Her breath dragged into her chest with a rasping gasp. The translucent pod door opened in front of her and she staggered out into the corridor. Apart from the fact she was freezing cold, it seemed only moments since she had stepped in. Around her people were stumbling out of their own pods and she watched Doctor Rush walk unsteadily past her. Matt lurched over to her.

"Where's Eli?" she asked, turning towards the formerly broken stasis pod.

The machine did not look as if it was in a good condition. The casing had been broken open, and parts were littered around it on the floor. There was a message written on the glass, in front of Eli's frozen face. It appeared to be written in lipstick.

"HEY U GUYS, WATCH THE KINO B4 U TOUCH THIS POD, LOVE ELI."

The text was slightly wobbly as if it had been written back to front, Matt rubbed his finger over the H.

"It's on the inside." He said. "I thought these things turned on automatically when you closed them."

"So did I Lieutenant Scott, so did I" said Rush from the console at the other end of the bank of Pods.

The first part of the Kino film was short.

"Hey guys, if you're watching this then you're alive, which is like, uh, really cool."

Eli grinned at them from the small screen.

"It's been a couple of weeks and well," he paused to scrub at his hair, "I've only got so far with the fixing of the pod."

Eli sat down on a chair and the Kino followed him.

"I've worked out a way of getting it on, which is cool, but it's a total workaround, guys. These things have a set system for reviving people and the control systems on the pod are still completely busted." He took a sip from a cup of something. "So I guess what I'm saying is I can turn it on, but there's currently no way of waking me up again."

He took a deep breath.

"I'm going in, I mean, if I stay out here either I'm dead or we all are. Look, I'm trusting you all…oh who am I kidding, if you're seeing this I'm in the pod, Doctor Rush, get me the hell out of here!"

Eli's face grinned at them and the video cut off to be replaced with a string of ancient text.

"It's a data location in Destiny's memory." Rush told them.

The screen flicked again and Eli reappeared.

"Okay, in case I die, I've got a few messages for…"

Young reached out and turned off the video.

They sat in the mess hall. Chloe and Greer had prepared some of the preserved foods into something approaching a meal whilst the others checked the ship then came back to report. Last to arrive were Young and Camille.

"Anything I should know?" Asked Young.

"We've got enough rations to last the people awake for a few weeks without hitting the last of the MREs or the dried bulk rations, sir," said Greer. "Mainly dried vegetables from the hydroponics, and the powdered roots, but also the dried fish and meat still looks good. It's been pretty much frozen as well as dried." He gestured at the stew on their plates. "And tastes okay boiled." He grinned.

Young nodded. "Rush? The ship?"

Rush looked up from his plate, swallowing a mouthful.

"Destiny appears fine. She woke us up immediately after refuelling in the star we are orbiting." He said. "We're currently in orbit around a planet which is apparently suitable for our needs. She appears to be waiting for us to stock up."

"Waiting for us?" asked Camille, paused with a fork half way to her mouth.

"Yes." Rush shrugged. "Destiny has an AI and the ability to learn, so I'm guessing she is letting us refuel as well. In addition to this planet there are two more gates within range, both of which Destiny has shown as safe."

"Sounds like she's trying to get us up and running as soon as possible." Matt offered.

Rush shrugged. "That was my take on the situation Lieutenant. Although I can override the countdown, it automatically set itself to four days, longer than we've ever had before."

"Our next move then is to wake up enough of the crew for an effective foraging party based on the rations we still have available to us. Lieutentant Scott I'll leave you to select the military personnel. Rush and Camille if you would select the appropriate scientists and other civilian staff. Ten military, ten civilians and we'll see how the foraging goes."

There was a break in the conversation as everyone finished the rest of their meal.

"Did you contact home?" Asked Chloe, finally.

"Camille and I went back and spoke to General O'Neill." Said Young. "They're very pleased to hear from us finally. We've been out 3 years and fourteen days. General O'Neill has arranged for all our families to be told the good news. There's a bunch of news from Earth, we've got a new president, but I'll let Camille get everyone up to speed on that and start arranging shore leave as soon as possible." He tossed back the last of his mug of tea and stood. "Right people, we have work to do."

