The Demiurge: Comes the Tempest

Rough
Action/Adventure, Drama
Set in 1941
FR-T
Violence and oblique character death
Spoilers for The Other Side

Disclaimers:

Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, The Sci-Fi Channel, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and related marks are trademarks of Activision. The Man from UNCLE and related trademarks are the property of MGM/UA and Arena Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.

The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.

Author's Notes:

This is the third story in the Demiurge series. It follows on from Vogler, and more directly from Sterilisation, and is continued in The Swan Maiden.

A tesseract or hypercube is a four-dimensional shape, specifically, a regular, convex polychoron formed of eight cubical cells. In short, each of its 16 vertices is formed by the meeting of four perpendicular edges, which can really bugger your mind if you try too hard to picture it.

This use of tesseract to describe a fifth-dimensional bridge through four-dimensional space-time is largely drawn from Madeleine l'Engle's excellent book A Wrinkle in Time.

 Acknowledgements:

 Many thanks to my shiny new beta reader, Sarah, and to my German language consultant, Sho.

Comes the Tempest

September, AD 1941

Westphalia

The first person to move was Teal'c, who swept his staff weapon into a firing position; the second was the scientist who slammed her hand into an alarm box. Teal'c reacted at once; a plasma bolt shattered the box and the scientist snatched her arm back in pain, but the alarm was clearly central and the klaxon wailed on. Sensing that Teal'c had rather nailed their colours to the mast, Sam raised her P90.

One of the scientists, an older man with a neat little beard and small, round glasses, raised his hands and motioned his comrades to back off. "Gehen Sie zurück!" he called. He turned to the woman who had reached for the alarm: "Bleiben Sie weg von ihnen, Inge. Kommen Sie her."

Sam let the scientists move away from the door and then she moved towards it herself.

"Sie können uns nicht entkommen," the lead scientist told her. "Sie wären gut beraten aufzugeben, bevor die Wachen kommen."

That would not be long, Sam was sure. She could already hear running feet in the corridor outside. "Wo sind wir?" she demanded.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Sam was grateful to her grandmother for forcing her to learn German as a child. She had found it somewhat useful when collaborating with physicists from Germany, but most of them had spoken perfect English. The potential lack of German-speaking opportunities in the young Samantha's life had not deterred Grammy, however. "Best to begin early in life," Grammy had insisted. "It will give her a lifelong faculty for learning new languages." As far as Sam had ever been able to tell, it gave her the ability to speak fluent German with no detectable accent, but little more.

"Schloß Walenberg, in Westfalen," one of the younger scientists replied.

"Major Carter," Teal'c warned, turning to face the door.

"Wieviele Wachleute gibt es?"

"Es gibt mindestens fünfzig," the man replied, without hesitation.

Sam gave a sigh. If they were to get out of this situation, it would not be by force of arms. "Give it up, Teal'c," she ordered.

Teal'c inclined his head in acknowledgement. He snapped the head of his staff weapon closed and swung it upright. Sam engaged the safety catch and lowered the barrel of her P90. She removed the clip and cleared the chamber, then unclipped the weapon from its sling.

"Wir geben auf," she told the lead scientist, proffering her weapon.

The man took the weapon and passed it to one of his colleagues. Another man took Teal'c staff weapon as his senior went to the door and called through it: "Sie haben sich ergeben. Stellt gen Alarm ab."

The door opened a moment after that and the guards came in. As Sam and Teal'c were stripped of their remaining weapons, the scientists were already clustering around the staff weapon; the injured woman alone was examining the P90.

Sam looked at the guards and her heart sank. "Oh no," she groaned.

"Major Carter?" Teal'c asked.

"We should have blown ourselves up," Sam told him.

The guards wore grey uniforms with peaked caps and high, black leather boots. The cut was old fashioned and Sam recognised the insignia as well. The weapons in the hands were MP40s. She looked back to the symbol on the wall and she could have kicked herself. She had realised that the energy field passing through the Gate had somehow transferred them to an unknown location, but she had been too slow to appreciate the enormity of the situation. They had not fallen among neo-Nazis, nor been swept to some bizarre alternate reality, nor yet found themselves on a world modelled, thanks to some wild contrivance, on Germany under the Third Reich. The Sentinel had somehow managed to achieve exactly the thing it had been built to prevent: they had travelled back in time.

The guards took Sam and Teal'c to a cell and left them there.

"Wie gut ist gein Deutsch?" Sam asked Teal'c.

"Es könnte besser sein," Teal'c admitted. "Daniel Jackson taught me so that I could assist him with his research, but I have little experience of speaking the language."

Sam shrugged. "It'll have to do," she said, continuing to speak in German. "We have to get out of here," she noted. "I dread to think what will happen if these scientists have time to examine our weapons."

"We have travelled back in time?" Teal'c asked.

"To World War II," Sam confirmed.

"I have studied that period in some detail," Teal'c assured her. "Colonel O'Neill holds it up as a warning of what the people of the Tau'ri are capable of. I understand your fears, but could the people of this time hope to reverse-engineer a staff weapon?"

Sam laughed. "Never in a million years," she agreed, "but it isn't the staff weapon I'm worried about. The Nazis had a bunch of alien tech, including a DHD, but they never worked out how to use any of it; they just didn't have the basic principles. No; it's my P90, my sidearm, our tac radios that I'm worried about. Depending on what year it is, portable field comms could swing the course of the entire war. We could already have changed history."

"Do our experiences in the year 1969 not suggest that whatever we might do in this time period will have already occurred within the passage of history as we know it?"

"Maybe," Sam agreed, "but we know that we changed our possible future at least once when we sent the message to warn ourselves about the Aschen. We can't take chances and we must make certain that we do all we can to minimise the damage that our presence might be causing."

Teal'c nodded. "Agreed."

*

Dr Inge Weiss settled herself at the desk and unrolled the oscillograph cylinder. As she studied the scribbled lines of red, blue and black ink, she reached for her coffee and winced; she cradled her injured hand tenderly, then reached for the mug with her left hand.

"Good God," she whispered.

"Inge. Are you alright, my dear? Dr Hochmann tells me that you refused to remain in the hospital wing."

"That is so," Inge replied, without looking around. She knew that it was impolite to keep her back turned when Herr Dr Erich von Kurtzweiler was addressing her, but she could not tear her eyes from the oscillograph's scroll. "It is only a little burn and a few cuts."

"What fascinates you so much?" von Kurtzweiler asked, stroking his small, neat beard as he leaned over the scroll.

"This is the record from the oscillograph that I connected to the lodestone," Inge explained. "It has recorded all fluctuations in the stone's electromagnetic emissions."

"This is quite some fluctuation," von Kurtzweiler noted, pointing to a series of spikes on the graph. "But do not worry your pretty head about it now. I have asked for an interrogation specialist to be sent from the Wewelsberg to question these intruders; by the time they arrive, I should like to have some idea of how they came to be in my laboratory."

"But I believe that is what I have found," Inge assured him. "You had speculated, in your last paper on the lodestone phenomena, that there was a possibility that the dimensional anomaly...I mean, the Kurtzweiler event," she corrected herself, "formed a door that swung both ways."

"Of course," von Kurtzweiler agreed. He took her word for it, although he had no real memory of it. Inge had written most of the paper, he had merely put his name to it.

"Well," Inge went on, with growing excitement, "given that this spike in the power levels came at exactly the same time as the arrival of the two strangers, I believe that this is no longer theory. These two emerged from the periphery of the event!"

Von Kurtzweiler stood up straight. "You mean...You mean that we have physical proof of the Kurtzweiler shift?"

"Yes."

He clasped a hand on Inge's shoulder. "Good work, Dr Weiss," he said. "Very good work."

Inge beamed. "Thank you, Dr Kurtz...Dr von Kurtzweiler," she corrected herself again.

Von Kurtzweiler shook his head. "Dear Inge; if you ever want to move beyond a research assistantship, you really must polish up your social graces."

"Yes, Dr von Kurtzweiler," Inge agreed. "Although, I do not think that I should be a project head. I am quite happy working as your assistant."

Von Kurtzweiler patted her shoulder. "You're a good girl, Inge," he laughed. "Don't ever change."

"No, Dr von Kurtzweiler."

*

Schloß Walenberg was a castle in the late mould, a 19^th Century folly built for comfort rather than for defence. It was largely for its appointments that the Ahnenerbe had selected Walenberg as the site for their laboratory, despite the necessity of running several miles of cable through the corridors to adapt the quaint old building to their power needs.

In need of labour, the Ahnenerbe had recruited dozens of workers from the nearby town of Walen. When they required an improved logistical supply structure, the made the workers of Walen build a warehouse and truck depot, then picked out several dozen of the strongest men in town to staff it. The local women were brought up to the castle to cook and clean for the officers and science staff. The local taverns were obliged to cater for the off-duty troops. In the space of two years, Walen had been converted from a small, thriving community into the laboratory's service group. For some, this was no more than their patriotic duty and for others it was enough that the Reich paid good money.

But for a few, the imposition was just too much.

Karl Grumman had been opposed to the Nazis from the start; almost. Always politically apathetic, Karl had at first been reluctant to make waves, but his brother and his wife had been committed Social Democrats. It had been one of the more dangerous political choices to make in 1934, but they had stuck to their guns, even when the soldiers brought theirs. Karl had stood silent, lending his tacit approval by his lack of protest as Luther and Petra were taken away. At one point, Luther had met his brother's gaze and nodded his understanding. Ever since then, Karl had suffered the nightmares and he had sworn that he would never let the same thing happen again.

It had happened again, of course, but more in spite of Karl than because of him. He had organised those who, like him, were not content with the way things were and, by 1939 he had the makings of a fully-fledged resistance movement. The group had done what they could to help dissidents, Jews and other 'undesirables' avoid capture by the Nazis, but they did not take a active role until the arrival of the Ahnenerbe and their SS babysitters.

They had begun by sabotaging a few supply trucks, misdirecting crates and arranging the loss of numerous small, yet vital pieces of scientific paraphernalia. Guards were bribed and suborned and some of the cleaning staff wandered where they should not. Between one thing and another, Grumman's group learned quite a bit about what was going on in the castle, although they had not had anyone to pass this on to until Kilburn showed up a few months before.

Kilburn – if that really was his name – was a small man with a face like a weasel. He spoke English with a lazy Devon drawl and German with the crisp tones of a Bavarian aristocrat. He smoked far too much and had once been a heavy drinker, but although his hands sometimes trembled so badly that his cigarette ash flicked off in all directions, he was a crack shot with a pistol. He was as deadly with his bare hands as any of Grumman's group were with a knife, although his true talent was not for assassination, but for sowing chaos. He was an agent working for the Special Operations Executive and the resistance group's contact with London.

"I have a favour to ask, Karl," Kilburn said; they were words that Karl had come to dread.

"Is this the sort of favour where people die?" Karl asked.

"Ideally, no," Kilburn replied. "The information that your people have retrieved from the laboratory has got London in a right state. They're sending a specialist and a commando team – codenamed Magpie – to lead a raid on the Castle; the team will need local forces to provide assistance."

Karl sighed, too tired to get angry. "There will be reprisals."

"Not so much if we can make it clear that the townsfolk were not involved. I would suggest a little collateral damage and a sterling and heroic effort to limit the damage to the castle, fight fires and provide shelter for the science team."

"Perhaps," Karl agreed, but he knew a conscience sop when he heard it. This way, London got to tell themselves that they had made all reasonable efforts to prevent reprisals and that when they did come about it was the inhumanity of the Nazis that brought it about. The reaction would not be as extreme as it might have been in France or Poland – the people of Walen were German citizens, after all – but there would be one. London did not care, however, and so neither did Kilburn. "What do you need, precisely?"

"The team will insert by river. They will require a local guide to bring them into town and someone to admit them to the castle."

Karl nodded. "The Ghost can do both."

"They will also require a diversionary attack tomorrow night," Kilburn went on, "and an escape route."

"Well," Karl said, thinking carefully. "There's a delivery going up to the castle tomorrow afternoon. We can delay it at the depot and plant a bomb; that should get their attention."

"A delivery of what?" Kilburn asked.

"Cheese, I think."

Kilburn shrugged. "It'll do."

*

It was clear from the start that the guards considered these intruders to be a serious threat; Sam supposed that appearing out of nowhere in the middle of a secure, military laboratory would do that for a girl's reputation. A squad of five guards, serious professionals in Waffen-SS uniform, were sent to collect them from their cell and bring them to a medical facility.

"We will start with the male prisoner," the medical officer declared. He was a fine example of Aryan manhood; tall, straight-backed and firm-jawed, with unwavering grey eyes and a touch of silver in his golden hair. His nurse was just as fine a paragon of the Nazi ideal; a pretty blonde with a clinical look in her big, soft eyes. Sam decided on the spot that she would aggressively dislike them both if she ever got to know them.

"Remove your belt, shirt and shoes and stand on the scales," the doctor ordered.

Teal'c made no move to obey.

The doctor nodded his head and one of the guards punched Teal'c hard in the stomach; Teal'c barely flinched.

"Impressive," the doctor observed. "I am Dr Major Emil Hochmann of the SS," he told them. "I do not make requests, I give orders. You will obey my orders or you will be shot. Do you understand?"

Teal'c glowered at him.

"We understand," Sam assured him.

"Then remove your belt, shirt and shoes," Hochmann ordered Teal'c.

Reluctantly, Teal'c obeyed. As he stripped off his jacket and t-shirt, the nurse gasped aloud; Dr Hochmann merely gazed intently at the x-shaped incision on the Jaffa's stomach. He reached towards the pouch and Teal'c knocked his hand away.

"Hold him!" Hochmann snapped.

The guards seized Teal'c's arms and – with some difficulty – held him still. Hochmann approached, more warily, and touched the edges of Teal'c's pouch.

"Nurse Grau..." he began. He jumped back with a cry of fear.

Sensing a threat to itself, Teal'c's Goa'uld symbiote had poked its head out of the pouch, gauging whether it could make a run for it. The guards released his arms and scrambled away; slowly, the symbiote withdrew.

"What on Earth was that?" Hochmann demanded. "Nurse Grau! Bring me a large specimen jar and a pair of clamps!"

"No!" Sam protested. "You must not take the symbiote out; his body relies on it. Remove it and he will die."

Hochmann rounded on her, angrily. "I will do as I please. If he dies, he dies. I have absolute autonomy..."

The door of the medical room opened and one of the regular Wehrmacht guards came in. "Herr Major. Orders from Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler; the prisoners are to be well-treated. They are not to be harmed in any way."

"What?" Hochmann demanded angrily. "Obergefreiter Lutz, I am not in the habit of taking orders from a civilian, relayed by a lackey."

The young corporal snapped off a nervous salute. He had an honest, open face and the expression of a man caught between two chains of command shown plainly upon it. "Yes, Mein Herr; but the Herr Doktor is most insistent."

Hochmann drew breath to respond, but his anger was at Kurtzweiler and Kurtzweiler was not there. "Very well," he said. He turned to one of the SS escort. "Return them to the cells, Oberscharführer."

"Herr Major," Lutz said. "Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler request that the woman be brought to his office at once."

Hochmann snorted. "Very well. Take her with you. Sturmmann Folker; stay with her and see that she is returned to her cell when the Doktor is finished with her. And Obergefreiter; tell Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler that I will see him at his earliest convenience, in my office."

"Yes, Herr Major," Lutz replied. "Fraulein," he said, inviting Sam with a gesture to precede him.

Hochmann waited for some five minutes before turning to Nurse Flora Grau. "Go after the Oberscharführer," he told her. "Order him to bring the man back here and prepare my...non-invasive instruments. We shall see what we can learn without causing any 'harm'."

