"

"One of the reasons," Teal'c replied. "But my people--lack choice. I came away because I hope to find a way to free them from the--"

"Teal'c," O'Neill interrupted. "They don't need to know this."

"I am sorry, O'Neill. I think they must know some of it, to understand. They must not destroy or incarcerate these spirits. To do so would make humans no better than the Goa'uld or the Jaffa they employ. The Ghostbusters spoke of peaceful dispersion. I would...prefer that."

"So would we all," Egon replied. "But we cannot communicate with them. I recognize certain root elements in their language, but without time to decipher and learn it, I cannot do more than the most basics of communication."

Ray took one more step toward the ghosts. They shimmered uneasily in the air as if about to zip away through the nearest wall or through the 'gate'. Since Peter couldn't see anything through it but the back wall of the huge room, he didn't have a clue how that would help, but maybe walking through the circle made it activate. No, that was probably too easy.

"Wait," Ray said, putting all the sincerity he possessed into his speech. "This Jaffa is not evil." He pointed to Teal'c. "He is good. He wants to help you." He smiled at Teal'c.

"You'll only make them believe we're allied with the Goa'uld," Carter offered. "They can't understand that Teal'c has come over to our side. I'm not sure it ever happened before, and it's not always possible to imagine something so unique."

Peter wasn't sure who the Goa'uld were, but at the word, the ghosts reacted strongly, hatred filling their faces. "Careful, everybody," he said. "We have to find a way to tell them we're not buddies of these Go-gu-whatevers. Can't you just say the name and then shake your heads?"

"Some cultures consider shaking the head to mean 'yes', Peter," Egon said a second before Daniel could speak, possibly to offer the same information. He was an anthropologist, after all. He was probably the liaison to the people they met when they popped through the SpaceGate, onto another planet.

"Okay, Daniel," Peter called out. "How would you communicate with them?"

Daniel looked at him in faint surprise, then he stepped forward, trying to look in the same direction as Ray. He put his hand to his chest. "Daniel Jackson. Human." He grimaced as if to show great distaste. "Goa'uld." And made a similar pushing-away gesture to the one the ghosts had made, which was lucky, if he hadn't been able to see them clearly. He pointed toward the ghosts. "You?"

They stared at Daniel a long time. Peter had to admit Daniel's distaste for the Goa'uld really showed. Unless the man was the best actor since the dawn of time, he hated the bad guys with a fierce passion. Peter didn't know Daniel Jackson very well. Egon knew him far better but in a scholarly way. Peter had seen the hunger for knowledge light up Jackson's face when he and Egon were talking, seen a similar intensity light Egon's. But it wasn't a knowledge-quest that twisted Daniel's normally good-natured expression. It was a personal enmity that went very deep. Peter hoped the ghosts could see it.

The ghosts hesitated, then the tallest man came forward a few steps, the woman clutching his ectoplasmic hand. He rattled off a long sentence. The only words Peter got from it were 'Goa'uld', 'Jaffa', and 'Daniel Jackson'. Then the ghost patted his own chest, as Daniel had done. "Ska-tan-nay," he said.

"He says his name is Ska-tan-nay," Ray translated for those who couldn't see and hear the spirits. And he doesn't sound very friendly about those Gould guys."

Daniel's eyes narrowed behind his wire-rimmed glasses. "I can almost see them now," he said. "Let me try again." Moving a step closer, he did his little pantomime once more. "Goa'uld, no," repeating the distasteful gesture. "Jaffa, no." Another repeat. Then he gestured toward Teal'c. "Teal'c. Friend." And he beamed at the Jaffa.

"Jaffa--n-no!" Ska-tan-nay spat, picking up the English word.

"Other Jaffa, no," Daniel insisted, gesturing widely to encompass evil Jaffa in other places. He pointed to the huge circle. "Jaffa there--no! This Jaffa," and he beckoned to Teal'c to stand at his side. "Friend."

"Fr-end?" The word was doubtful.

Peter decided to plunge in. He edged in beside Ray and draped an arm around his shoulders. Patting himself on the chest, he said, "Peter." Touching Ray, he said, "Ray." Then he tightened his grip around Ray's shoulders. "Peter. Ray. Friends."