With the lack of Eli or any quantity of scientists, Rush himself was piloting the Kino through the gates. The kino floated smoothly through the event horizon and instantly began to transmit footage.

The landscape was bright and sunny, and very very green.

"Jungle." Said Rush to Young who was looking over his shoulder. "We've got a good chance of finding fruit and other edibles."

They watched as Rush piloted the kino in a brief tour round the area of the gate.

"I can't see anything that looks like it's going to eat the foraging party." He said.

"Fine." Said Young. He turned to the waiting party. "Go through. Bring back as much as possible. You have six hours. We've got at least three more days here. Concentrate on getting as many samples as possible for testing. If you can find a good water source, note it."

With nods and salutes the party left through the gate. Rush turned the kino on the planet to remote scan to monitor the area of the gate and closed the wormhole.

"Next gate." Muttered Rush hitting the buttons on the dialling panel.

With a whoosh the wormhole opened. Rush sent the second kino through.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Young, staring at the screen.

"It's a room." Rush said. He grabbed his radio one handed. "Mr Brody, are you on the bridge?"

There was a crackle. "Yes."

"I need you to check the sensor readings Destiny took of the second planet. The one with less seas."

There was a pause. "What do you want to know Doctor?"

"Is there anything at all that could indicate people or sentient beings on that planet?"

Another pause.

"No, nothing."

"Thank you Mr Brody, Rush out."

Rush set the Kino on roam and sent another through to examine the room in more detail. The walls were bare and appeared to be made, or at least covered with of some sort of pale coloured cement or plaster. There were a few piles of debris on the floor, although whatever it was, was very deteriorated, and three open doorways leading to somewhere else. The doorways in the side walls were rectangular, but the proportions were a little off for what would have been expected from human or ancient architecture. They were proportionately taller so they appeared narrower, probably eight feet high, but only three feet wide.

Opposite the gate in the centre of the wall was a larger doorway with an arched top, mimicking the shape and size of the gate. There was another room on the other side at least as large as the Gate Room they were currently examining. Rush and Young could see the dialling device in the corner near to the large arched door.

"Big enough to get a small fighter through, threading the needle." Young noted.

Rush nodded. He piloted the kino through the archway and into a massive room, much larger and taller than the gate room which could easily have been a hanger. It was empty and deserted, with just the occasional pile of debris and what appeared to be drifts of dead leaves blown in from an archway to the outside in a wall to the right. The walls were the pale plaster or cement again but the ceiling appeared to be some sort of smoked glass. The floor in here was cracked and near the outside doorway a healthy crop of weeds were colonising the cracks vigorously, including a small tree.

Outside, the ground was paved with some kind of concrete like material, long since cracked and buckled by tree roots.

"Presuming those tree type things grow at the same rate as ours, this place has been deserted for upwards of eighty years." Rush said as the kino floated over the rotting trunk of a fallen "tree type thing" that was four feet thick. The tree type things were green, but instead of small leaves were covered in a mass of long green ribbons, which drooped to the floor. Among the leaves were long strands, clustered with something yellow.

The second foraging party walked into the room. Chloe, Matt, Varro, Volker, James and Stevens.

"I want to go take a look." Said Rush. "If there's any technology left it could be useful."

"We don't know why it's deserted," countered Young.

"Well the fact they took the time to pack up almost every last shred of their equipment and furniture in the rooms we've seen would suggest it wasn't a sudden catastrophe." Rush said.

Matt wandered over.

"Rooms?" he queried. "Sir?"

Young looked at him.

"The Stargate appears to be in come sort of complex, Lieutenant." He said. "Apparently deserted. There's no one on the kino and sensor readings show no evidence of people."

He looked at Rush.

"Get your kit." He said.

Rush handed the kino remote to Volker and disappeared quickly out of the room.