*

Obergefreiter Lutz and Sturmmann Folker walked either side of Sam as they took her to Dr von Kurtzweiler's office. Lutz kept a respectful distance, suggesting that von Kurtzweiler had a rather more cordial reception in mind than Dr Major Hochmann. Folker was as unlike Lutz as could be imagined; he had a thin, rather cruel face and mean, obsequious eyes. He walked uncomfortably close to Sam and each time she looked around at him, he leered at her.

"Fraulein," Lutz said, respectfully. He stopped and opened a door, holding it open for Sam.

"Thank you, Obergefreiter," she said, stepping through into a room that was not so much an office as a study, or even a parlour. The furniture was expensive; possibly antique. A trim, grey-haired man in a butler's livery stood beside a marble fireplace, in which a small pile of burning logs looked unutterably lost. The harsh electric lamps which lit the corridors had not been installed here and the soft glow of gas lamps kept back the darkness that was drawing in outside the windows.

The senior scientist from the laboratory sat behind an impressive, oak desk. He had shed his lab coat and now wore a dark suit; his black hair was slicked back. He was slim and neat, with an air of quiet authority, but compared to Hochmann he was an unimposing sight. The fact that von Kurtzweiler outranked him was clearly a source of unending annoyance to Hochmann.

There were three leather armchairs pulled into a rough circle before the desk and when von Kurtzweiler stood to greet Sam, a figure rose from one of these. Sam recognised the woman who had sounded the alarm, but whereas in the lab she had been confident and decisive, here she looked lost. Her fair skin, blonde hair and pale blue dress were muted by the rich, dark colours of the room and she appeared meek and submissive.

"Ah there you are," the man said, walking around the desk. "Thank you, Obergefreiter; you may go."

"Herr Doktor," Lutz acknowledged. "Dr Major Hochmann asked that you speak with him as soon as possible, in his office," the young man added.

"Very well," von Kurtzweiler replied, as though this were the most tedious of all possible occurrences. "You, Sturmmann; tell Hochmann that I will see him in...two hours."

"Yes, Herr Doktor," Folker replied, in a voice like oiled silk.

Von Kurtzweiler waited for the two soldiers to leave before turning to Sam. "Welcome to Castle Walenberg," he said, jovially. He offered his hand and Sam received an almost-overpowering whiff of his pomade as she came close enough to accept it. "My name is Dr Erich von Kurtzweiler, but then I am sure that you know this. You must know many things, looking at our world from your future perspective."

Sam hid her surprise well. Her mind raced: If the Nazis knew that she was from the future then she could be in trouble, but they were being so friendly. It could have been a ruse, but the answer came to her in a flash of inspiration: Of course they were being friendly. For any dedicated follower of fascism, it would be a given that any scientifically advanced human travelling from their future must be a representative of the victorious Thousand Year Reich that they were busily creating.

"Of course," she assured him, with her best German accent and a haughty sneer that came directly from Jolinar of Malkshur. "I am Dr Samantha Carter. You won't have heard of me," she added, after a beat. Ideas flashed across her mind. In the space of a pregnant pause she had rejected a dozen possible cover stories as requiring too much supporting evidence. Instead, she fell back on an old intelligence adage: 'When in doubt, bluff it out'. Von Kurtzweiler had already decided that she was on his side and the story he had settled on would serve her far better than anything she could come up with.

Fear would raise questions; arrogance would keep a man like von Kurtzweiler on the back foot. "And this is?" she asked, with the slightest gesture of her head towards the pale ghost of a creature that stood by the armchair.

"Dr Samantha Carter, this is Dr Inge Weiss," von Kurtzweiler replied. "My research assistant. I doubt that her name will have survived, but her humble contributions to my work on the lodestone and the Kurtzweiler event will have played some part in bringing you here. Or should I say...now?" he offered, with an oily laugh.

Sam responded to his joke with the frosty glower that it deserved.

"Erm...Shall we sit?" he suggested.

"Thank you," Sam replied.

"Coffee? Brandy?"

"Coffee, thank you."

Kurtzweiler nodded. "Reiss!"

The butler bowed and shimmered away.

"This is a momentous occasion!" von Kurtzweiler declared excitedly. "The first meeting of the minds who will make the Reich great and the great minds that the Reich will make! May I ask from when you have travelled?"

"I am not permitted to say," Sam replied.

Weiss leaned forward. "Your speech is very like ours," she noted. "You are from the near future; not much more than fifty years."

Sam felt her eyelid twitch; Inge Weiss might be a drip, but she was clever.

"Inge! The Frau Doktor can not say; it is not polite to speculate," von Kurtzweiler insisted.

Inge blushed. "I'm sorry, Frau Doktor," she said.

"I suppose that you have come to aid us in our work?" von Kurtzweiler said. "I always knew that perfection of a Kurtzweiler transference device would allow scientists of the Reich to travel from a more advanced time to accelerate the progress of our technology! First the transference device itself, then rocketry, tanks and aeroplanes; power generation and distribution. We can send teams throughout history; turn defeats into victory and change the future, time and again, until we get it right..."

Sam watched in horror as Kurtzweiler launched into what was clearly the overture to a well-rehearsed rant about the glorious future of the Reich. She did not know what was more horrifying: the fact that von Kurtzweiler believed that all of history was his to experiment with, or the fact that he could believe that she had come to aid him in enabling manifest destiny in this way.

"So," she interrupted, forcing herself to keep calm. "Why don't we start with you telling me how far you have already got?"

*

"So...Negro," Dr Hochmann began, glowering at Teal'c as though he were something nasty that he had stepped in, "what is the thing in your belly?"

Teal'c looked up from the operating table to which he had been strapped, shirtless once more. "I will tell you nothing," he assured Hochmann.

"Nurse Grau!"

The nurse operated a control which tilted the table into a semi-upright position; so suspended, Teal'c was able to see the instruments set out on a small table; scalpels, clamps, tongs, retractors, bonesaws, callipers and syringes, as well as a number of tools which Teal'c did not know the names of.

"Is it your intention that I be frightened by this display?" Teal'c asked ingenuously.

"No," Hochmann replied. "That would be too much to hope for. Anticipatory fear requires intellect and imagination, both of which are lacking in a manual labour type, such as you."

"I require no imagination to anticipate torture," Teal'c assured him. "I have been tortured by professionals."

Hochmann laughed coldly. "I assure you, whatever witch doctors you may have encountered in your native lands could not approach the levels of sophistication that are possible through the rigorous and scientific application of pain."

Behind the doctor, Sturmmann Folker had re-entered the medical room. Nurse Grau left her place by the side of the operating table to speak with him, so that Hochmann could continue his rant undisturbed.

"It is not a question of force or brutality," Hochmann explained. "Rather, the key is an acute understanding of the human body. When armed with such an understanding, a child could inflict more pain than the strongest man."

"The most gifted torturer I have ever suffered under was a girl of sixteen," Teal'c assured him.

"You insolent savage!" Hochmann spat.

"Herr Doktor!" Nurse Grau called.

With an effort of will, Hochmann turned away from Teal'c.

"Sturmmann Folker has important information for you," Nurse Grau reported. She sounded shaken by whatever she had been told.

"Very well," Hochmann replied. "Nurse Grau, you will take the measurements."

Grau nodded. "Yes, Herr Doktor," she agreed.

As Hochmann moved away, Grau took up a clipboard and pencil. She turned her attention first to a scale marked along the side of the bench. "Height: Six foot and three inches. Weight...Well, we shall have to wait until you are feeling more amenable," she told him. "Physical condition" – her eyes flickered up and down his body – "excellent," she declared at last. "Again, I think we must wait to take your chest and arm measurements, but..." She swapped the clipboard for a pair of callipers and poised one prong of the device delicately on her mouth. "Cranial dimensions," she said. "Let us see what they will reveal."

Hochmann drew Folker aside. "Well?" he asked.

"Herr Doktor von Kurtzweiler will see you in one hour and fifty minutes," Folker reported.

Hochmann waved this information aside, impatiently. "Yes, yes; never mind that now. Did you hear anything of interest?"

"I was only able to hear a little," Folker replied, "but from what von Kurtzweiler and the woman, Frau Doktor Samantha Carter, said, it appears that von Kurtzweiler believes her to be a scientist of the Reich sent through his 'Kurtzweiler event' to assist him in his research."

"The man is a pathological egomaniac," Hochmann sighed, "as well as an élitist swine. I am surprised he bothered to listen to her, if she was not Frau Dr von Carter."

"Yes, but you know how he is with blondes," Folker pointed out.

"True," Hochmann agreed. "Did you know, he even tried to proposition Nurse Grau once?"

Folker forced a grin. "No, Herr Doktor."

Hochmann gave a sharp, triumphant laugh. "It is probably the only time she has ever turned anyone down!"

"Indeed," Folker said, in a strained tone.

"Don't be such a child, Folker," Hochmann scoffed. "Flora is an efficient nurse and a most excellent personal assistant, but she is quite devoid of sexual morality. Enjoy her and move on, like the rest of us have done."

Folker's face fell. "Yes, Herr Doktor," he muttered.

"Now, let us see how the efficient Nurse Grau is coming along with our patient from the future," Hochmann suggested. "Nurse Grau?"

The nurse turned from her patient and smiled, batting her eyelids briefly in Folker's direction. "Aside from the incision in the abdomen, the patient is in excellent physical condition," she reported. "Despite the cut, the abdominal muscles are clearly still functional. His skin shows some evidence of scarring, but..." She tailed off.

"Nurse Grau?"

"It is very strange," Grau said. "It looks as though he has suffered substantial damage which has had a very long time to heal."

Hochmann shrugged. "Perhaps this is an effect of time travel," he suggested. "Or it may result from the creature inside him. Let us suppose that von Kurtzweiler is correct about this woman; why would a scientist of the Reich travel with a Negro?"

Nurse Grau cast a glance over her shoulder; she turned back with a lopsided grin and raised one eyebrow.

Hochmann shot a look at Folker which said: 'I told you so.' "He is strong, quick; he was well armed. Perhaps he is some fashion of Mamluk; a warrior-slave in service to his betters."

"That is a dangerous course," Folker said. "If you teach a slave to fight for you, soon he will fight better than you."

"He is a savage," Hochmann scoffed.

"A trained savage will defeat an indolent Aryan, however pure his blood," Folker insisted, refusing to be put down by Hochmann again. "That is how the first great civilisation fell and dozens of others have followed them; the Mamluks alone took power in India, Baghdad, Egypt..."

"Yes, alright!" Hochmann snapped. "We speculate only. Who can know what his true role is?"

"You're a very learned sergeant," Nurse Grau noted approvingly. Folker grinned stupidly.

"That will be all, Sturmmann," Hochmann said, impatiently. "Return to your duties." He cast a disparaging look at his nurse, before turning back to the subject of his investigation. "But he is right, a warrior-slave class would be a danger unless...'If you remove it, he will die'," he mused.

"Dr Hochmann?"

"The creature. A control device?" He looked at the savage's face and saw that he was listening to every word he said. "What about it, man from the future," he said. "What is your purpose?"

"My name is Teal'c," Teal'c replied. "I will give no other information."

"You already have," Hochmann assured him. "Nurse Grau, what does his biometric data tell us?"

Grau consulted her clipboard. "Cranial capacity suggests above average intelligence; however, the shape of the forehead and brow is indicative of a primitive emotional and moral development: aggressive tendencies, stubbornness, irrationality and resistance to learning. The set of his eyes suggests that he is wary of unfamiliar circumstances; he does not trust easily and is therefore inherently dishonest himself. He is also highly sexed," she added.

"Well, Mr Teal'c," Hochmann taunted. "What do you make of that?"

"Amongst my people a fortune teller who could not do better than that would be beaten as a charlatan," Teal'c assured him. "And you failed to tell me my lucky number."

"Have him taken back to his cell," Hochmann spat. "When the interrogation team arrive from the Wewelsberg tomorrow, I shall obtain their leave to dissect you; then we shall see how funny you are." Emil Hochmann had as little time for sarcastic savages as he had for educated NCOs.

*

A small boat slid quietly to the shore of the Rhine, five miles from Walen. Six men and a woman were crowded into the boat; the men clutched silenced Sten guns and gazed alertly into the darkness, while the woman clutched a bag nervously to her chest.

As the boat touched the bank, two men jumped out. One covered the bushes and the other pulled the boat onto the bank. The man on stag raised his hand; a soldier in the prow of the boat raised his Sten and the second man on the bank turned to face inwards.

"Something in the bushes," the watchman warned, indicating a dark bulk among the lighter shadows. "Wilson."

Wilson, the man who had been pulling the boat up, crept towards the dark shape. Holding his submachine gun ready, he flashed a light across the shape. "German soldiers," he whispered. "Dead. Throats cut."

"You weren't supposed to show any lights."

Wilson turned and aimed his Sten gun at the woman who had spoken. In the darkness, all he could make out was her shape, a silvery halo of starlight in her hair, and the grey gleam of the weapon at her shoulder.

"One," she challenged.

"Sorrow," Wilson replied.

"Captain Grebeling?" she asked.

The watchman stepped forward. "I'm Grebeling."

The woman moved out of the shadows. There was no moon and it was still hard to make much out, but there was something unnerving about her, even in that dim light. She was wrapped in a heavy coat and scarf; the weapon she held at her shoulder in a professional manner was a silenced Sten, just like those the commandos carried. She looked the men over, then lowered the Sten.

"You were told that the river bank was heavily patrolled. Why did you show a light?"

"The rudder fouled," Grebeling replied. "We needed to see what it was to clear it."

"Damnit," she hissed. "Alright. Get your gear out of the boat and get the bodies in. We'll tie them in and I can sink the boat midstream. We can't hide it now; they'll search for those two."

Grebeling looked at her for a long moment, and then turned to his men. "Alright; everyone out. Wilson, get a rope; Sheffield, Turpin, get these bodies in the boat."

The six commandos moved quietly and efficiently, Grebeling and the other two moving out to keep watch for other patrols. The woman was less practiced in her movements.

"Technical?" the girl asked Wilson

He followed her gaze towards the woman and nodded. "What's your name?" he asked in a friendly tone.

"Lotte," she replied coolly. She turned and thrust her Sten into the arms of the technical woman. "Hold this," she said.

"Right," the woman replied.

Without the slightest trace of self-consciousness, Lotte stripped down to her underwear. Without the bulky clothes, she was clearly young and strong, if a little underfed. Despite the cold, she did not shiver as she rowed the boat out to the centre of the stream and punched several holes in the bottom; she was as little affected by sharing a boat with the corpses of two men whom she had just killed. She slid into the water with the grace of an otter. The boat went down and a 'V' of ripples cut its way to the bank.

Lotte was shivering when she emerged and she dressed quickly, before retrieving her weapon from the technician. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Not English," Lotte observed.

"American," the woman replied, but Lotte did not seem particularly interested. Understandably, she was eager to get the team under cover.

She led them at a demanding pace through the woods to the outskirts of the town. She left them for a few minutes outside a farmhouse, then returned to lead them down into the wood cellar. There was a rack of wine against one wall and a sound tug on one of the bottles caused it to swing outwards. "The man who owns this farm was – and is – a smuggler," she explained, ushering them into the secret passage. "We have to share space with some contraband drugs; I hope none of you have too many moral qualms about that?"

"We'll live with it," Grebeling assured her.

"It's cosy," Wilson said, approvingly; he kept close to Lotte as she lit the lamp. The light glittered on her wet hair.

"Yes," she agreed; she sounded almost amused. She turned around, holding the lamp up in front of her.

"Jesus!" Wilson exclaimed, recoiling from the girl.

His comrades raised their weapons, but just as swiftly looked away, trying desperately not to stare.

"I...I mean..." Wilson stammered. "I'm sorry."

"You become accustomed to it," Lotte assured him, with a crooked grin; it would have been difficult for her to give any other kind.