"Ah, Ka-ta-nak," the woman said as understanding dawned.

"Ka-ta-nak? Jaffa? NO!" objected Ska-tan-nay, the English word full of scorn.

"I can see them, and hear them," Daniel blurted out. He edged in beside Peter and Ray. Behind them, Carter gasped in astonishment as if the ghosts had suddenly become visible to all.

"Oh, now, this is too weird," O'Neill muttered. "Can you see that?" he asked one of the soldiers.

"Yes, sir," the man admitted doubtfully as if expecting to be reprimanded for it.

"Jaffa fr-end NO!" insisted another of the ghosts.

"Most Jaffa, no," Daniel tried with determination. "This Teal'c friend. Jaffa there," and he gestured at the Gate again. "Other Jaffa, friend, no."

"I don't think they're getting it, Daniel," Jack muttered uneasily.

"How can they?" Peter asked, edging away from Ray and sliding over in the direction of O'Neill. "If they think these Jaffa and Gould guys destroyed their world, they're not gonna like Teal'c just because he's on the side of the angels. Not unless we do a little more than sign language and this 'Me-Tarzan, you-Jane' pidgin stuff."

"Exactly," Carter agreed. "They see us with a Jaffa, and we obviously control a Gate. What else can they think but that we're trying to deceive them? They can't know we're the enemy of the Goa'uld, that Earth buried its Stargate for so many centuries to keep them away. We have to communicate. We can't just 'bust' them, Dr. Venkman. It would only convince them they were right."

"Besides, near as I can make out, they destroyed their own world to keep the Goa'uld out," Jack offered. He immediately looked unhappy that he'd said as much, but by then, the words were out.

"Destroyed it? How?" Egon asked, edging closer. "I don't recognize their language. I haven't heard enough of it to recognize any roots. At first I thought possibly Navajo. Or further back, the Anasazi, but I am unfamiliar with their language. But there may be Inuit elements in it, as well, or even ancient Mayan. Yet, if they are from another world, how can that be? It may be that there are certain universal similarities in languages, as so many different earth based ones have similar sounds for 'mama'."

"I don't think they're gonna wait while we offer linguistics classes here," O'Neill put in impatiently. His eyes never left the ghosts as if he considered them a grave threat. Peter had to agree with him on that one.

"Maybe they can pick up our language more quickly," Daniel offered. "When I was stranded on P3X 886 and Nem held me prisoner, he learned English as I spoke."

"Yeah, but he wasn't human, Daniel. These people are," Carter reminded him. Peter listened for all he was worth. Anything they said in their theorizing might help him and the guys deal with the ghosts. He cold see utter fascination on Ray's face and the alert lift of Egon's head.

"Some humans have linguistic gifts," Daniel insisted. "I've known one or two people who only have to hear a language once to be able to start speaking it."

"Some 'live' humans." Winston frowned. "Okay, since nobody here can do that, we have to find a way to communicate with them."

"Let me try," Daniel offered again. He moved up to them, pointing to the man and woman spirits who stood close to each other. Getting the male's attention, he pointed to the woman. "Wife? Mate?"

"I don't think he's gonna get that, Daniel," Jack objected.

Daniel pantomimed giving a hug. "Wife?"

The spirit hugged the female. "Wife?" he asked.

"Now he thinks 'wife' means 'hug'," Peter objected.

Daniel looked daunted for a moment, then he tried again. Patting his chest he said, "Daniel Jackson. Wife--" Pointing to the Gate, he let great sadness come into his face. "Wife--out there. Goa'uld."

Peter felt a thrill of horror pump through him. He hadn't known Jackson was married, but if these Goa'uld had captured his wife and taken her away, somewhere out there.... He could see the utter pain and devastation in the young man's face.

It was worse than that, though. Daniel repeated, "Goa'uld. Why can't I make you understand? They took Sha're. My wife. Don't you understand. She's a Goa'uld now. Even if I could find her and bring her back, she wouldn't be Sha're any more." The outburst drained him, and this teammates gathered around him, O'Neill dropping a reassuring hand on his shoulder, Carter hugging his arm, and Teal'c standing beside him as if to offer support.