After he had returned, Lieutenants Scott and James led the way through the gate into the deserted Gate Room on the other side. The place was eerily quiet as the party stared at the deserted room. With the torchlight, Rush could see the doorways had lintels of dull metal and the walls and floor were beige. James peered through the side door.

"It's a corridor." She said.

"James, you're with Rush." Ordered Lieutenant Scott. "Keep in touch, everyone else, you're with me. Let's start with those fruit trees."

Rush let James lead the way into the corridor on the left of the gate. It opened into a series of rooms along the outside wall of the complex, all empty although one did have some graffiti on the wall. Rush summoned the kino to record it and they moved on. At the end of the corridor they came to a dead end and retraced their steps to the gate room to try the other side. The other corridor evidently led further into the complex. The first series of rooms off this corridor were equally as vacant as those off the previous corridor, but the last doorway on the end led to a stairwell, leading up and down.

"Up or down?" asked James, shining the torch attached to her gun both ways.

Rush shrugged.

"Down?" he suggested.

She led the way down. Each step was just slightly too large to be really comfortable to walk down in a single step. They made their way down a flight of stairs to another level, the stairs continued down. A brief investigation of this level indicated it had been cleared like the upper floor, but there were several rooms where there was a significant amount of graffiti on the walls and they found what appeared to be a lift.

"It doesn't go up to where we came from." James noted.

The doors to the lift were partly open and the shaft went up to what appeared to be open doors at ground level and dropped down at least another three floors to where they could see what must be the lift itself in the shaft.

"No cables." Said Rush.

"How does it go up?"

"Your guess is as good as mine Lieutenant."

They retraced their steps and went down a level, and another, all vacant, and finally to the lowest level, an extra flight of stairs deeper than the other layers.

"Wow!" said James, as the corridor at the bottom of the stairs opened out into a large, cavernous room, full of machinery. She turned to look at Rush, who had a broad and rather covetous grin on his face.

"I'll do a sweep of the room," said James, "then if you're okay I'll go up, report to the Lieutenant and the Colonel then come back down."

Rush was already running his hands over a bank of machinery near him.

"Fine Lieutenant," he said absently, "whatever you think is best."

The room was as deserted as all the rest, and James ran up to ground level and reported in. By the tie she got back Rush had a panel open and was examining the insides of a machine.

"Do you know what it is?" she asked him.

"The large pipes and the machines at the end appear to be a geothermal power plant. The rest, I have no idea yet. Some of this looks similar to Ancient engineering, maybe derivative."

James waited as Rush spent the next two hours in the room, examining everything. She was beginning to feel sleepy when Chloe and Lieutenant Scott walked in.

"Wow." Chloe said.

"Yeah," said James, "that's what I said."

The stared around.

"Rush says the things at the far end are probably a geothermal power plant. There's an air conditioning system and some other kind of pumping stuff I think. Apparently it's all kind of like Ancient stuff but not."

Chloe wandered over to Rush.

"Hello Doctor." She said.

He looked up from what looked like a control panel.

"Chloe." He acknowledged her.

"What is it?"

"Main control panel," he said, "it's similar to Ancient technology. I can't read the writing, but the components are similar."

"Can we use them?"

"Possibly."

"Varro thinks the ribbon leaves are fibrous enough to make something like linen and maybe some sort of paper."

"Paper would be good," said Rush, removing a component, "very good, we've run out."

Chloe looked at the components.

"I'll be right back." She said.

Ten minutes later she reappeared with Dale Volker and a crate full of ribbon leaves and they began rapidly packing the components in layers of ribbon leaf padding. Rush gave them an approving look and continued in his cannibalisation of the machine.

Walking through the puddle into the gateroom on Destiny, Chloe was confronted by stacks of crates and bundles. As the event horizon closed behind them, another foraging party, recently awakened were getting ready to go down to the jungle planet. Young was standing next to the DHD.

"Was it good?" she asked him?

"Very." He grinned. "We've got crates of fruit and veg and masses of a high protein nut that tastes a bit like a pecan."

She smiled back and as she turned to help Matt, James and Rush with the crates of stolen components, even Rush was smiling.