*

Apparently the separate cells were extended only to new prisoners and Teal'c was placed in a sort of dormitory area with a dozen assorted, sorry-looking souls.

A tough, brawny man with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips looked up as Teal'c sat on the bunk next to his. "Blimey, mate; who are you with?" he asked. "103^rd Bleeding Obvious?"

"I am with Major Carter."

The man sat up and tapped Teal'c's gold tattoo. "Not exactly undercover, I take it."

"Indeed."

The man shrugged. "Smith," he said. "CPO Smith, RN."

"Teal'c," Teal'c replied, then after a pause: "Teal'c."

"Right. So what did you do to end up here?"

"I do not understand the question," Teal'c admitted.

"Well," Smith explained, "if you get yourself a reputation as a problem case – an escape artist, so-to-speak – they send you to 4C or one of the other special camps. If you get a reputation there, they send you here. No rec, no rights, no Red Cross; just one morning a week working in the yard, Hochmann's slab and Kurtzweiler and his bloody machines." He pointed to one of the other men in the room, tall and thickset. "Rigsby over there: got careless; killed a goon making his escape. Should've been shot, but sometimes they just write you up as dead and send you here. A bullet would be kinder."

He took a long drag on his cigarette, then pointed to a slightly-built man with observant eyes. "Hank Hudson; so-called spy. He maintains he's a journalist and he probably was. He just got unlucky and was stuck in Germany when the Yanks joined the war."

"And what did you do?" Teal'c asked.

"Well, I got caught when me boat went down," Smith explained. "They put me in one of the regular camps and I escaped, along with a couple of other guys. They got caught after about a mile; I took a bullet in the leg, but kept going. I was in a bad way until I met this fresh little Fraulein who took pity on me. She hid me in a little outbuilding, bandaged me up, brought me food; she even nursed me through a bit of a fever. I was ten days in that outbuilding altogether; cold and draughty but she...made me comfortable," he said, ignoring the ribald laughs of his fellow prisoners.

"Trouble was, her ol' Mum had been on to me from the start and she called in the goons as soon as she were sure. Next thing I knew, I was here."

"Tell the man why you didn't end up back in the camp!" Rigsby called.

"Or in Colditz!" Hudson hooted.

"Well blimey!" Smith exclaimed. "How was I to know my frisky Fraulein..."

"...was the bloody commandant's daughter?" the prisoners chorused. It was clearly an old story, but it still raised a laugh.

"Place like this, you gotta have something to keep you going," Hudson told Teal'c. "For most of us, it's knowing that this sorry son of a bitch has even less luck than we do!"

"And you?" Teal'c asked Smith.

At once, the room fell quiet.

"When they dragged me out of there, she said she'd wait," Smith replied, with simple certainty. "When this war is over, I'm bloody well going back there to find her."

"Why do they bring you here?" Teal'c asked. "Is this not a laboratory?"

"You betcha," Hudson agreed.

"And us as the bloody lab rats," Rigsby explained. He brushed his lank hair back from his temple to reveal a burn mark. He was clearly suffering from some kind of shock and could barely keep his hand steady. "Every one of us has been up in Hochmann's lab at least once. He does his tests and that nurse of his takes her measurements; everything recorded and tabulated until they can tell you exactly who you are."

"It's a bloody parlour trick, Rigs," Smith assured him. "Two parts psychology to one part generalisation. Whatever they say about you could apply to me, 'cept what they know from your file and the little telltales those big, soft eyes catch from you. She's sly that girl, though she looks simple. Anyway, they told Hudson he was incapable of emotional commitment and that just ain't true. He's solidly committed to...what was it, Hudson?"

"Three," the American replied.

"Right; solidly committed to three different women. Married to two of 'em, ain't you?"

"Engaged to the third."

"Yeah. Anyway," Smith went on, turning back to Teal'c. "If they haven't given you the treatment yet, they'll get started soon enough. Then, every few months, they take someone away to test one of Kurtzweiler's new theories. They never come back."

There was another long pause.

"You never did say what you were here for," Smith observed.

"You would not believe me if I told you," Teal'c assured him.

Smith laughed and the other men gathered around. "Well, now you've just got to tell us."

"My comrade and I were transported here from the future," Teal'c said. "We come from a time many years after your forces won this war, but Major Carter fears that our presence here might alter the course of history. Dr von Kurtzweiler is questioning her, but appears to believe that she is a friend; she will be endeavouring to limit the damage we have caused and find a way to return us to our own time, along with our anachronistic equipment."

There was a long pause.

"They keep you here long enough, you go mental," Rigsby observed. "I guess in your case you ain't got so far to go."

The men filtered back to their own bunks, but Smith kept on staring at Teal'c. "You're serious, ain't you?"

"Indeed."

"Got any proof?"

"What is the year?" Teal'c asked.

"You serious?"

In reply, Teal'c simply raised one eyebrow.

"1941," Smith replied. "September of same, if I've been keeping track aright. Why? You gonna tell us who wins the National this year?"

Teal'c lifted his shirt to reveal his pouch. "I am not of your world," he said, as the symbiote pushed its head clear of the flaps. "I was born on a planet far from Earth, forty-one years before this time and one-hundred-and-one years ago by my reckoning. On that world I have already fought in three wars and led a dozen raids in the name of a false god, whom I shall betray in the year 1995."

"Bloody hell," Smith muttered.

*

Sam had to wait to learn what the Ahnenerbe were up to. Despite his evident deference, von Kurtzweiler had insisted that a tour of inspection not begin until the morning. Over dinner he had spoken in vague terms of the wonders of the Kurtzweiler phenomena, but he refused to be drawn on details. In fact, he refused to be drawn on details to the extent that Sam wondered if he himself understood the work. She learned far more from questioning Inge Weiss when von Kurtzweiler left to speak to Hochmann than she did from the great man himself, but the woman appeared reluctant to say too much without her master present to give his approval. Despite her evident intelligence, she reminded Sam of a frightened mouse.

The evening would not have been so intolerable if Kurtzweiler had not insisted on scattering his discourse with political polemics that were obviously intended to ingratiate himself with Sam. He was clearly more of a political animal than an academic; she knew the sort from her time at university, before the academy. In peacetime he would have been wrangling funding and co-publishing with a succession of brilliant doctoral students; under the Third Reich he toed the party line and ran a laboratory full of minds superior to his own.

In the end, Sam had to plead a headache – "time sickness," she explained – and retire to bed. Inge Weiss led her to a small bedroom and wished her goodnight.

*

She rose early in the morning and was not entirely surprised to find that her clothes had been removed during the night. Apparently Dr von Kurtzweiler was taking her on trust, because an alternative set of clothes had been set out for her; a Wehrmacht female auxiliary's uniform with the silver piping of an officer. As there seemed little alternative, Sam donned the uniform, complete with sidecap, and examined herself critically in the mirror.

"Oh, God," she groaned, feeling almost nauseous. "How do I end up in these situations?" In her time at the SGC she had dressed as a Jaffa priest and various types of handmaiden, but she had never felt uglier or less dignified than she did in a Nazi uniform. At least they seemed to have got the size right, although the cut was wrong for her.

Wearing the enemy's colours had its advantages, however. Leaving her room, which was not locked, she found her way to the officer's mess with the assistance of a helpful schütze. Either the officers at the castle were early risers or she was, because there were only two people in the mess; clearly, neither of them heard Sam arrive.

Inge Weiss stood in a corner of the room with her back to the wall. Dr von Kurtzweiler pressed close to her, oblivious to the way she squirmed desperately to avoid him.

"You must stop being so coy, my dear," von Kurtzweiler murmured. "We are a fine team in the laboratory; why not elsewhere?"

"Herr Doktor, it would not be right," Inge protested, with an air of desperation. "You are a great man and I am from humble roots."

"That matters little when a woman has your...advantages," he assured her.

Sam coughed, loudly.

Von Kurtzweiler sprang away from Inge and straightened his jacket. "Frau Dr Carter," he greeted her, with forced cheer.

"Where do I get my breakfast?" Sam asked innocently, fighting the urge to knock von Kurtzweiler's teeth in, and then try to slap some sense into the spineless Inge.

"Inge will show you," he assured her. "I must be getting on. Dr Carter; Inge."

Inge's hair was loose this morning and she let it fall across her face. "The plates are over here," she said. "Breakfast is self-service and..."

"Does he do that often?" Sam demanded.

Inge shot a panicked look at Sam, then hid behind the curtain of her hair once more. "Thank you for coming when you did," she whispered.

"He can not be allowed to treat you like that," Sam insisted. "Can't you complain...?"

"Oh, no!" Inge insisted, terrified. "No, I could not. He is the director here and I would find myself in trouble if I spoke out against him. It is not his fault," she added apologetically.

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"He is under a great burden," Inge explained. "He carries the responsibility for all research at the Castle; it is a great strain for any man and he has no companionship to relieve him. Perhaps if I wore a smock-dress instead of civilian clothes..."

"Stop!" Sam protested angrily. "Just...stop. Let's just have some breakfast."

They sat at one of the empty tables and Sam shovelled food into her mouth with quick, frustrated movements. Opposite her, Inge ate like a bird, picking nervously at her plate.

"I'm sorry," Inge said at last.

"What?"

Inge set down her fork. "I said something that upset you. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"What?" Inge fidgeted at her napkin.

"Why are you sorry? What did you do wrong?" Sam demanded. "Can you even tell me?"

Inge shook her head and looked down at her hands. She worried the napkin between her fingers, twisting the cloth until Sam was sure that it would tear.

"You know, sometimes it's okay to say what you feel," Sam told her. "And you certainly don't need to apologise for a toad like von Kurtzweiler."

"He is a great man!" Inge protested. "He was my tutor at Heidelberg; I would never have obtained my doctorate without his help." She looked Sam over. "You do not understand," she declared. "You have the same look as him; that aristocratic air. Maybe in your time every man and woman has the chance to achieve their dreams, but I know how lucky I am to have these opportunities!" As she spoke, Inge seemed to straighten and grow taller, but at the end of her tirade she deflated again.

"I am nothing special," she said, "but I know my place. I am a good girl, Frau Doktor; I do as I am told by my elders and betters and I prosper because of it. My father was a schoolteacher, but he knew that I could be more if I applied myself. He shaped and moulded me until I was ready to pass on to my tutors at college and university."

"You have a brilliant mind, Inge," Sam told her.

"I know," she replied, "but I am a simple girl. I do not know how best to use what I have been given. When I was a child I wanted to write poetry," she admitted, almost wistfully. "My father knew that this would be a waste of my potential, however. He guided me to mathematics; to science and other useful skills. It was the beginning of a path that led me to the service of a man like Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler and, ultimately, of the Führer."

"So you just let other people tell you what to do?"

"They know so much better than I how to use my gifts," Inge explained.

Sam felt a deep and keening pity for the woman, but at the same time a great desire to stab her in the eyeball with a fork. She was pathetic; meek and biddable to the point that she barely had an original thought in her head. No, that was not true; she could think, just not hold an opinion.

"So, you've been working with Dr Kurtzweiler..."

"Von Kurtzweiler," Inge corrected apologetically.

"...since you got your doctorate?"

Inge nodded.

"Does he publish much?"

"Oh yes," Inge assured Sam.

"And how many papers has he published recently which you didn't co-author?"

Inge blushed. "He has devoted a great deal of his time and energy to furthering my career," she said, protectively.

"And how many have you published on your own?"

"Well, my thesis and...But I have been fortunate enough to be his assistant. It takes up all of my time."

Sam sighed. Or in other words, his entire career for the last few years has been founded on taking credit for your work and you've just sat back and let him, because he knows so much better than you.

It was with some relief that Inge noticed that Sam had finished her breakfast. "Would you like to see the lab?" she asked.

"Yes, please," Sam agreed. "Where is Teal'c?" she added.

"We did not know what to make of him. I believe that he is still in the cells."

"What!"

Inge flinched. "I will order him released and given quarters in the servants' wing," she promised. "Most of the cleaning women come in from the town so there is plenty of space there. If you can find your way to the lab..."

"You go," Sam replied acidly. "Do that. I'll meet you there."

*

The cooks came up to the castle early; the cleaners followed soon afterwards. They were a mixed group, young and old, fat and thin; the old and fat went largely unmolested, but their younger colleagues drew the attention of the guards. Some of them laughed and flirted as they went through the gates, others shrank away. Among the former was a very striking girl with ugly scars on her face, but a strong and shapely figure; she laughed at the ribald jokes and blew kisses at the guards who called out to her. As the officer of the watch admitted them through the servants' door, she let him block her path and run his hands across her body.

She tossed her dark hair and looked up at him with a dark, laughing gaze. The officer laughed and sent her on her way with a slap on the backside, unaware that he had just been marked for death.

"On your way, Lotte, my love," he chuckled.

As she walked away from them, Lotte's smile faded and the laughter in her eyes died. A flicker of nervousness passed across her face; she had never been required to hide in the castle overnight before and she knew that there was a great risk of her absence from the departing group being noted. There were two other members of the circle prepared to swear blind, if challenged, that Lotte had gone home sick at lunchtime, but the officers kept an eye out for the girl with the scarred face and the easy laugh. It was easier for her to hide her true feelings if she pretended to feel the exact opposite, but now she wished that she had been more circumspect.

"Miss Lotte?"

Lotte cursed her luck and forced a smile onto her face as she turned. This was a different smile, however, hard and spiteful. "Obergefreiter Lutz," she said, coolly.

"Hello, Miss Lotte," the young man said. He took off his sidecap and approached her, diffidently. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a dark blue packet. "I have a cousin posted in Belgium," he told her. "He managed to send a little Belgian chocolate; I thought you might like some."

Lotte's mouth watered at the thought, but she hid her reaction. "Belgian chocolate?" she asked airily. "Leutnant Metzler had some Swiss chocolate last week. That was fine."

"Oh," Lutz said. "Still, if you would like..." He proffered the bar of chocolate.

"From you?" Lotte asked, laughing. "I do not think so, Lutz."

The boy's face fell.

"Goodbye, Petey," she chuckled, turning and sweeping grandly down the passageway. Again, as soon as she was out of sight her face fell.

Outside the storeroom, Aline approached Lotte, looking worried. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Lotte shook her head, but refused to answer. She pushed her way past her comrade and disappeared into the cleaners' washroom. She leaned on one of the sinks and looked at her reflection with loathing. The man who scarred her had not cut her face, he had signed it with slow, deliberate strokes.

The first cut had been made across her forehead, the second a short, parallel slice across the bridge of her nose and the third through the crease between lower lip and chin. Having satisfied himself that she would not flinch easily, the man had made a deeper cut in the right corner of her mouth, the cut that, even healed, pulled her lips out of shape. The next had been the longest, a line that curved from the centre of her hairline, over her left eye, past the corner of her mouth to the cleft of her chin. He had drawn the knife slowly across the lid of her eye so that the eye itself had never been pierced, but her eyelid had torn and she could never quite shut out the light now.

She had been pretty once, but now she was hideous. The men who flirted with her did so because they saw a scarred, desperate girl who would allow anything if they would ignore her disfigurement. Only Pieter Lutz saw her differently and that was why she was cruel to him. Every man who touched her was marked for death in her mind and she did not want his name on that list; it was a shame that he seemed so eager to die.

*

The guard rattled a cup on the bars of the cell door. "Hey! Blackie!" he called.

"I think he means you, old son," Smith noted.

Teal'c sat up and turned to face the door.

The guard leered through the window. "That's right, Blackie. It's your lucky day! You've been promoted to labourer."

Smith raised an eyebrow. "I guess your friend really is in with Kurtzweiler," he noted. "Don't suppose you could get the rest of us out of here?"

"I shall do my best," Teal'c assured him.

"Don't worry about us," Smith told him. "You've made a convert of me, future boy; you tidy up whatever mess you've made and see those bastards don't win."