Peter exchanged an appalled gaze with Egon, his stomach tightening in shock. "Did you know about that?" he mouthed.

Egon shook his head. "I had no idea, Peter. This is terrible."

Peter edged closer and looked at the five ghosts, who were regarding Daniel with the edges of understanding. "Goa'uld," he offered, probably wrecking the pronunciation. Why couldn't they have nice easy names? "Goa'uld, no friend to you." He pointed at Ska-tan-nay. "No Ka-tan-nak. Us," and he gestured around the room. "Goa'uld, no ka-tan-nak."

"Very good, Peter, I think they understand that. It is simply that they have likely been conditioned over many years to distrust the Jaffa. It is not that I distrust you, Mr. Teal'c," Egon added hastily. "Simply that they cannot understand your change of heart."

The ghosts drew together, talking hastily in their quick, unfamiliar language, then, without a word, they popped out of sight.

"Hey, where'd they go?" blurted one of the armed guards.

"Did we do it?" Winston asked. "Did they understand and go away?"

Egon shook his head. "No, they are still here, on this base. I think they simply regrouped to talk about what they had learned."

"Do they still distrust us?" Teal'c wanted to know.

"And can they do us any harm?" Jack asked, cutting to what he considered the bottom line. "Okay, so I could see them--see right through them. But can they do anything to damage the base? Manipulate controls? Anything like that?"

"I don't know if they would," Ray put in quickly. "They're so sad."

"They seemed more pissed off to me," O'Neill replied. "As long as they believe we're allied with the Goa'uld, what's to stop them wanting to destroy us like they did those Serpent Guards?"

Peter wasn't sure who the Serpent Guards were, and he had a good idea O'Neill wasn't about to tell him. But he did know that class-threes could manipulate physical objects. The only thing that might give the base a breathing space was the fact that the spirits probably did not understand the technology of this base any more than Peter did. Even if they were technologically advanced, they couldn't read English. If they were really from another world, and it looked like they were, they had to learn a lot before they could exact revenge on potential Goa'uld sympathizers. And from what Daniel had told them, maybe they were starting to suspect that, in spite of Teal'c, the people here weren't.

"So are the Goa'uld and the Jaffa allies, then?" he asked quickly, hoping for an automatic response before the Colonel started in with his 'need to know' rules.

"Allies, no," Teal'c spat. "The Goa'uld control the Jaffa." He touched his stomach. "I bear an infant Goa'uld larva. It grants me health and long life but it also ties me to them in a physical way. I have chosen to serve them no longer and would free my people. But most of them do not wish to be freed, nor could they be freed, should they wish it. They are the servants of the Goa'uld."

"So..." Peter hesitated. "So did they do that to Daniel's wife?" he asked softly.

Daniel heard him. He came over. "No, they took Sha're to make her into one of them, into a Goa'uld. Teal'c's larva simply lives and matures inside him. But a mature Goa'uld can take over a person's mind and will and submerge it until only the Goa'uld remains, though I must believe something of the host lingers."

"They find the human form useful," Samantha offered. "So they go to worlds through the Stargate and select likely 'specimens' and implant them."

"I think we're getting in a little deeper here than we want to, boys and girls," O'Neill cut in, making it sound like an order.

"We already knew you went to other worlds," Ray reassured him, looking distressed at Daniel's pain and impressed by Teal'c's attitude. "And even if we didn't know that was called the Stargate, we figured out it was how you got there. Remember, we're sworn to secrecy. And this is the kind of thing we have to know to get those ghosts to go away peacefully. Did they really destroy their own world?"

"No, they only made it uninhabitable," Carter explained. "Colonel, the Ghostbusters have to know what's at stake here. It's not as if we were going to take them through the Gate."

Ray's eyes lit up hopefully. He wanted to go through badly, to walk on other worlds. Peter could see intrigue on Winston's face, too, and that driving quest for knowledge that fueled Egon springing to birth. As for himself, he wasn't sure he wanted to go out there. It was hard enough protecting his buddies here on Earth where he knew the dangers. There might be a real kick in it, though. After all, he'd been in outer space and the Netherworld, and he'd traveled in time on a couple of occasions. But he'd never thought he might get to another planet.

"No trips through the Gate," O'Neill insisted.

"Of course," Egon agreed. "It seems we have two choices. One is simply to bust them in a safer location where the Stargate will not be damaged. The other is to convince them that you share a common enemy and that there is hope where one Jaffa could rebel against the Goa'uld, others might. I would like to study their written language to see if I can make sense of it. Communication becomes the main problem of our second option."

"I can work with you on that," Daniel offered hastily as if he were afraid one of the Ghostbusters would ask him about his wife. "Come with me, Egon, and I'll show you what I have so far. I've attempted translation but I've had little time to work on it."

They walked toward the door together.

When they had gone, Ray turned to Carter. "Gosh, that's awful about Daniel's wife. I didn't know he was married, but that must really be awful. To know she's out there somewhere, alive, but not Sha're any more...." He sounded horrified at the very thought. Peter had to admit he didn't like it either. What was to stop the Goa'uld from popping in through the Stargate and grabbing one of his buddies? Peter couldn't think of a more awful fate than to lose someone he loved in such a way. The other Ghostbusters were his family, as close as brothers, and to lose one of them like that or to lose his dad would be an unending nightmare. But Daniel had lost a wife.... Peter's respect for Daniel Jackson and sympathy for him increased.

"They can't get through to us, can they?" Winston demanded, eyeing the Stargate dubiously.

"No," O'Neill answered immediately.

"If they try, we close the iris," Carter replied. "Colonel, they have to know a little. They do have Level 1 clearance."

"I haven't seen them do anything useful yet," O'Neill replied.

"Did we have any communication with the ghosts before they came?" she challenged him. "Could we even see them? At least we started a dialog."

"They let us see them," O'Neill argued.

"After they realized the Ghostbusters already could see them." Teal'c frowned. "My presence is endangering your base."

"Only because they don't understand," Jack replied hastily. "Once we can make them understand, there will be no danger."

"And if anybody can do that, it's Egon and Daniel," Peter offered. "Egon brags that he can read Sumerian underwater, in his sleep, with the lights off. I've heard him say how good Daniel is with ancient languages. There's some character named Beckett he talks about too, but he's away on some secret project." He looked around hastily. "He isn't here, is he?"

"Beckett?" Sam frowned. "Dr. Sam Beckett? I think there was talk of recruiting him when we were trying to decipher--information. But he was involved in another project and not available. But Daniel figured out what we needed to know right away."

"I wish we could help those ghosts," Ray said wistfully, pulling the discussion back to the subject at hand. "How did they make their world uninhabitable?"

"We think it was some kind of plague," Carter replied. "It's no longer effective. It didn't endanger us, but for years anyone who went there through the Stargate did not return."

"You mean they massacred all their own people just to stop the Goa'uld?" Winston's eyes widened. "That's really a case of overkill, isn't it?"

O'Neill looked around the room at the soldiers who stood guard there. "Let's go to the briefing room," he suggested. "I don't like any of this, but I do think there is more going on here than we can know. I still don't like the idea of you Ghostbusters being here, but maybe we're too close to it. I'm going to get General Hammond and we'll see what we can find out before those ghosts do damage we can't fix."

"I don't think it was a plague they unleashed on their world," Ray said thoughtfully as the two teams and General Hammond gathered in the briefing room an hour later. Daniel and Egon had their heads bent over print-outs of the ghosts' language.

"You don't? How do you know? You weren't there," O'Neill argued. He didn't like any of this. The Ghostbusters knew too much, and he found Ray's enthusiasm irritating. Even the irreverent Venkman was a scientist, and only Zeddemore, the former soldier, made any sense to him. But he had to admit they were smarter than he'd expected them to be. Bracing himself to listen to far more than he wanted to hear, he nodded for Stantz to continue.