Teal'c inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Ral tora ke, CPO Smith," he said.

"Best of British," Smith replied.

As the door closed behind Teal'c, Rigsby approached Smith. "He's completely mad, isn't he?" the soldier asked.

Smith shrugged. "After six months in here, I'm buggered if I can tell."

Teal'c was taken up to a yard and given wood to chop. His fellow workers were all soldiers of the Wehrmacht and not keen to talk to a black man, but that was fine with Teal'c; he had no real wish to speak with them. The axe was stored in a tool shed, however, and it was a simple matter for Teal'c to slip a chisel inside his jacket sleeve; just in case.

*

Von Kurtzweiler was in the main lab when Sam arrived and he seemed to have completely forgotten the incident in the mess hall; either that or it just did not occur to him that she might be troubled by it.

"This must be quite a treat for you," von Kurtzweiler said. "To see the beginnings of the science that you learned at school!"

"Quite," Sam agreed, eyeing the ramshackle lash-up as though it were about to explode, as it appeared it might. She took brief note of her P90 and Teal'c's staff weapon, placed on a side bench for later examination, then turned her attention back to von Kurtzweiler's machines.

From a cursory examination, it appeared that most of the equipment was intended to monitor a device in the centre of the room. There, a huge pole transformer had been connected to a pair of Tesla coils; it looked like the kind of thing Sam had built in the garage when her dad had been overcompensating. There was a constant smell of burning circuitry in the air. Sam could feel her hair stand on end as she approached the coils.

"That is the Kurtzweiler portal," von Kurtzweiler explained. "The Kurtzweiler event is generated in the lodestone, which is housed within the Kurtzweiler engine." He indicated the transformer. "When activated, the coils draw power from the generators to focus and intensify the event. Let me show you," he said.

Bouncing like a child with a new toy to show off, he handed Sam a lab coat and a pair of thick, smoked-glass goggles. Then he ran to a bank of switches and threw them. A low whine filled the room and the Tesla coils began to crackle. The lights dimmed.

"Watch the space between the coils," von Kurtzweiler told her.

The coils began to glow and electricity arced between them, bright enough to show clearly through Sam's goggles. Lashing tendrils of galvanic fire wound outwards, earthing in the metal plates and copper rods which surrounded the apparatus. Despite the various precautions, a line curved out and found one of the monitors; it touched only for a moment, but the power was sufficient to cook the circuits, leaving the complex machine nothing but a steel box of melted copper and plastic.

Sam took a step back.

"There!" von Kurtzweiler announced triumphantly, pointing to the empty space between the two coils.

Except that the space was not empty. Or perhaps, the emptiness was no longer exactly space. It was difficult to tell through the smoked glass, but it appeared to Sam as though the fabric of space-time were being warped, almost like the formation of a hyperspace window. It glowed where it stretched and it was rapidly coming to glow very brightly. Despite the goggles, it was becoming rather painful to look at the gap between the coils.

Brilliant light exploded in front of Sam's eyes. She blinked to clear her vision and saw a cowled figure standing in front of her.

"I know you," he said, "but you have no power over me."

Sam reached towards him, but he dissolved into a glowing mist.

"Frau Doktor?"

Sam turned towards von Kurtzweiler, but she saw a woman standing right in front of her, blonde-haired and haughty. "You have ruined everything!" the woman boomed, her voice thundering and eyes burning with white fire. She flung out her hand and light exploded from a stone in the centre of her palm.

*

Grebeling picked up his Sten gun as the secret door swung open. As an SOE operative, he recognised that he might have to work with drug smugglers, but he did not trust them. "Three," he challenged.

"Girl," the small, weasely man replied. He pushed the door wide with a shaking hand, and then entered. He was followed by a larger man with tired eyes, who pulled the door closed behind them.

"I'm Kilburn," the small explained. "This is Grumman." He looked at the team's technical expert, the sole woman in the room. "You must be Dr Carter," he said.

"What gave me away?" Sally asked dryly.

*

Sam staggered backwards. She felt something on her back that could have been heat or cold or even both, before hands grasped her wrists and pulled her forward again. The goggles were pulled from her face; Inge Weiss stood in front of her, a hand still grasping her wrist. Behind Inge, von Kurtzweiler was opening the switches to deactivate the devices.

"Are you alright?" Inge asked.

"Yes, thank you," Sam replied. "I think so. Did you see a woman in here? A blonde."

"No," Inge replied. "Apart from the two of us, I mean."

"And a man in a cowl?"

Inge shook her head.

"I think that 'yes, I'm alright' might be a little more conditional, then," Sam admitted. "Has the event ever caused hallucinations before?"

"No." Inge scowled at von Kurtzweiler. "Did you remember the safety locks?" she asked.

"Of course," von Kurtzweiler insisted.

Inge moved away to study the paper spooling from the monitoring devices.

"So tell me what the Kurtzweiler event is," Sam suggested.

Von Kurtzweiler looked confused and disappointed. "Surely you..."

Sam held up a hand. "The precise history of scientific advance during the war is somewhat obscure," she explained. "I need to know where you are now."

"Of course," von Kurtzweiler agreed, his delusions reinstating themselves. "Well, the event is a wrinkle in time, you see; a sort of fold which brings two separate times together."

"Or rather, all separate times," Inge noted.

"It's a tesseract," Sam realised. "No wonder it hurt so much to look at; it's a four-dimensional construct forced to manifest in three-dimensional space and existing in multiple time zones."

"Quite," von Kurtzweiler replied. "A...tesseract, if you must," he grumbled, clearly unhappy that it had not gone down in history as the Kurtzweiler event. "In theory, anything entering the field can exit at the same spatial location at any time."

"In theory?"

Von Kurtzweiler looked awkward; Inge looked...angry.

"In practice, as near as we can tell, they are destroyed," Inge spat.

Sam thought for a moment. "Well, if it really does allow transition in time, but not in space, the same point in space – depending on your ultimate reference point – is most likely to be in hard vacuum at any given time. To make a safe transition, you would need to include a spatial element. Of course, since space and time are entangled..."

"Jewish balderdash!" von Kurtzweiler assured her.

"...then the shift could be spatially controlled," Inge finished, picking up Sam's train of thought. "I have theorised that the lodestone might act as a spatial anchor for the tesseract," she explained. "This would make sense; if space-time is a unity, then..." She stopped speaking and scrambled for paper and a pen. As she scribbled ideas down, she looked at Sam. "I can not find any flaws in the input power readings," she said, speaking softly, "but the output was extraordinary; I think it must be a reaction to you. As a time traveller, you must retain a sort of para-chronic momentum that affects the field effect of the tesseract."

"Yes," Sam mused. The idea of temporal momentum was promising; it suggested a way back. The lodestone also presented intriguing possibilities. This 'anchor' must be responsible for drawing her and Teal'c back into space-time at this point, whatever effect of the Sentinel had cast them out of regular four-dimensional space-time in the first place. That meant that it might get them back.

Unfortunately, it was clear that she had already started Inge Weiss' brilliant mind thinking along new lines. Von Kurtzweiler was a vain and foolish man; Inge was meek, but she was the dangerous one. Sam would have to be careful what she said around her.

*

"The compound perimeter is only lightly guarded," Grumman explained. "The castle walls are pretty much impossible to climb and the main doors are well-protected."

The secret room was rather crowded. Grumman was sitting with Kilburn, Grebeling and Sally Carter around a plan of the castle. Around them, the other members of the team were preparing the weapons; Sergeant Wilson was checking the fuses and timers on their explosives.

"There is a single point of weakness at the back, here; the kitchen door. It's heavy, steel and bolted from the inside, but that is not a problem if there is someone inside to open the door for you."

"And there is?" Sally asked.

Grumman nodded. "The Ghost works as a cleaner; she'll hide out inside and admit you to the castle at nineteen-fifty-five hours."

"How will we know this Ghost?" Grebeling asked.

"You've met her already," Grumman replied. "Lotte Leman was your guide last night."

Sally shivered. "That girl gives me the creeps," she admitted.

Grumman shrugged. "That is why we call her the Ghost, but she is good at what she does," he assured her.

"Which is?"

"Kill Nazis," Kilburn explained.

"She was one of the first to be serious about resistance," Grumman noted. "We started off by just turning a blind eye, then actively helping people to escape when they came for them. Lotte was waging a one woman war while the rest of us were sneaking a little bread to the Lowensteins, but then she had more reason than anyone."

"What happened?" Sally asked, although she had a feeling that she might regret it.

"Her father was shot when he protested the removal of his Jewish neighbours," Grumman explained. "As you might imagine, nobody else said much after that. The first garrison commander at the castle was an SS-Standartenführer named Veith. According to Veith, the Leman family – all except for the younger daughter – had planned to blow up the castle or some such damn fool story. The truth is, he took a shine to the widow Leman and...it got nasty. Mother, son and older daughter were all shot; the only survivor was the youngest daughter and that was Lotte."

"Good God."

"Was she...somewhere else at the time?" Grebeling asked.

"No. Obviously, I am no supporter of the Nazi Party or their thugs in the general case, but there are a few special cases like Veith who manage to give the SS a bad name," Grumman agreed. "He let Lotte live, but he raped her and scarred her face. He knew that she wouldn't get many other offers with her face like that, so it did not surprise Veith when she turned up at the barracks as a cleaner and offered to be his mistress."

"What?" Sally was aghast.

"Six weeks later he was on the target range when his rifle exploded, killing him."

"His...Lotte?"

Grumman gave a crooked smile, reminiscent of Lotte's. "She has a great deal of patience when it comes to revenge. Every now and then, we hear that one of the officers at the castle has met a bad fate and we know that he has come a little too close to the Ghost."

"That's horrible."

Grumman shrugged. "Maybe," he agreed, "but she's useful for us. And tonight, she's useful for you," he added coldly.

*

Dr Hochmann was in a foul mood. Von Kurtzweiler was throwing his weight around and he had been refused permission to continue his tests on the Mamluk – as Hochmann had come to think of the man. He had been watching the man on-and-off through the day and he liked him less and less. He seemed a hard worker, but he had a defiant face and Hochmann was sure that he was looking around him all the time, spying out the land. He had sent a report to the Wewelsberg regarding von Kurtzweiler's indiscreet behaviour and was eagerly awaiting a response, but in the meantime he was keen to throw his weight about a bit and Nurse Grau seemed like a good target.

He stormed back into the medical room and heard Nurse Grau utter her seductive, throaty little laugh. The artificial sound was like a red rag to a bull.

"Nurse Grau!" he snapped. "I must insist that you limit your sexual activities to your off-duty hours."

The man who was with her turned around. "Is that so, Dr Major Hochmann?" he demanded. "And what, may I ask, do you imagine is going on here?"

Hochmann froze, horrified. The man was tall, with short-cropped, brown hair, a cold, arrogant expression and blue eyes that glowered coldly from behind narrow, hexagonal-framed glasses. He wore a long black greatcoat and held one of Hochmann's medical files in black-gloved hands. There was a heavy pistol on his right hip. The man snapped the file closed and set it down, revealing the Gestapo uniform jacket that he wore beneath the coat.

Hochmann snapped to attention and saluted. "Heil Hitler," he gasped breathlessly.

"Yes, yes," the Gestapo man replied in a bored voice. "Nurse Grau, this file is incomplete and I have not seen the file on the female intruder yet. Would you bring it, please?"

"We don't have a file on the female intruder, Herr Klingsor," Grau replied apologetically. "Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler insisted that she was an honoured guest of the Reich."

"She presented him with valid ID?" the man asked.

"No," Hochmann replied, trying to restrain a sense of triumph. "He claims that she is a scientist in the service of the Reich who has travelled back in time, using his crackpot research on the lodestone." If he had hoped that the Gestapo man would pour scorn on this theory, however, Hochmann was to be disappointed.

"What?" Klingsor demanded.

 "A...a time-traveller." Hochmann stared at the man's hands, embarrassed to even say the words. As he did so, he noticed a silver bracelet on Klingsor's wrist that he did not think could be part of a regulation uniform.

"Damnit."

"But it is ridiculous," Hochmann protested.

"You seemed willing to believe that the man was from the future," Nurse Grau thoughtfully reminded him. "Dr Hochmann speculated that the creature in the man's stomach might be an adaptation developed to create a superior..."

"Creature in his stomach?" Klingsor demanded. "Why was this not in the file?"

"We had no measurements yet," Nurse Grau explained, "so Dr Hochmann thought..."

"Enough, Nurse Grau!" Hochmann barked.

"Do you at least have names for them?" Klingsor asked frostily.

*

After dinner, Teal'c managed to slip away from the servants' quarters and return to the kitchen yard. From there, it was child's play for him to make his way past the guard posts to the fence. He had spent most of the day spying out the patrol routes and knew all of the blind spots; the men here were more arrogant and complacent than the average Goa'uld.

O'Neill had told him, after their experiences on Euronda, that this was a dark time in history, but his account had been tempered by its provenance. His father and grandfather had fought in the war and told the young Jack O'Neill many stories of their exploits; as a result, O'Neill's view of the war was somewhat romanticised. In turn, this had coloured Teal'c's studies of the period. It was now becoming clear to Teal'c that the racism and intolerance that he had observed in twenty-first century America was mild by comparison to the standards of these troops.

It was clear also that the Nazi troops felt safe here. The security on their perimeter was limited and patrols were sporadic. If it were necessary, he was certain that he and Major Carter would be able to leave the castle at a moment's notice. He was a little more doubtful that he could get the prisoners away, but he knew that honour would demand that he try.

Teal'c saw a figure up ahead. He slipped back into the shadows, but then he saw that it was Major Carter; clearly, she had had the same thought as he had. He stood up and approached. Major Carter turned and Teal'c felt a gnawing of doubt. Her eyes were colder than he had ever seen them; they were like the eyes of a Goa'uld.

On sight of him, Major Carter reacted without hesitation. She drew a pistol from inside her long, black coat and held it levelled at his stomach.

*

"Inge," von Kurtzweiler said. "Stop fiddling with those machines and show Dr Carter the lodestone. No doubt by her day, Kurtzweiler events are ten a pfennig, but there is and will always be only one lodestone."

"Would you care to see, Frau Doktor?" Inge asked.

"Yes, indeed," Sam replied glibly. "I have seen it of course, but only behind glass in the Museum of Science and Innovation in Berlin."

"Science and Innovation?" Inge asked curiously. "I should have thought that it would have been more at home in a Museum of Antiquities."

Sam gave herself a mental kick in the head. Keep it simple, stupid, she reminded herself.

Fortunately, Inge gave it no more thought. She was busying herself disconnecting the transformer from the coils and the electrical supply. She was in her element once more, surrounded by machines instead of people. As she moved among the coils and cables, she was confident, graceful, and powerful; a woman transformed. With deft hands, she released the catches on the transformer case and lifted the heavy lid.

"Come. See," Inge invited.

Sam walked around to stand beside the other woman. She looked into the case and shivered. "It's...hideous," she whispered.

"It is, is it not?" Inge agreed. "But do not let Dr von Kurtzweiler hear you say so; he is half in love with it."

Held in a cradle of cables, electrodes and steel braces within the lead-lined case, the lodestone was a massive block of silvery, crystalline stone, engraved with sweeping sigils. In the centre of the block, the sigils were in a curious state of disarray. Sam could feel the power radiating from the lodestone; power and hatred. Her stomach twisted in recognition of the material of which the stone was made.

"Naquadah."

"I beg your pardon?" Inge asked.

"Nothing. Tell me about it."

Inge shrugged. "You must know more than I," she noted, "but alright. The lodestone was discovered by Ernst Schäfer during the Tibetan expedition, along with a number of other devices that we are studying here. It was found in a monastery, sealed within a stone coffin."