"Well, first of all, I don't think they killed everybody on their world just to eradicate the Jaffa," Ray persisted. "I've been thinking about it. If the Stargate can go to the ghosts' planet and wherever you met Teal'c and wherever the Goa'uld go to capture people to turn into more Goa'ulds, then I bet you can go all over the galaxy if you know how to set your Stargate to get there. It's not a teleport, but I bet it's something like a stable wormhole that you can control. I'm not a physicist but I do have a doctorate in engineering, and I've worked with a physicist for fifteen years. You said the ghosts' world was technological. Maybe they could doctor up an Ebola thingy to wipe out the Goa'uld and Jaffa when they came through the gate, but I think there are easier ways. And I think before they did it, they got most of their race off the planet--through the Stargate. I think the five ghosts were the ones who stayed behind to trigger whatever happened."

"Ya think?" Jack asked. He and his team had got that far on their own. That Ray could have come up with that with only the few hints he'd picked up about the Stargate said a lot for his smarts, but then he was a scientist. His brain functioned differently from normal people's.

"I think it might have been something like a neutron bomb," Ray offered, causing General Hammond to sit up straight and start paying closer attention. "Probably not precisely what we think of when we think of a neutron bomb but something that wouldn't damage the world itself, only the people. Maybe it was specific to sapient life forms, because if they ever hoped one day it would be safe to return to their own planet, they wouldn't want to come back to a scorched earth with everything destroyed. But I bet they'd want it to kill long enough to discourage the Goa'uld from bothering them any more."

"General, I think what he's saying makes sense," Carter offered. "We'd theorized the rest of their race may have gotten away. But these five didn't stay behind to bury the Gate. They died, too. I think Ray's right, that one day their people hope to return to their homeworld. I'm not sure how long they planned for, but if the device or bomb or plague or whatever it is has ceased to be effective and the Goa'uld have shown no signs of visiting the world, it may be near the time for the natives to return."

"And then what happens?" Daniel said, glancing up from his scribbled notes. "Just when they might think it was safe, someone comes through the Stargate. Not just travelers, which could happen, but travelers with a Jaffa. The ghosts couldn't hope to guess Teal'c was on our side now. They only knew it meant their people couldn't come home. Of course they had to come back through the Gate with us. They had to find out who we were and what our intentions were. We might have meant the ruin of their plan."

"This is all just guessing, you know that, don't you, guys?" O'Neill put in. Who was to say the people of P3K 665 thought the way Earth humans did? And who was to say they believed both teams' attempts to explain that SGC meant no harm to the people of Garda?

"In other words, we threaten them, whether we want to or not?" Hammond did not look happy. "If we can find our way to their planet, the Goa'uld can try again, too."

"But all they have to do is bring their people home and bury the gate," Sam insisted. "We're not a threat to them and never would be. We'd leave them alone."

"The problem is," Peter Venkman said, "they don't know that."

The base's raucous alarm sounded then, cutting through the room like a knife through butter. "Unauthorized gate access," a voice cautioned over the speaker. "Unable to shut it down."

"Come on!" O'Neill leaped to his feet and set off for the embarkation room at a dead run, followed by his own team, the Ghostbusters and General Hammond.

When they reached their destination, the Gate was already activated. Jack heard the Ghostbusters exclaim at the sight of the energy barrier that rippled like water. Spengler whipped out his ever-present meter and leveled it at the Gate, his eyes widening with awe behind his red-rimmed glasses. "Astonishing," he breathed. "The level of power present under complete control--this requires an incredible level of technology far beyond the trans-dimensional portals we have constructed. Far beyond anything I believed this world capable of creating."

"Look out, Egon, there are the ghosts!" Peter hollered, pointing with one hand and grabbing for his proton rifle with the other. Jack lunged at him and forced the weapon down. "You can't fire at the Gate," he warned.

"You don't dare, Peter," Egon added to O'Neill's warning. "The repercussions would be unthinkable."

"But they're going through it, Egon," Peter cried, pointing.

O'Neill squinted at the gate. He could barely make out the near-transparent figures in front of the glowing, waterlike surface. As he watched, unable to stop them, conscious of technicians working frantically in the control room overhead and the soldiers leveling their weapons that could not harm ghosts, the five spirits drifted through and vanished without a trace. After a moment, the portal dissolved, leaving the Gate empty as before.

"Wow!" cried Ray. "That's incredible. I never saw anything like that in my entire life. It was so great!"

"It wasn't great, homeboy," Winston told him, shaking his head. "They got away."