"Who would put a monastery in a stone coffin?" Sam asked.

Inge laughed. "The coffin was inscribed with the name of Heinrich der Vogler. We have this to thank for the presence of Dr Major Hochmann and his Schutzstaffel friends; the Reichsführer-SS takes a personal interest in anything related to the Fowler."

"You mean because he believes he is a reincarnation of Heinrich?" Sam asked acerbically. Inge's voice was grating on her nerves and she hated herself for wearing the grey uniform. She wanted to hit someone to relieve her frustration; part of her wanted someone to hit her.

"Take a step back," Inge suggested. "The energy field resonates in the amygdala; it can create and exacerbate feelings of fear and hatred if you stand too close for too long."

Sam stepped back and she did indeed feel calmer almost at once.

"I suppose I'm used to it," Inge added.

"It doesn't look like a power source," Sam lied; a block of naquadah that large could provide enough power to wipe half of Westphalia off the map, assuming it was of weapons grade purity. Even if it were worked raw, it would take care of the castle. The sigils were an Ancient script, however, and the Ancients knew more about naquadah than anyone else in the galaxy, so the lodestone could be designed to do just about anything.

"This is only the container," Inge explained. "The material seems to act as a natural barrier to the tesseract's energy field. When the Kurtzweiler engine is activated, the electrodes stimulate the surface to release the seals; without the additional containment devices built into the engine, the rage incited by the unbound power would be...catastrophic."

"So the power comes from the tesseract itself?" Sam asked. "You don't generate the tesseract?"

Inge put a finger to her lips. "A sore point," she noted. "But no, the tesseract exists on its own; everything else is containment and focusing. Mind you, containment is nominal at best." She took a small, black tube from inside her jacket and pointed it over the top of the lodestone. A pencil-thin beam of red light emerged from the device. Inge lowered the tube; as it came close to the lodestone, the beam was split and distorted. "The energy field bends space, even through the seals," she explained, awed.

Sam tried to smile, but she was keenly aware that Inge was making rather inventive use of the laser aiming module from Sam's P90.

"I have already improved my understanding of the phenomenon by using this device," Inge added, apparently thinking that this was what Sam would want to hear. "The accuracy of measurement that is possible..." She tailed off and closed the lid of the engine. "Dr von Kurtzweiler is an innovator, more than a theorist," she noted. "He makes the experiments and I measure and analyse."

"Experiments?" Sam asked. "You mean, sending things through the event?"

"Yes," Inge replied, without much enthusiasm. "Things."

"What things?"

Inge looked uncomfortable. "Undesirables," she replied. "Those who would otherwise be executed are sent through the tesseract. We do not know what becomes of them, but the energy release indicates that they are...destroyed."

Sam did not trust herself to respond.

"I do not like this thing," Inge admitted. "The sooner we can generate an artificial tesseract the better."

*

Klingsor paced impatiently. "Dr Hochmann," he said at last, "tell Dr von Kurtzweiler that I wish to see him, here."

"Herr Klingsor..." Hochmann protested.

"I want him here now! Nurse Grau will not be able to compel him as you will."

Hochmann's protest died and he smiled. He liked the idea of compelling von Kurtzweiler to do something. "Yes, Herr Klingsor," he agreed.

Klingsor sat in Hochmann's best chair and rested his feet on the operating table. "Nurse Grau," he said.

"Yes, Herr Klingsor?" Grau husked.

"Bring me a pot of coffee."

Grau pouted sourly. "Yes, Herr Klingsor."

Klingsor watched her flounce out and shook his head in amused disapproval. As soon as the door was closed, he lifted his left arm and touched one of the panels on his bracelet. "Kundrie, this is Klingsor," he said. "Respond."

*

Teal'c had realised quite quickly that the woman who held him at gunpoint was not Major Carter, or at least, not his Major Carter. This was a disturbing turn of events. The idea of a chance resemblance was worrying enough, but when the silver bracelet on the woman's wrist chirruped softly, he saw that something even more alarming was taking place.

"Kundrie, this is Klingsor. Respond." The voice confirmed many of Teal'c's worst fears.

"Klingsor," the other Major Carter replied, "I believe that I have located the source of the disturbance."

"The Jaffa or the...other one?" The man at the other end of the connection sounded amused.

"The Jaffa." The woman – Kundrie, as she called herself – sounded disappointed. She must have thought that she had discovered all the answers; if she was like Major Carter at all, she would feel cheated that someone else had got there first, but this one seemed to take it more personally.

"Bring him in. They know all about him and I'm waiting on the research chief; some guy called von Kurtzweiler. You know him at all?"

Unseen, Teal'c slipped the chisel into his hand.

Kundrie shrugged. "By reputation," she replied. "He was an early researcher on your Casket. I'll bring the Jaffa inside; where are you?"

"Medical bay," the man replied. "Out."

"Out," Kundrie responded. She lowered the bracelet and turned back to Teal'c. "Now..."

Teal'c's hand came up and he flung the chisel at Kundrie's face.

*

"Von Kurtzweiler!"

Dr von Kurtzweiler turned to face the door. "Dr Hochmann," he replied.

"The Gestapo interrogator is here," Hochmann announced. "He requests your presence in the medical bay, at once."

"I will come along as soon as I may," von Kurtzweiler replied.

"Herr Klingsor was most insistent."

Von Kurtzweiler muttered to himself. "Very well," he agreed. "Inge; show Dr Carter anything she wishes to see."

Hochmann did nothing to contradict his rival. He was determined to give von Kurtzweiler all the opportunity he needed to reel off more rope for the Gestapo to hang him with.

"You don't like this work, do you?" Sam asked.

Inge looked away. "I should record the results of that test run. Your presence has clearly had a considerable effect on the function of the engine and I really must begin an analysis..."

"Why didn't you tell Dr von Kurtzweiler about the variation? You were being very careful not to let him hear," Sam observed.

"I...I will tell him, but I want to try and work out what is going on first. I mean, it might not make a difference, but..."

"But if you tell him there's a change, he'll have someone dragged up and thrown through the portal just to see what happens."

Inge blushed. "I know that the advancement of the Reich requires sacrifices, but...They do not seem subhuman to me!" she blurted out, quickly. "We learn nothing that we would not learn from using an inanimate test subject and I can not help feeling guilty for the lives that are lost. It does not feel right." She stopped and looked down at her feet. "Will you report me to Dr von Kurtzweiler?"

Sam thought for a long moment. She knew what the woman she was supposed to be would say, but those words would not come out. "I don't think so," she replied, then adding, for the sake of her cover: "Dr von Kurtzweiler's methods seem...inefficient."

"Inefficient. Yes," Inge mused, uncertainly.

Sam turned to the door as it was filled by a heavy frame. "Major Carter," Teal'c said.

"Teal'c."

"Major?" Inge asked, confused.

Sam winced.

"There is something that you should see, Major Carter. It is very important."

Sam nodded her understanding. "Thank you for your help, Dr Weiss," she said. "I am sure I will have more questions later."

"I am at your disposal Dr...Major Carter."

Inge was confused. What kind of a name was Teal'c? she wondered. And why does he call her Major if she's a doctor? And if she's a Major, why didn't she say so? She sighed. It was not her place to question the likes of Dr Major Samantha Carter and besides, she had already given her so many things to think about; she could not afford to waste time. She went to her locker and retrieved her laboratory journal.

The journal was a large, thick, leather-bound notebook and it was the ninth such journal she had kept. Her first journal had been a graduation gift from Dr von Kurtzweiler and she had filled it with her small, neat handwriting after only four months of recording observations, measurements, hypotheses and deductions from his many experiments. Sometimes she had filled a page and then had fresh thoughts on a subject and so there were many inserts, carefully gummed into the notebook; when finished, each book was almost twice as thick as it had been when purchased.

She sat at the desk, opened the book to her last page of notes and carefully wrote down the date and time. She took the sheet of paper on which she had recorded her scattered thoughts and began to write them up in the journal. As she copied and expanded the notes, new ideas came to her and she wrote these down as well. She finished up by making a list of questions:

• Why did Dr/Major Carter experience visions/hallucinations when exposed to the tesseract energy and nobody else did?
• How did Dr/Major Carter manage to successfully negotiate the tesseract to arrive at a targeted location?
• Why does her presence affect the formation of a tesseract portal? Does a time-traveller carry a 'signature' of some sort?
• A potential can be created by lifting an object from rest or separating a pair of charged plates. Does transferring a body through the tesseract portal create a temporal potential?
• If there is a temporal potential, a time-travelled body will tend to accelerate back towards its own time. Is that what happened to Dr/Major Carter?

Inge put her pen down. "Temporal potential?" she asked herself. "You're letting your imagination run away with you, Inge Weiss."

The lab door burst open. Dr von Kurtzweiler led the way in, followed by Dr Hochmann and a man in a Gestapo uniform and a leather coat.

"Where is she?" von Kurtzweiler demanded.

"Sir?" Inge asked.

"Frau Dr Carter!" the Gestapo man demanded. He walked over and fixed Inge with his gaze.

Inge swallowed hard, feeling trapped by that stare. His eyes were cold, but they were incredibly beautiful. "I...I do not know, Mein Herr," she replied. "She left."

The man swore violently and raised a hand in exasperation. Inge flinched and an incredible change came over the man's face. His eyes grew kinder and he lowered his hand. "Forgive me," he said. "My anger is not aimed at you. I am Herr Ernst Klingsor of the Geheime Staatspolizei," he added. "Department A, Counterespionage."

"I'm Dr Inge Weiss, with the Ahnenerbe," she replied.

Klingsor smiled. "I know who you are, Frau Doktor," he assured her. "I am no scientist, but I try to follow important developments...and of course I read your personnel files before coming here," he confided.

Inge giggled nervously.

"As I say, I am not a scientist," Klingsor said, turning slightly to address the entire room. "Perhaps you and Dr von Kurtzweiler could show me the device which is supposed to have brought these travellers from the future."

Von Kurtzweiler's black mood seemed to brighten at this prospect. "Of course," he agreed enthusiastically. "I will have a test subject brought up."

*

"You have got to be kidding me," Sam insisted, staring down at the unconscious form of her double. Aside from the chisel cut on her hand, the severe bruising on the left-hand side of her jaw and the black Gestapo colours of her uniform, the two were identical. Having subdued the duplicate – another difference, Sam decided, was that she would never be stupid enough to try and hold a Jaffa covered while answering a hail – Teal'c had tied her up, brought her into the building and hidden her in a cleaning cupboard, where she would not be found until morning.

Teal'c kept watch while Sam bent down and searched the woman's pockets. She tried to avoid looking at her face.

"You couldn't have searched her?"

"It would not have felt right," Teal'c admitted.

"I appreciate the thought," Sam assured him. "Alright; what've we got? Can I see that pistol?"

Teal'c handed it down.

"Curious choice of sidearm for 1941," Sam mused. "This is a Mauser Broomhandle Schnellfeuer, chambered for 9mm parabellum; the holster on her belt is one of those detachable shoulder-stocks. Why would a Gestapo administrative aide be carrying an out-of-date, short-barrel machine carbine?"

"Overcompensation?" Teal'c suggested.

Sam smiled. "I wonder what else she's carrying." She checked the silver bracelet on the woman's wrist. "You're right; this is a communicator and...damnit. Crystal-based transmitter technology; this is an Earth design, using Goa'uld technology." She dug inside her double's jacket pockets. "Back-up sidearm," she announced, holding up a high-tech pistol. "Looks like some sort of home-made zat; I guess that confirms she isn't a local girl. Handcuffs; so she's adventurous," she quipped. Another search revealed what Sam was looking for: A thick leather wallet containing the woman's ID.

"Who is she?" Teal'c asked.

Sam shrugged and examined the woman's warrant card, a fold of stiff, waterproofed card. "Well, according to this, she's a nurse assigned to the Gestapo. Her name is Elke Kundrie, born Heidelberg 1911. Same birthday as me," she noted. "There's no other ID to indicate she's a time-traveller, but then I guess you wouldn't want to prove that very often." She stared at the card, as though by willing it to tell her who the woman really was she could make the name on it change. This had no real effect, but as she stared, she did notice something; a corner of the card that was slightly smeared with grease, as though a finger or thumb had been pressed down on it.

Sam pressed her thumb onto the patch; at once, the writing on the card began to rearrange itself. "Neat," Sam observed. "Alright, so according to her double-secret ID, she is an operative of the SS Temporal Division Alignment Protection Group. She was born...same year as me," she evaded, "and her operational year – I guess that means the time she travelled back from – is listed as Reichsjahr 61...Depending on when they date from, I'd guess that's between 1990 and 2006."

"And her name?" Teal'c asked gently.

Sam hung her head. "Sturmbannführer Gudrun Carter," she admitted. "She is me; she is a Carter." She paused. "And it looks like my promotion prospects are better in the SS."

*

Inge protested, but von Kurtzweiler was too caught up to listen.

"I must make more observations before we operate the device again! Let alone send anything through it!" she cried, so frightened that she dared to directly contradict him.

Von Kurtzweiler swung around and slapped her hard across the face. She stumbled away, her mind paralysed by shock as much as by the pain. Strong hands caught her and held her while she recovered herself.

"Thank you, Herr Klingsor," she said.

"You're welcome," he replied.

"Here," von Kurtzweiler said, handing out goggles. "Put these on. Now where is my subject?"

As if on cue, the laboratory door opened and two guards entered, leading one of the prisoners, a brawny man with a glazed expression. Von Kurtzweiler handed goggles to the guards, then threw the main switch.

"Drugged?" Klingsor asked, still looking at the prisoner.

"They go through easier that way," Inge replied; she sounded as though she were about to be sick. "If they struggled they might damage the equipment."

The machine powered into life and slowly the portal began to form, larger than it had ever been before.

"The tesseract," Inge explained. "In theory, a portal connecting disparate points in time and, I now believe, in space. If my hypothesis is correct, the portal opens onto any spatiotemporal location in which the tesseract is not sealed within the lodestone."

"Incredible," Klingsor whispered. "Barely stable, insanely dangerous, but impressive nonetheless. You have a truly formidable mind, Frau Doktor."

"I am but an assistant," Inge assured him, but she blushed at the compliment.

"Now!" von Kurtzweiler called.

The guards pushed the unresisting prisoner into the blazing light of the tesseract. Inge wanted to turn her face away from the terrible sight of a man being torn apart by the field, but she was gripped by the grim fascination that was the negative aspect of a scientific mind.

The man stumbled forward. His hands touched the edge of the field and an irresistible force dragged him fully into the rent in space-time. He turned in place, slowly at first; as he came to face the room he reached out to Inge, the beginnings of fear piercing the narcotic haze; his eyes were distorted, pupils shrunk to dots against the light of the tesseract. He span around, faster and faster, until he was just a blur, then the blur collapsed in upon itself. As it vanished, an arc of electricity leaped across the room and transfixed the control panel; sparks flew everywhere and the tesseract began to build in intensity.

"Dr von Kurtzweiler!" Klingsor called. "Perhaps it is time to end this demonstration?"

"I...I can not; the controls..."

Inge sprang forward. The tesseract was growing and she knew that she had only moments before it spanned the space between the machines entirely. She darted between the magnetograph and the pulsing field and felt the burning cold ravage her skin, but she made it through. She all-but threw herself at the table and caught up the strange weapon that Dr Carter's companion, Teal'c, had carried.

With awkward hands, she levelled the staff and felt out the firing and release studs. She aimed the tip of the weapon at the left-hand Tesla coil and – after a couple of failed attempts – fired. A plasma bolt struck the base of the coil, followed by two more strikes higher up. With a tortured shriek, the coil fell to the metal earthing plates and the tesseract winked out of existence as though it had never existed.