"Yeah, and they know where we are," Peter said. "Remember, they don't like us. They think we're the bad guys."

"Request permission to go after them," O'Neill volunteered. "We can stop them before they come back."

Ray's eyes lit up at the very thought of a trip through the Gate, but the General intervened before Stanz could express his delight. "No, I'm not authorizing anyone to go through the Gate at this time. They may greet whoever comes through with a lethal dose of whatever killed those Jaffa, and I'm not prepared to take the risk of someone stumbling back and contaminating the earth."

"But we weren't contaminated before, sir," Carter reminded him. "We'd have the Ghostbusters with us, and they could more easily stop the spirits without the risking the Gate itself."

"I'll take that under advisement," Hammond said, his face thoughtful. "But I'm not prepared to approve such a step without a lot more consideration."

"They could pop back any minute," Peter put in carefully. "You'll need to have this place guarded--"

"I think that's already covered, Pete," Winston pointed out, gesturing at the armed guards around the room. "They've got a warning system that lets them know when the Gate is coming on. We'll just have to be ready if that should happen."

"Until I've decided whether to authorize a follow-up visit to P3K 665, no one goes through the gate," Hammond decided. "I want the iris activated and kept up round the clock. If Dr. Stantz is right about the neutron bomb theory, or even if the plague theory is right, what's to stop them coming back to destroy this particular Stargate or from sending us a nasty surprise?"

"I think we blew it, guys," Peter said ruefully to his team. "Because if you couldn't stop them from going, I'm not sure you could stop them from coming back."

"You mean with their neutron bomb?" Carter demanded. "Because they still believe we're allies of the Goa'uld?"

"Get that iris up and keep it up," Hammond barked. "If they try to come through again, we have to stop them." He left the embarkation room and a few moments later O'Neill saw him up in the control room talking hastily with the techs. The iris closed.

"He'll seal off the base completely," the Colonel told the others. "Even if they do find a way to get past the iris and return with a nasty little present, we should be able to protect the rest of the planet."

"Gosh, I hope so," Ray said, alarm in his eyes. "If we could convince them we're the good guys, maybe we could help them bring their people home. It would be so neat."

"My presence here has endangered the Earth," Teal'c said. His face was expressionless, but Jack, who knew him well, could see the depth of pain in his eyes.

"No," Peter said hastily before any of the other members of SG-1 could open their mouths. "Their own paranoia is the threat, not your presence."

"If I had not been here, this world would not now be in jeopardy," Teal'c said unanswerably.

"Hey, come on, Teal'c," O'Neill consoled him. "You saved our lives, not just on Chulak but many times. We'll figure out a way to stop them. Maybe they can open the Gate but they can't get through the iris. Not even the Goa'uld can do that. We'll be barricaded for awhile, but that's the worst thing that will happen. And we've been through that before." He offered his friend a reassuring grin, but Teal'c's ethics would not permit him to accept easy absolution.

"Maybe they'll have time to think and to understand what I tried to tell them," Daniel plunged in. "If they realize we don't like the Goa'uld any more than they do...."

"They'll have time to think. Maybe they're just going back to their planet. Maybe they'll seal their own gate and block us out," Sam offered. She patted Teal'c sympathetically on the shoulder. "No matter what they try, it isn't your fault. We don't blame you."

"The people of Earth may blame me--as they die," Teal'c replied and turned away.

When Daniel opened his mouth to offer understanding, Jack shook his head. He fell into step with the Jaffa and followed him out of the room.

In the silence that followed, Egon frowned. "We'd better return to the translations," he said. "Daniel...."

"Of course." He moved with Egon to the door.

"I'm going to stay right here," Ray volunteered. "I got some great readings of the gate when it was open. I'm going to see if there's a way to configure my thrower so it can stop the ghosts without damaging the gate. Winston, you can help me."

"You bet I will, homeboy," the former soldier agreed.

"That leaves us, Samantha," Peter told her. "I think we need to get together right away."

She gave him a dubious look. "And why is that?"

"Because we have to figure out a way to get through to those ghosts if they come back armed for bear. And we have to figure out how to do it without knowing their language."

"Funny how things turn out, isn't it?"

It was four hours later. The ghosts of Garda had not returned; the iris was still up, only to be lowered if SG-3 came back from a planned reconnaissance early. Everyone had worked very hard since the spirits' disappearance through the gate, and now O'Neill had suggested a break. They all needed to relax and unwind, even if only for half an hour. The language was proving difficult. Egon believed he might be able to read it--after three months or more of study, and Daniel agreed with him. The pictographic parts were easier to grasp but the phonetic parts didn't help at all. Worse, with only one name and one word in the language as an example, they didn't have a clue how to pronounce it.

Peter found himself sitting across from Daniel Jackson at a table in the mess hall. He could spot the others of their teams here and there amid other base personnel, Egon and Ray bent over Ray's proton pack, brainstorming on possible ways to fire at the ghosts and stop them without damaging the Stargate itself. Anything Ray could try that would protect the gate didn't seem likely to stop the ghosts, should they return with an explosive present for Earth.

The base itself was sealed up tight. Peter understood there had been some evacuation, personnel who would know what to monitor should the worst case scenario occur and endanger the planet. He thought longingly of home, safe at the firehall in New York, but he knew it might not be safe. There was no guarantee the base's security would prevent the plague or neutron bomb or whatever it was from breaking out of the base and killing every man, woman, and child on Earth.

Across the room he could see Teal'c sitting between Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter. They were offering him unqualified support, but Peter had noticed a few members of the base personnel casting unfriendly looks in his direction as if they halfway blamed the Jaffa for the fate that might be about to fall upon them.

Peter had looked around the room before sitting down with his tray of food, spotting Daniel sitting off by himself, poring over pages of notes. Migrating that way himself, Peter had dropped into a seat opposite him. He got a quick look from the anthropologist, Jackson pushing his glasses up on his nose in much the way Egon did, before he returned to his notes.

Peter watched him a few minutes, then he applied himself to his food. A few conversational gambits were met with abstracted murmurs. He was a lot like Egon in that way. When the physicist was caught up in a project, he forgot to put up an umbrella in a rainstorm, to take out the garbage, or even to look both ways when crossing the street. Glancing over, Peter bestowed a fond smile upon his oldest friend, who was equally occupied, then he made his comment about the way things turned out.

That caused Daniel to look up and blink at him. "Wh-what?"

"I was just thinking how it all turns out. My dad raised me to be a con man, to follow in his footsteps, hoping I'd run scams with him."

"Your father was a con man?" Daniel blurted in surprise as if he wondered how Peter had been granted clearance to the base.

"Sold the Brooklyn Bridge door to door," replied Peter with a certain pride. When his father wasn't driving him nuts, he loved the old crook. "I surprised him, surprised me too. Went to college. Got two doctorates. I was gonna open a private practice on the Upper East Side, rake in the bread, live the high life, just like my dad always wanted to, only legit."

"How did you get from that to being a Ghostbuster?" Daniel asked, interested in spite of himself. He must have needed a distraction as badly as Peter did.

"I met Egon," Peter said. "For the first time in my whole life I found somebody I could actually trust. Well, except my mom, but kids always trust their moms."

Daniel's eyes held a moment of wistfulness. "I grew up in foster homes."

"Like Ray," Peter said. "After his folks died, he stayed with relatives part of the time and in foster homes the rest. Turned out great. Anyway, I met Egon and then Ray, and somehow we got around to parapsychology, and then we opened the business. We've had a damn good run of it, too. Dragged Winston in, and those three guys are the brothers I never had. Family. If we have to go down, at least we'll go down together. I never thought we'd end up in a place like this, waiting for aliens from another planet to come through a gate and blow us all to kingdom come."

"I never thought I'd go off this world in the first place," Daniel said, looking a little startled to be sharing confidences with a man he'd barely met before. "But I wound up going through the Gate the first time--well, we thought it was the first time--to Abydos. That's where I met Sha're."

"Your wife is from another world?" Peter asked, startled. He hadn't heard the name before that it hadn't dawned on him she might be an alien. He had halfway assumed she was a fellow scientist who had gone through the Gate with him, not someone he'd met out there.

"She's human; the people of Abydos came from Earth originally. But they'd lived there for centuries, millennia, servants of Ra."