"Herr Doktor," Klingsor said, his voice dangerously soft. He turned around, but there was no sign of von Kurtzweiler. Klingsor walked to the door, opened it and dragged the struggling scientist into the room. "Herr Doktor; I can not help thinking that you may not have taken all necessary safety precautions."

"I assure you, this was a fluke," von Kurtzweiler insisted. "For the charge to bypass the grounding rods..."

"The emergency cut-outs did not activate," Inge said. "You forgot to activate the safety locks. The power would have kept building until the tesseract encompassed the lodestone itself and then...And then I do not know what would have happened."

"Yes," Klingsor mused. "That must be what it wanted."

Inge gave the man a curious look, but he turned to von Kurtzweiler. "And as for your test, does it seem wise to you to be flinging enemies of the Reich at random throughout the Chronosphere?"

Von Kurtzweiler bridled at the man's tone. "I assure you, the experiment presents no threat," he said. "The man was destroyed."

Inge was less sure. She had never seen anyone react that way to being placed within the tesseract. She crossed to one of the undamaged monitors and began examining the readout.

*

"So," Sam said, "an alternate version of me has been sent back in time from a bleak, Nazi future with a firm grasp of time-travel technology. Therefore, either the tesseract connects alternate universes..."

"In which case, we may already have crossed into a world that is not our own," Teal'c noted.

"...or our presence here has already changed the course of history sufficiently to change our world into this one."

"Neither could be called a desirable scenario," Teal'c noted.

Sam shook her head. "You have a gift for understatement," she agreed. "What I don't understand is how a world in which World War II ended so differently could have a version of me. My birth depended on so many random factors, the idea that the exact same person could be produced..."

"She is not the same person as you, Major Carter," Teal'c assured her.

Sam nodded gratefully. "It doesn't matter, anyway. In either case, our course is the same. With no way to get home, we go with SOP; remove any risk of contamination in the timestream then retire somewhere quiet and keep out of the way."

Teal'c nodded his understanding. "In which case, our first task is to identify all potential sources of contamination."

"Number one, that bloody tesseract generator," Sam said.

"But we did not bring that."

"No, but we know they didn't use it in the war, I've never heard of it afterwards and I've already given Inge Weiss too many new ideas."

"Then the second source of contamination to be eliminated would be..."

"Yes! I'm trying not to think about that," Sam admitted.

Teal'c inclined his head. "I shall attend to it."

"Thank you," Sam replied, "but I can't duck responsibility for it." She sighed. "Maybe I can get away with just burning her notes," she added, without much hope. "Anyway, source three would be our equipment; weapons, explosives, scanners, my..."

"I shall attend to your computer," Teal'c promised.

Sam adopted a resolved expression. "Thank you," she said. "I know it has to be done. Right," she decided. "We have to get on with it. Can you wait outside, Teal'c?" She looked at the still form on the floor and rolled her eyes. "I need to undress myself."

*

Inge studied her readings with concern, trying to ignore the sound of Drs von Kurtzweiler and Hochmann yelling at each other. There were definite changes, even from this morning's dry run, but most importantly there was no surge of energy release when the prisoner had been thrown into the tesseract. She opened her journal and compared the readings.

"What do you think happened?" Klingsor asked softly.

Inge jumped. "You startled me," she gasped.

"I apologise."

She waved it off and turned back to her notes. "I do not believe that this prisoner was destroyed," she said. "There was no energy release," she explained. "In fact, the energy levels dipped when he vanished. I believe that the portal functioned precisely as intended. The prisoner was drawn through the portal into the tesseract, drawing a small portion of the charge with him. What I do not understand is what happened afterwards."

"What about this transfer," Klingsor pressed. "Why did it work this time, but not before?"

"I do not know," Inge admitted. "Unless..." She leafed through the journal to the results from the morning test. "It may be that the presence of a time-traveller – their temporal potential – stabilises the flow of other matter through the portal."

"You have a unique and brilliant mind, Inge Weiss," Klingsor said, sliding a hand into his pocket. "Without you, von Kurtzweiler's research would have stalled, years ago."

She blushed again, oblivious to the small pistol which Klingsor had slipped into the palm of his right hand.

"But these readings are almost identical to those I got this morning, with a time-traveller in the room with me," Inge mused. "That must mean that you..." She turned to look up at him. "You are a time-traveller, also."

He smiled wistfully. "You are brilliant," he said, in a voice that was almost regretful. He lifted his right hand towards Inge's face. She looked shy and awkward and his resolve almost failed him.

"Herr Klingsor!"

Klingsor turned to look at Hochmann, the annoyance on his face unfeigned. He had no interest in what the man had to say, however, and he turned back to Inge at once. In that moment of distraction, opportunity had passed. Feeling embarrassed and self-conscious to be the focus of his attention, and furthermore gripped by a new idea, the scientist had slipped away from him and moved to another monitor. He tried to follow her, but Hochmann called again and strode up to catch his elbow.

As he turned, the palm-pistol in Klingsor's hand was levelled for a moment at Hochmann's heart, but he resisted the urge to pull the trigger and slipped the weapon back into his pocket. It was as well that he did so, because at that moment, his partner arrived.

Sam, feeling even more uncomfortable in the black Gestapo uniform than she had in Wehrmacht grey – although the coat was pretty stylin' – strode into the lab. Once more, she let the fragmented memories of the Tok'ra, Jolinar, guide her body language, filling it with arrogance and disdain. The pose was hard to maintain and the sight of Daniel Jackson in a Gestapo uniform did not help. Her own presence in an altered timeline was unexpected, but not unprecedented; this was downright suspicious.

"Herr Klingsor," she said.

"That is her!" von Kurtzweiler exclaimed. "That is Dr Carter!"

Klingsor looked scornfully at the scientist. "That is my assistant, Nurse Kundrie," he assured von Kurtzweiler.

Von Kurtzweiler stared, as did Hochmann and Weiss.

"There is some resemblance?" Klingsor asked.

"It is...uncanny," Inge breathed.

"Then I think it is more important than ever that Dr Carter is found," Klingsor said. "Dr von Kurtzweiler, as Director of this centre, perhaps you would see to it?"

Von Kurtzweiler nodded, nervously. "Yes, Herr Klingsor," he replied, and he hurried away.

"Kundrie; where is the J...companion?"

Sam's ears pricked up at Klingsor's near-slip. "In the cells," she replied, honestly enough.

*

"Halt!" the guard at the main prison door snapped.

Teal'c half-raised his hands. "Herr Dr von Kurtzweiler wishes me to bring a prisoner to the laboratory," he explained. If it was hard for Sam Carter to play the arrogant tyrant, the role of downtrodden servant was nigh impossible for Teal'c, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that it was one which he knew so well. He had been a slave for many years, however, and he could mask his resentment of his 'masters' for a time.

The guard laughed. "Another one? Must be a busy day." He turned and unlocked the door.

Teal'c pulled out Gudrun Carter's backup pistol and fired. The energy charge that arced from the emitter array to the guard was red-gold, but otherwise identical to a zat blast. Clearly it was more powerful, however, bypassing the incapacitation and killing stages and disintegrating the guard on the spot. If Teal'c had been the easily shaken type, he might well have been taken aback by this, but he was not; he pushed his way into the prison. There were two more guards in the watchroom in front of the main cells; they were less hardened than Teal'c and were startled for just long enough to die.

Teal'c crossed to the cell door; a face appeared in the grill.

"Is that you, Teal'c?" Hudson asked.

"It is indeed, Hank Hudson," Teal'c replied. "Stand back from the door."

Hudson obeyed at once; he might be a civilian, but he was no fool. A single pulse from the pistol vaporised a nine-inch hole in the centre of the door, twisted the strengthening iron strips inward and consumed the wood in a flash of incandescent flame. The wood of the door frame smouldered.

Hudson poked his head through the gaping rent in the door. "I like your style, Teal'c," he said.

The guards had not even had time to reach for their MP40s when Teal'c entered the room. Teal'c took one from the rack and threw it to Hudson, who caught and held it in a manner more like that of a professional soldier than a journalist. Teal'c made no comment, he just passed the second weapon to the next man.

The next man – as it turned out – was Rigsby and Teal'c was rather relieved when he handed the weapon to another soldier; one without shaking hands. "Ordinarily we wouldn't be shooting at guards," Rigby admitted, "but there's not much worse they could do to us. Where else could they send us?"

"Where is CPO Smith?" Teal'c asked.

"Gone," Rigsby replied sadly. "They took him to go in the machines."

Teal'c closed his eyes for a moment in silent respect. "Very well," he said. "There is an armoury on the next floor up; the security between here and there is light. Once you are all armed, make your way down three floors and exit through the kitchen door. Go south for thirty paces, then head south-south-east and you will avoid the guards completely. After that..."

Rigsby held up his hand. "We know the deal," he assured Teal'c.

"I take it you've got other business?" Hudson asked.

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.

Hudson offered his hand. "Good hunting, buddy," he said.

*

Unaware that a dozen armed prisoners would soon be heading her way, the Ghost slipped out of hiding and crept along the corridor to the kitchen. To her alarm, she saw that there was a guard in the passage outside the kitchen door. There was no possible way that she could approach him unseen, so she opted for the bold approach. She ruffled her hair, disarranged her smock-dress, slipped her knife into her hand and held it concealed behind her arm. She changed her expression, becoming willing, obedient Lotte, and with a slightly drunken stride, emerged into the passage and moved towards the door.

The guard came swiftly to the alert, but lowered his MP40 again when he saw the scarred scrubber-woman approaching, clearly returning late from an assignation with one of the officers who 'took care of her'.

"Keeping you busy?" he asked suggestively.

Lotte smiled at him, allowed him to reach for her, then the Ghost slid her knife beneath his ribs and into his heart. His face froze in an expression of shock and he dropped to the ground. As he fell, the knife was dragged up and lodged in his sternum.

The Ghost let the hilt of the knife go and snatched the bayonet from the man's side. She pushed the door open and went through. A second man stood at the outer door; he turned and saw the Ghost and, slowly, took in the narrow blade in her hand and the blood on her sleeve. He scrabbled with his weapon, but instead of an MP40, he carried a Kar98k carbine to fire accurate shots through a slot in the plate steel door and its length told against him now. With her left hand, the Ghost held the barrel away from her and with her right she thrust the bayonet up in the same killing stroke which had felled the first guard. This time she gave the handle a quick twist to loosen the blade and pulled it free. She let the body fall, then hurried to drag the other guard in from the passage before turning her attention to the door.

The bolts were heavy, but the Ghost was strong. She lifted the bar, dragged back the deadbolts and fetched the heavy iron key from its hook by the range. She unlocked the door, but before she swung it open, she waited for a brilliant light to shine around the cover of the firing slit. Darkness surrounded the castle, broken by the sweeping beam of the searchlights, but the lights would not come back to the door for another five minutes; the patterns were utterly predictable, even on increased alert.

The Ghost gave a sharp, trilling whistle, not unlike the call of a night bird. She waited anxiously; Grebeling would be expecting a ten minute window. She checked her watch and it was less than three minutes before Captain Grebeling and his commandos appeared out of the night and filed through the door, but it felt much longer.

Two of the commandos moved to the door to stand watch. Trying not to meet her eyes, Wilson gave the Ghost a silenced Sten.

"The lab is on higher alert than usual," the Ghost cautioned. She put her shoulder to the door and pushed it closed. Moments later the light returned. "I don't know why, but there were two guards on the kitchen and the searchlight patterns have changed. Fortunately, most of the staff have gone off-duty; one lock turned and they will all be sealed in the dormitory wing."

"Sheffield; that's you and Turpin," Grebeling instructed. "Then back here and secure our retreat. Wilson, take Travis to deal with the main generator room; Miller and I will hit the research archive. Miss Leman, I need you to take Dr Carter to the laboratories; she's the only one who'll be able to make head or tail of it."

"We'll start with Hochmann's biology labs and work our way to the main lab," Sally added. "We'll leave an explosive charge in each lab to make sure the Nazis don't get anything more from them.

"All teams rendezvous back here in forty minutes; we leave at twenty-forty-five hours and no later."

He looked around at his team. Six men and two women against a fortress full of Nazi soldiers. Somehow, he liked their odds.

*

Klingsor turned to Dr Hochmann. "Return to the medical room," he instructed. "Prepare for a full examination of the man and his symbiote."

"His sym..."

"Prepare the medical room!" Klingsor snapped.

"Yes, Sir," Hochmann replied.

Sam chuckled as the medical officer left. "You're very convincing," she told Klingsor.

Klingsor gave a wry smile. "Practice makes perfect," he assured her. "A Jaffa, in 1941!" he laughed. "Whatever track this Dr Carter comes from, you have to admire her temerity; and to come here without identification!"

Sam gave a cough. "What about..." She nodded towards Inge.

"Dr Weiss?" Klingsor turned to look at the scientist; Inge looked back at him, staring like a rabbit caught in the headlights. "Well, she's already worked out that we're not of this time," Klingsor remarked. "I doubt she will overhear much that she could not work out for herself. She is a remarkably clever young woman," he added, favouring Inge with a smile that made her blush and Sam shiver. It was so like Daniel's smile, but she could sense the artifice behind it; this Daniel – if he was even called Daniel – did not smile like that naturally.

"Why don't you go and join the search?" he suggested. "I'm sure you'd like a crack at an alternate and if you're with one of the search teams then they won't keep bursting in here thinking that you're her."

Sam hesitated; that might be what Gudrun Carter would want, but she did not want to leave Inge and Klingsor alone with the Kurtzweiler engine. By the time she got back, they could have warped history into the perverted form that produced Gudrun and Klingsor in the first place. She struggled to think of an excuse, but then something struck her: Klingsor had not ordered her away; he had suggested that she go.

She was in charge.

"If they come here, you can tell them who I am," she assured him. "I am interested to see how brilliant this woman's mind is. Why don't we see what she makes of the truth behind her work?"

Klingsor looked uncertain. "The truth?"

Sam forced a confident smile. He has to be an archaeologist, she told herself. "Yes." She took a seat and adopted the pose of an intent observer. "Tell her about the device; the lodestone. Tell her what it really is."

*

Corporal Sheffield worked the tumblers in the dormitory door lock until they clicked into place. He tested the door and found it locked. He took a dummy key from his pocket, thrust it into the lock and gave a sharp twist, breaking the end off so that the lock was jammed.

"That ought to hold them," he told his partner.

"We should just gas the bastards in their sleep," Private Turpin muttered. His family were gypsies and his hatred of the Nazis – and by extension of all Germans – was awesome to behold.

"Whatever," Sheffield replied. "Back to the kitchen."

Grebeling took up a position just inside the doors of the research archive, a long room in which all of the notes made by the scientists in the Castle were filed for future reference. Lance-Corporal Miller, an academic in civilian life, made his way along the shelves as quickly as possible. His brief was to steal any research that looked important and complete and to destroy the rest of the archives.

"Anything good?" Grebeling asked.

Miller paused and took from the shelf the first of eight leather-bound journals. He thumbed quickly through the pages and gave a low whistle.

"Corporal?"

"I think I've definitely found something," Miller replied.

Sergeant Wilson and Private Travis had much further to go than the others. They managed to go down two levels without being seen or heard, but they were on a flight of spiral stairs when they heard the sound of someone coming up towards them, endeavouring not to be heard. Wilson motioned for Travis to take what cover he could.

The footsteps were only a few metres away when they heard a voice from below cry: "Halt!" followed by a sustained burst of gunfire.

Wilson shrugged and gestured for Travis to follow him. They moved cautiously down the stairs. After a short distance they could, by peering around the central pillar, see a group of men in tattered fatigues, exchanging fire with a small number of German guards. Wilson lifted his Sten to his shoulder and fired a short cluster of shots at the nearest guard.

The fight ended quickly, the remaining guards being overwhelmed. The other men turned to continue up the stairs and came face to face with Wilson.