"Ra? Isn't he some Egyptian god?" Peter demanded skeptically. At least he'd gotten Daniel talking.

"He was a Goa'uld. They often assumed the identities of the gods, or served in that function on various planets. They weren't all mythical, Peter. They were simply advanced beings from another world who were more powerful than primitive humans. When they went away, when the ancient Egyptians buried the Stargate, the concept of the ancient gods gradually reverted to the form of legend. People forgot, or never knew, that once the Goa'uld were here and tried to dominate us. We beat them. We did it in a different way than the Garda did, but we got rid of them. Before that happened, though, Sha're's people were taken to Abydos and enslaved. Sha're and I fell in love and when Jack brought his team back through the Stargate, I stayed on Abydos, with her."

"And now you're here," Peter said. "What happened? The Goa'uld realized our Stargate wasn't buried any more?" Now that was an ugly thought.

"Exactly. They came through, and since we didn't know about any worlds but Abydos, Jack and a team came through to find out what had been happening there. While they were there, the Goa'uld came through from another world--and they took Sha're and Skaara with them. Skaara is Sha're's brother, just a kid really. Jack was fond of him."

Peter cast a speculative glance over at O'Neill. "That must have been rough."

"It was. Anyway, even though we tried to rescue them, they wound up implanted with Goa'uld and the last time I saw Sha're, she didn't even recognize me. I saw them take her away. She's out there somewhere." He heaved a shaken sigh and gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. "I joined the SG-1 team because it was the only chance I had to rescue her. And now--I might never see her again."

"Hey, we don't know the Garda will come back here with a bomb," Peter said. "Remember, they're not physical. Maybe they can't even lift it."

"They manipulated the Stargate," Daniel said unarguably. "Do you think there's...any chance they won't come back?"

Peter hesitated, then he shook his head. "No, I think they're coming back," he said. "But remember, we don't know they had any more of their little bombs or plagues or whatever it was to spare." He shrugged. "I wouldn't bet money on that, though."

"No." Daniel pulled himself together. "If this is the way it ends," he said, pushing aside his tray and rising to his feet, "I think I should be over there, with the rest of my team." He trailed across the room toward the other three members of SG-1 and they looked up to welcome him, Sam patting the chair beside her, Teal'c nodding at him, and Jack giving him a welcoming clap on the shoulder as he sat down.

Peter grinned sadly. "Best idea I've heard all day," he said and went over to drop into the chair next to Egon. The physicist looked over at him and nodded as if he understood. From across the room, Winston picked up his tray and drifted over to join them.

"Come on, Egon," Peter said hastily, seeing the unwelcome knowledge at the back of Spengler's blue eyes. "How many times have we saved the world already? This is just the next time on the list, is all."

"Yeah, and this time we don't have to face it alone," agreed Ray, nodding over at the other four. "They're a great team, aren't they?"

Winston nodded. "Yeah. You work together with somebody, you face death with them, you get to be family. Even if Teal'c didn't come from Earth, that doesn't matter. A brother is a brother, wherever he comes from."

"Amen," Egon said quietly before he bent his head over his translations again.

Peter reached out like O'Neill had done to Jackson and patted the physicist on the shoulder. He couldn't help wondering, as they were all wondering, how much time they had left.

The alarm rang through the mess hall. "Off-world gate activation. Security teams to the Embarkation Room!"

"Come on." Jack leaped to his feet. Across the room, the four Ghostbusters bounded up, sliding into their proton packs, prepared to face what might be their greatest threat. For the first time, O'Neill eyed them with respect. They had to know they might be going to their deaths, but like a soldier defending his country, not one of them hesitated or flinched.

"It's not SG-3, is it?" Jack demanded when they got to the gate room. Hammond's voice answered him from the speaker in the control room. "No. There's no recognition code. This has got to be it, the ghosts from Garda."

"Then we'd better pray the iris holds," Sam said, falling into place beside O'Neill.

"It's held up against the Goa'uld," Daniel said to the Ghostbusters. "We'll have to hope it will against humans whose culture was not quite as advanced as ours."

The inner circle of the Gate spun around, the chevrons locking into place methodically. Jack watched the glow as each of the chevro