"Anyone in charge here?" Wilson asked.

"Sergeant Henry Hudson, US Army Intelligence," one of the men replied. "Good to see you guys. Need a hand with anything?"

Sheffield signalled for Turpin to fall back at the sound of approaching voices. They ducked around a corner and hunkered down out of sight, Sten guns ready.

"...is ridiculous!" a familiar voice was saying. "I am Elke Kundrie, with the Gestapo. This 'Dr Carter' of whom you speak is an impostor and an intruder, you fools."

"Whatever you say, Fraulein," a man replied. "Just keep moving."

Sheffield leaned out and saw a group of for guards, escorting a woman in a grey Nazi uniform. She did indeed look very similar to Dr Carter, although not identical by any means.

"What the hell is going on?" Turpin wondered.

Sheffield shrugged. "Let's ask her," he suggested.

The moved to the corner and took position. On Sheffield's signal, they fired together, putting five bullets in the back of each of the guards walking behind the woman.

"Down!" Sheffield called to her and she did indeed drop to the ground, but as a third guard fell, she picked up an MP40 and fired on her would-be rescuers.

"Back!" Sheffield ordered Turpin. "Get b..."

*

"If you're sure?" Klingsor asked Sam.

She motioned for him to continue and he turned to face Inge. "What you call the lodestone is an artefact of an Ancient race; it is called the Dahak Casket. If you could read the inscriptions instead of merely manipulating them, you would know that."

"I said that we should have scholars work on the language," Inge said, "but there is a rivalry between the scriptural and scientific arms of the Ahnenerbe and Dr von Kurtzweiler did not want to share the lode...The Dahak Casket."

"Well, he's a clod," Klingsor declared.

"He is a great scholar!" Inge protested.

Klingsor shrugged. "Zoroastrian mythology speaks of Azi-Dahaka, or Dahak, the Storm Serpent, a terrible dragon who rises up in the service of the Demiurge, Ahriman, to destroy the world."

"The Demiurge?" Inge asked.

"According to Zoroastrianism, the creator, Ahura Mazda, created the ideal world of spirit," Sam explained, "but then his son, Ahriman, created the world of matter and so brought evil to the universe."

Klingsor grinned at her and this smile was not forced. "She listens," he remarked.

"Sometimes," Sam replied.

"But yes, Ahriman is the creator of the flawed universe of matter and he is also its would-be destroyer; the Demiurge. This Casket contains the power of Dahak, a being who once spanned all of time and space, and it is – it will be – the key to the domination of the Third German Reich and its mistress, the Supreme Reichsführerin. Because of his panchronic and omnipresent nature, the Dahak entity created a bridge from any point in time and space to any – to every – other point. Even contained as it is, its power can be used as a temporal gateway."

Inge's eyes widened. "Because although it has been spatially restricted – it now exists only within the Casket – it is still present in all times at...Well, I would have said 'at once', except that for a being existing simultaneously in all time zones, any words relating to linear time become meaningless."

Good God, Sam thought to herself. She is a genius. Then, with a slight sense of resentment: She's smarter than I am!

"Precisely," Klingsor agreed with a smile. "After the basic principles of the Casket's use for temporal transference were established – and abandoned as impractical – I translated the inscriptions and we learned how to use the device. The SS Temporal Division was created to handle the device and the Alignment Protection Group was formed to provide the field teams who would actually travel through the portal, both to strengthen the rule of the Reichsführerin and to prevent incursions from alternate historical tracks.

"History can be changed, you see," Klingsor went on, "and each time it is changed, the old history remains as a...ghost; a potential future, relative to the point of incidence. Usually, any attempt to change history fails; changes are washed out in the flow of time. But there are key points, often seemingly unimportant, at which the course of the future can be radically altered. One thing and one thing alone determines when these points are."

"The Dahak Casket," Inge whispered.

"Exactly. It is not the only known method of time travel," he assured her, "but it is the one most likely to put a traveller in a position to affect the future, because history is easiest to alter when the Casket is open, and you can only travel to a time when at least the outer seals have been released."

"Extraordinary," Inge said.

"Now what I do not understand is the presence of another version of Kundrie with a Jaffa associate," he admitted. "We were sent here to prevent a catastrophic event which would lead to the lessening of the Reichsführerin's power, but if we are here, why would she be sent as well? Communication through the portal is possible; they could simply have updated us."

"Perhaps she is from an alternate stream," Sam suggested. "Perhaps she is even here to stop the Reichsführerin coming to power. How do you suppose...?" she began, but before she could ask how Klingsor would stop the rise of the Reich, he turned and shot her.

A zat blast jumped from his pistol and struck her in the chest; the familiar burning pain rushed through her. She fell off her chair and lay on the floor, trying to move her unresponsive limbs.

Inge gave a small scream.

Klingsor moved a switch on the side of the pistol. "This weapon is now on its maximum setting," he told her. "It is similar to the zat'nik'tel that you brought with you, but on this setting it will simply disintegrate any target with one shot."

"But...why?" Inge asked.

"Because I know my partner well," Klingsor replied, "and she would never even consider the possibility that a version of herself could be completely against the Reichsführerin. Up," he ordered Sam, as the strength slowly returned to her body. "We'll leave you in the medical room, where you can be properly restrained. Dr Weiss, I shall return shortly. Keep up the good work."

Inge felt shell-shocked. At first it had been easy enough to accept that Dr Carter was a time-traveller; after all, that was what she was working on. Now, however, things were more complicated. There were, it seemed, two identical women, with different names, who came from different versions of the same future year, all tied together by the multidimensional entity that was locked up in the transformer box in her laboratory, behind ancient seals that...

Inge's eyes widened in alarm. "The seals!" The engine had not been shut down; she had severed the power and the safety locks had not been set. That meant that the second layer of seals must still be open.

She hurried to check the interface which would allow her to manipulate the seal sigils, but a stink of burned metal rose from the panel and underneath the vacuum tubes had shattered. Inge swallowed hard: she would have to do this manually. With trembling hands, Inge unlocked the casing of the Kurtzweiler engine. She took a deep breath, held it, then lifted the lid.

With a cry, Inge stumbled back as the black light of the Dahak core spilled out of the casing. She had never seen the Casket with its seals open before and the black light terrified her; it looked wrong, a thing that radiated from its source like light but which cast shadows instead of banishing them. It hurt her eyes to look at it. When the lid crashed back down, she could hardly believe what she had seen.

Inge took three more deep breaths to steady her nerves, then she closed her eyes and opened the casing by touch, feeling for the prop and setting it in place to hold the lid. Steeling herself, she opened her eyes.

Constrained by the walls of the casing, the lid of the Casket had not opened far, but a long, straight crack ran laterally along the centre of the lid and the black light spilled from this gap. In its darkness, it was difficult for Inge to make out the sigils, let alone see how to manually return them to their closed position. Tentatively, she reached for a design that she could see.

At that moment, an explosion made the laboratory floor shake; the general alarm sounded and a voice crackled over the tannoy to announce an intruder alert. Inge could almost feel the tension growing in the air around her and, as though in response to that tension, the black light grew more intense and the Casket seemed to throb.

It was too much for Inge. She turned, snatched up her journal and fled from the laboratory.

*

"So why are you here?" Klingsor asked.

"Why are you going by an assumed name?" Sam responded.

"Historical confidence," he replied derisively.

"Why didn't I think of that," Sam drawled.

"You really don't know what historical confidence is?"

"No."

"You really are very ill-informed for a...for a..." Klingsor began to laugh. "You're not a time-traveller at all!" he realised. "You're here by accident."

Sam blushed. The floor shuddered and suddenly Sam wanted to smash Klingsor's face in.

Klingsor stopped laughing. "Do you feel that?"

"An explosion," Sam scoffed.

"No, not that; an irrational rage."

"I hardly feel it's irrational."

Klingsor swallowed hard. "It is. Shoes off!" he commanded.

"What?"

"Take your shoes off and resist any urge to hit me. Once you start, you won't be able to stop, believe me."

Klingsor waited until Sam had one shoe off, then took a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He bent down and, keeping her covered with the pistol, hitched up his trouser leg and snapped one end of the cuff around his bare ankle.

"What are you doing?"

"Socks as well," he said.

"Socks?"

"Off! And walk off the carpet; bare feet on the stone."

"You are completely insane," Sam accused, but he had the sidearm and she obeyed. "This is rid..." As her foot touched the stone, Sam felt her anger bleed away, almost as though it had never been. "Explain," she said simply.

"Dahak," Klingsor replied.

*

Hochmann hear the sound of voices and running feet and went to the door of the medical room. In the corridor, chaos reigned; the science staff were in a panic and raced along the passage in a mob. As he turned to see what had frightened them, he saw Dr Carter approaching, with a pair of MP40s slung across her shoulders. He tried to call out a warning to the guards, but before he could make a sound she had seized him and propelled him back into the room.

"Dr Hochmann!" Nurse Grau called out.

"Dr Carter!" Hochmann protested.

"I am Nurse Elke Kundrie with the Gestapo!" the woman who looked like Carter insisted. "That bitch is running around in my uniform, with my pass, and you are going to help me find her."

Dr Hochmann had many flaws, but he was a shrewd judge of character and it was easy to see that this was not the same woman he had met – albeit briefly – the previous day. That one had not this much rage in her.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"We need a security detail," she replied. "There are British commandos in this castle. I killed two of them, but there are more, I am sure of it. Most importantly, however, we must catch my counterpart before she destroys everything I have ever worked for."

"Dr Hochmann, what is going on?" Nurse Grau demanded, more forcefully than Hochmann was used to.

"Just stay here!" he snapped impatiently. In truth, he was rapidly losing track of events himself, but he was not about to confess that to a lowly nurse.

"Quickly, Herr Doktor!" Kundrie called.

"That is no nurse," Hochmann grumbled, but he followed her anyway.

Nurse Grau stayed where she was for a few minutes, but the noises outside the room were getting louder and angrier. She crossed to Hochmann's desk and took the Luger pistol from his top drawer. So protected, she emerged into the corridor and joined the press of scientists fighting to reach the perceived safety of the open air.

Inge's past exposure to the energies of the Dahak Casket stood her in good stead to resist it now. She was gripped by frustration and she lashed out at anyone who came too near, but she retained the sense to avoid the crowds and so kept her fury in check. She ducked into one of the latrines to avoid a group of Dr Hochmann's SS soldiers and found a moment to clear her thoughts. Her journal was still clutched beneath her arm and that gave her a focus.

"My research," she murmured to herself.

All was quiet outside and she set out for the archive.

It was Grebeling who found the bodies of his men; Sheffield and Turpin. They had made a good account of themselves, it seemed, but he could not stifle a flash of anger at them for allowing themselves to be drawn into a firefight in the first place, an anger which threatened to well up into violence. Miller set down his bag of files to keep watch while Grebeling stooped to remove Sheffield's tags and close the corporal's eyes. He moved on to do the same for Turpin, but the gypsy's dark eyes flickered in recognition.

"Dr...Carter," Turpin croaked. "They were looking for..." His eyes closed for the last time.

"Good lad," Grebeling sighed, lifting off the private's tags. "Miller; main lab, and fast."

*

"Stand still and keep quiet," Klingsor told Sam. "I have to close the seals or we'll all be destroyed." He moved to the open casing of the Kurtzweiler engine and set down his pistol in easy reach.

"How is it doing this?" Sam demanded. "It's a tesseract; it shouldn't be making people crazy!"

"It isn't just a tesseract," Klingsor explained, moving his hands deftly across its surface. Where he touched, the sigils lit up and slid across the surface beneath his fingers. "The Casket does not merely contain Dahak's power; it contains Dahak itself; the most powerful and destructive being which ever existed, or the remains of it, at least. Dahak is a living tesseract; a psychic entity, aware and perhaps intelligent. It feeds on strife and it creates strife. Uncontained, the psychic influence invokes feelings of mindless aggression in all...in most people."

"Some are immune?"

"Some are resistant, but none are completely immune. But that was not what I meant."

"Then what?" Sam asked.

"Scientist to the last; in that, if nothing else, you are like Gudrun. Some people experience an almost violent..." Klingsor looked awkward for a moment; it seemed that he had some things in common with Daniel. "A...ah, sexual response."

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"Anyway, that is a minority," Klingsor assured her. "If I can not close the seals, this castle will be torn apart by the suppressed rage of its inhabitants and the effect will spread to the village. A high price for a handful of people getting their rocks off!"

As Sam struggled to take this in, the lights went out. Sam did not hesitate; she knew exactly where her P90 lay and she snatched it up. The darkness had a strange quality, thick and cloying, but Sam knew where Klingsor was; she ducked and aimed at him.

"Dr Carter?" Klingsor called. She heard the hiss of his pistol activating.

Red, emergency lighting flickered on. Klingsor's pistol was aimed right at Sam; her P90 directly at him. Another hiss indicated a second weapon powering up.

"Lower your weapon and step away from the device," Teal'c ordered.

*

Inge touched the door to the archive and recoiled. The metal was hot; the room beyond was on fire.

"No!" she wailed, desolate. Her notes, the sum total of seven years work, were burned to ash.

"Inge!"

She turned at the unfamiliar voice and was shocked to see Dr von Kurtzweiler moving towards her. He sounded different, angry and passionate, and there was a gleam in his eye that terrified her.

"Herr Doktor?" she asked.

Von Kurtzweiler leered at her. In his slack-mouthed, lecherous, possessive expression, she saw at last the waste and abuse to which her talents had been subjected. "Come here, Inge my dear."

Inge backed away. "Please, Herr Doktor. The archive..."

"Yes," he hissed. "More private."

He lunged forward and caught Inge by the wrist. With his free hand he groped for the door handle, oblivious to the smoke that coiled from his burning flesh.

"No, Herr Doktor!" Inge screamed.

She dropped her journal and threw a clumsy punch at von Kurtzweiler's face. He was not hurt, but recoiled a little, allowing her to wrench free of his grip. Dr von Kurtzweiler turned the handle and thrust the door wide. For a moment he stood, watching Inge, flames reflected in his eyes and on his skin, lending him an infernal air, and then the flames leaped from the doorway and engulfed him.

Inge screamed and ran.

Von Kurtzweiler yelled his defiance to the flames until his throat was too scorched to make a sound. At the dying man's feet, the pages of Inge's journal curled and browned in the heat.

Nurse Grau stumbled and fell to her knees. She put out her hands to catch herself and almost immediately snatched them back so as not to get her fingers trampled on. Rough hands caught her around the waist and pulled her upright. She struggled free and turned to see Sturmmann Folker. He grabbed hold of her again and dragged her against him. Her heart was pounding and her skin was flushed, but she thought that was probably just from running so hard.

"This way!" he yelled, pointing back the way she had just come. "Stairs to the freight bay in the lower bailey!"

She nodded and they ran.

*

Cut off from the main lab by the stream of panicked and enraged scientists, the Ghost led Sally Carter up a level, across and down. They emerged into the corridors near to the laboratory. All seemed quiet, but as they started along the passage, three guards rounded the corner ahead, two in Wehrmacht brown and one in SS grey. Their eyes were wide and mad with rage.

The three men charged blindly at the women. The first two ran straight into the fire from the two Sten guns, but fury carried them through. It took almost an entire clip to make them stop and fall and the third man sprang over the bodies and grappled with the Ghost. He grabbed at her wrists, bearing down on her with all his strength and weight. Even up close, with his face against hers, it was hard for the Ghost to recognise the gate officer who had flirted with Lotte that morning.

A knife glittered in the man's hands; Sally Carter tried to find a clear shot, but could not.

"Herr Leutnant!" Footsteps pounded along the passageway and strong hands pulled the man back. There was a struggle, the Leutnant's knife flashed and a Luger barked sharply.

The Ghost struggled up as her rescuer ran over and took her gently by the arms. "Lotte! Are you...?" Lutz stopped, seeing Sally Carter, the Sten guns and the flak jackets. "What does this...?" He broke off again.

"I'm sorry," Lotte whispered.

Lutz staggered back two steps and fell over the Leutnant's body. He lay still, with a knife in his heart.

"Lotte," Sally said, softly. "Um...Ghost?"

Lotte did not move or speak.

*

Teal'c stepped forwards, his face contorted in a look of rage that she had not seen on his face since he had finally succeeded in killing Tanith. "Daniel Jackson?" he asked, confused. Klingsor looked thunderstruck.

"Teal'c," Sam said, softly.

The pistol swung towards her.

"Careful, Dr Carter," Klingsor said. "He's fighting his symbiote's rage as well as his own and that pistol is on maximum power."

Sam lowered her weapon and took a step towards Teal'c. "It's alright, Teal'c," she said. "Just let the man work, and give me your hand."

For a moment, it looked as though Teal'c might actually shoot her, but then he held out his free hand and she grasped it, tightly. She could feel the power which gripped him pass across their linked hands, down through her body and into the metal earthing plates on which she stood. The rage left Teal'c's eyes.

"Major Carter," he said.

"Welcome back," she replied. "Keep your hand on that grounding rod until I say otherwise," she suggested, "and Klingsor; back to work."

"Yes, Ma'am," Klingsor agreed. He set down his pistol and turned back to the Casket. Sam came to his side and watched everything he did, trying to burn the sequence into her mind, just in case she needed to duplicate it sometime.

At last, the Casket closed; the crack between the two sides of the lid closed and once more the lid was a single, undivided slab. Although the rage was not touching her, Sam could feel it drain away with the closing of the seal.

Klingsor moved his hands across the centre of the lid, closing the outermost seal. "Done," he said. "And I am," he sighed.

"Klingsor?"

"The Casket is sealed, the door is closed," he explained. "I can not go home without opening the Casket again, and I do not intend to do so."

Sam shared a worried look with Teal'c. This did not sound good.

*

"Ghost!" Sally snapped, risking a shout. She realised that her hand had been tight on the grip of her Sten gun, ready to shoot Lotte in the back, when her urge to kill anything had at last left her. Shocked, Sally relaxed her grip. "Lotte?"

"Yes? Sorry," Lotte said, finally emerging from her funk. She bent and slipped a new bayonet from the belt of one of the fallen.

A soft voice called from ahead of them: "Five!"

"Um...Silver!" Sally responded.

Grebeling and Miller rounded the corner. "Are you two feeling alright?" he asked, concerned.

"Got a bit...odd," Sally admitted. "Seems to have passed though."

The captain nodded. "Sheffield and Turpin are dead; I'm scrubbing the mission. That lab'll be a fortress by now."

Sally shook her head. "I'm not so sure, now," she replied. "The place is in an uproar and I'd hate to come back without the gold when we've paid so much."

"I'm not taking the risk," Grebeling insisted, although he nodded his head to acknowledge his understanding. "We go, now."

"Wait!" Lotte called. "I can get out easily enough. Give me whatever explosives you have left and I will take care of the laboratory."

"Ghost..." Sally began.

"Lotte," she insisted. "My name is Lotte." Her eyes strayed to the body of Obergefreiter Lutz as she spoke.

Sally nodded. "Alright." She took out her last explosive charge and gave it to Lotte. "Just don't do anything stupid."

"I'll try not to," Lotte replied.

Grebeling nodded and passed Lotte another charge. "Good luck, Miss Leman."

*

Sam passed Teal'c his staff weapon and tucked his zat into her pocket. She shouldered her pack, having decided that she would need her computer if she were to find her way home.

"Alright. What do we do next?"

The lab door burst open. "Put your weapons down and raise your hands!" Gudrun Carter suggested. She came through the doorway, quickly, followed by a trio of guards and Dr Hochmann. Five MP40s were held at the ready.

"Over here, Klingsor," Gudrun Carter ordered. "And drop your weapons!" she insisted.

Sam crouched and laid down the P90. After a moment, Teal'c followed her lead. Klingsor obeyed as well, walking around to stand beside his commanding officer.

"So, it seems I will have a chance to dissect you after all," Hochmann told Teal'c.

"Why are you here?" Gudrun Carter demanded, ignoring both Teal'c and the doctor. "Our goals can not be so different; we could work together."

Sam tried to come up with a convincing story, but she had overworked that part of her brain in the last two days and nothing came to her. Fortunately, she was saved from babbling some nonsense that would serve only to humiliate her when the cough of silenced gunfire sounded in the corridor and two of the guards fell dead. Teal'c reacted like lightning, kicking his staff back to his hands; Sam pulled the zat from her pocket and dropped the third. Teal'c's staff snapped open and burned a hole through Hochmann's gut.

Gudrun Carter turned her weapon on Sam, but it seemed that she found it hard to pull the trigger on 'herself'. She swung the muzzle of the MP40 towards Teal'c, but Klingsor pushed the barrel down and fetched his erstwhile partner a hefty blow to the jaw which laid her out.

A scar-faced girl entered the laboratory with a Sten gun at her shoulder. "Halt! Put your weapons down!" she commanded.

Sam sighed. "This is getting repetitive," she noted.

"Weapons down and move to the corner. I don't want to kill you, but I will if I must."

"What are you going to do?" Sam asked, laying down her zat.

"I'm going to blow up this lab," the girl announced.

Very slowly, Sam swung down her pack, opened the top and pulled out a dull, grey block of plastic explosive. "PBX?" she offered.

*

"Four!"

"Boy!" Grebeling called out. The kitchen passage was littered with bodies; apparently a lot of people had tried to get out that way without giving the correct countersign.

"No sign of Sheffield and Turpin," Wilson reported.

"They didn't make it," Grebeling replied. "We're all here and...And you brought some friends."

"Escaped prisoners, Sir," Wilson explained. "There's more going on here than we know. They've been experimenting on POWs and something had us practically at each others throats in the generator room."

Grebeling nodded. "We'll work it out later, or rather, Doc Carter will. Let's just get the hell out of here."

"Sir."

As the team began their retreat, Grebeling came up alongside Sally. "First field op?" he asked.

She nodded.

"You did well. Most civvies would have bottled it by now."

Sally gave a nervous laugh. "I'm panicking on the inside," she assured him.

"You think I'm not?" he asked. "Look; when we get back to Blighty..."

Sally gave a nervous cough. "I'm married," she told him.

"Damnit." Grebeling shook his head, regretfully. "Ah well; let's get you home before he starts to worry."

*

The girl accepted the offering of what was obviously some sort of explosive, but she still regarded them with suspicion as she set about placing charges on the machines. Sam was not sure that many of the devices in the lab could have been more damaged than they were.

"No!" Klingsor called out.

"Sit down!"

Klingsor ignored her warning and moved towards her. "The Casket is not the source of the power, it is a container. If you destroy the Casket, you unleash Dahak upon the universe and everything ends. Close that casing, keep it shielded or else..."

"Beware!" Teal'c called.

Klingsor and the girl turned and saw Gudrun rise from the floor, weapon in hand. As she pulled the trigger, Klingsor moved, pushing the girl aside so that the bullets meant for her hit him instead.

"No!" Gudrun cried.

Sam dived across the floor and snatched up her P90. She swung around and, before doubt could grip her, pulled the trigger. Sam felt pain explode through her head and the world spun into darkness.

*

The Magpie team's explosives sent gouts of flame shooting from the windows of the castle. The structure shook, greatly weakened by the series of blasts. The team themselves saw none of this and neither did Sam or Teal'c; they were already far away. The girl with the scarred face, Lotte, took them to a shelter in the woods, Klingsor leaning heavily on her for support and Teal'c carrying the unconscious Sam.

"It's just time-shock," Klingsor assured the Jaffa. "Seeing yourself die is traumatic; people frequently experience physical trauma in sympathy with their slain self."

"I have seen myself die twice and experienced no ill-effects," Teal'c assured him.

"Frequently; not always."

The shelter was an old cabin, obviously long abandoned. There were basic first aid supplies and Teal'c tried to bind Klingsor's wounds, but he could see that there was little hope.

"Good of you to try," Klingsor said.

"You share the appearance of a friend of mine," Teal'c explained.

"Yes; Daniel Jackson, you said."

"Indeed."

Klingsor sighed. "There's a name I do not hear often." He reached inside his jacket and produced an ID card. As Gudrun Carter's had done, at the press of a thumb it changed from Karl Klingsor's Gestapo warrant card to an Alignment Protection Group warrant in the name of Dr Dieter Jackson, PhD. "But my name isn't really Dieter," he went on. "It is Daniel."

"How did you and Gudrun Carter come to work together?" Teal'c asked.

"In 1945," this other Daniel Jackson explained, "the Allies were on the verge of winning the Second World War when a pair of long-range rocket planes called the Jeh and the Angra Manyu were dispatched to drop experimental atomic weapons on Washington and London. The death toll was massive and the aftermath horrific. A week later the troops arrived; driven, ruthless and implacable. Much later, the survivors of England and the USA learned that Hitler had died just before the launch and that the Reich was now led by the Supreme Reichsführerin, Marianna Veidt.

"In the USA, the Gestapo carried out a massive manhunt, searching for enemies of the Reichsführerin, including my grandfather, Mathias Jackson, and one of his close friends, Sally Carter. More specifically, she wanted their children; Sally Carter tried to fight and was cut down, her child taken from her dead arms. My grandfather, however, swore allegiance to the Reich and became a favourite of the Empress."

"He was a coward," Teal'c snarled.

"He was a wise man," Daniel replied, angrily. "He saw that all resistance had fallen and that there would be no victory at that time. So he went with her, he did terrible things in her name, but he made sure that he raised his son, and not the state. He raised his son, and my father raised me, to seek for a way to bring her down. When I found out about the Dahak Casket and learned what it could do, I masterminded the APG as a means of ending her reign before it started. I came here to kill the one person responsible for Veidt's use of the Casket to rule the world.

"I didn't know who I was looking for, precisely, but I found her anyway: Dr Inge Weiss. But she escaped me. I failed."

"What of Gudrun Carter?" Teal'c pressed.

"A loyal servant of the Reich, like her father. I had to lie to her with every breath I took, but she was still my...my best friend," he admitted, momentarily choked with tears. "I'm glad I am dying too. I'd hate to live long enough to have to tell her husband what..."

He sighed. "And all for nothing."

"This is not certain," Teal'c assured him. "I know nothing of this Supreme Reichsführerin."

Daniel shrugged and winced at the pain it caused him. "You must make sure," he said. "Put the Casket beyond use, but do not destroy it, on the lives of the entire universe."

"We shall do so," Teal'c promised.

"And be careful" – Daniel's voice was growing very weak now – "if the Reich is still triumphant, the APG may send other agents after you if the Casket is ever reopened."

"We shall be wary," Teal'c agreed. "You must tell me, however, do you know of a way that we might return to our own time?"

"Not if the Casket is sealed," Daniel replied. "Unless..."

"Unless?" Teal'c pressed, but the light was gone from Daniel's eyes. He was dead.

"Dal shakka mel, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c murmured.

Teal'c and Lotte buried Daniel's body behind the shed, and then burned anything that might have identified him as a member of the Gestapo or the APG. Teal'c also burned his and Major Carter's identification and their distinctive fatigues, replacing them with clothes drawn from the supply at the shelter. Their technological items he kept for the time being, along with a number of unknown gadgets recovered from Daniel Jackson's pockets.

"We keep the clothes here in case we need to get rid of blood-stained garments," Lotte explained in a broken voice. She left the cabin a few moments later and when Teal'c followed he found her weeping.

"You should not be ashamed of your tears," he told her.

"My family were slaughtered and I was not permitted to mourn," she told him. "Since that day I have not shed a tear; how can I not be ashamed that I cry for a Nazi when I could not cry for my murdered sister?"

"He was not a Nazi," Teal'c assured her. "Not in his heart."

"Not him," Lotte replied. "I am not crying for him. It is Pieter Lutz. He was a stupid, romantic boy who thought that his cause could do no evil. The others wanted me to want them, it flattered their egos to have me fawn for their attention, but he truly believed that I could love him. I think that he loved me and I know that he saved my life...and I killed him."

Teal'c sat beside her and gazed with her into the night.

"Sometimes I think that I am cursed," she said. "All those who care for me die: My family; poor, stupid Lutz; even your Daniel Jackson."

"He is not my Daniel Jackson," Teal'c corrected.

"He died for me as well," Lotte said. "Do I bring death?"

Teal'c gave a rough laugh. "In war, it is no misfortune to die," he told her. "Rather, only the very lucky survive." He laid a hand briefly on her shoulder, then stood and left her to her grief.

As he entered the cabin, Teal'c saw that Sam had woken and changed into the clothes he had found.

"They're a good fit," she told him, "although I'm not mad about the colour."

Teal'c gave her a brief summary of their escape, explained where they were and told her that Daniel Jackson was dead.

She nodded. "There are a couple of interesting bits in among his gear," she told him. "I believe that I can use his communicator and this recall device" – she held up a small box – "to rig a scanner that will allow us to track other time-travellers. If the SS send anyone else after us we'll have a warning and we may get lucky and locate the Colonel or our Daniel."

"That is good," Teal'c agreed, "but there are more immediate concerns. We must establish identities here; in a war zone, those who do not belong, die."

"Agreed."

"Daniel Jackson was insistent that to prevent the Supreme Reichsführerin Marianna Veidt taking absolute control of the world, we must prevent her from seizing the Casket. We must track it, therefore and seek to disable it."

"Also agreed." Sam shook her head. "I'll be honest, Teal'c," she said. "I can't see us ever getting home."

"Then we must simply protect our world for those we care about," Teal'c declared, "even if we shall see neither our time nor our loved ones again."

"Well said," Sam agreed.

A small cough at the door drew their attention to Lotte. "I can no longer do as I once did for the resistance here," she told them. "I believe that it is time for me to move on. May I come with you?"

"I think we'll need all the help we can get," Sam assured her.

*

As the sun rose the next day, it revealed a Castle Walenberg that was a shadow of its former glory. The building itself was burned out and structurally rather unsound, and the cluster of displaced personnel at its foundations looked like a mob of hungry peasants. An SS team had arrived in the early morning to secure whatever could be salvaged from the labs. The soldiers and medical staff were ordered to find billets in the village – and the villagers were only too happy to oblige, despite the damage done to their town by the commandos who had attacked the castle – while the scientists were taken away by truck to await reassignment, following a full enquiry.

The SS team was led by a small, dead-eyed man named Klemper, who wore no uniform, but commanded both fear and respect. He strode along the line of personnel making their way to the village, noting an SS-Sturmmann and an attractive nurse locked in a passionate embrace.

"Straighten up and show some dignity!" he snapped. "Save that behaviour for the bedroom."

"Yes, Mein Herr!" Folker replied, but Klemper had already moved on.

Klemper picked his way through the wreckage of the laboratory section until he reached the main lab. The ceiling had collapsed and it looked as though the floor were about to do the same. A familiar feeling prickled across his skin and he found his mouth watering in anticipation.

"Obersturmführer!" he called. "Get this mess cleared. I want to see what is left."

The SS troops worked for nine hours to clear the main lab and, at last, uncovered nothing more than an ornately inscribed coffin, made from some quartz-like material; for some reason it had been sealed in a steel box and had survived the blast intact.

"Carry on," Klemper ordered and he waited for the soldiers to clear the room. Then he ran his hand across the surface of the Casket, caressing the stone as though it were the skin of a lover. "At last," he said, a chuckle staring deep in his throat and building into a booming, sinister laugh. His eyes flashed white and his voice was a deep in human growl as he said: "At last, it is time."