The Apprentice

Chapter Four: The Stargate

Briefing Room, the next day

Immediately after figuring out that the symbols in the middle of the cover stone were constellations, Daniel and I had raced to inform Catherine. Catherine had then informed Kawalsky, who informed his superiors. Which is why I was now following Kawalsky and Daniel into the briefing room where several military officers, Myers, Shore, and Catherine were waiting for us to explain what the symbols meant.

"Hi, hello," Daniel exclaims, looking at the people around him.

Some of them nodded at him in greeting, but that's about it. I just glared at each of them, and in turn some of them glared back at me. I'm pretty much a quiet person; I like to keep to myself a lot if I don't know that many people in a room. Daniel said it probably came from being on my own for some time after my parent's death.

"Right here," Kawalsky stated, indicating two chairs for us.

"Jackson, Adolfina, I'd like you to meet General West," Catherine introduced.

West approached us and shook Daniel's hand, then held his hand out to me. I eyed his hand for a second before reluctantly shaking the offered hand.

"So, you two think you've solved in 14 days what they couldn't solve in two years?" West asked.

"Two years?" Daniel asked, surprised.

"Any time," West stated, ignoring Daniel's dumbfounded expression.

Jack entered the room just as Daniel started passing out several rolls of papers. Jack eyed me again for a second as if he still thought I shouldn't be here, and I just glared at him.

"Um, we have stuff for you to look at. Just, um, pass-pass them down. Um, you'll have to share them, cause' I um... sorry, I- don't have enough of those. But anyway," Daniel sat down took a quick breath then continued, "Okay, all right, we're obviously looking at a picture of the cover stones. Now on the outer track, these figures that you would believe to be words to be translated were, in fact..."

Daniel stood up and started shuffling his papers around. Some of the large pieces of paper he accidentally pushed onto some of the people next to him as he rolled out a star chart.

"Were in fact star constellations, now these constellations were placed in a unique order forming a map or an address of sorts. Seven points to outline a course to a position," Daniel continued, turning to a metal wall behind us.

There was a picture of the cover stones taped up on the wall, and Daniel tapped up another paper which he started to draw on.

"And uh... to find a destination within any three-dimensional space, you need six points to determine the exact location," Daniel stated, drawing a cube and placing a dot in the center of each of the six "sides" of the cube.

"You said you needed seven points," West interrupted.

"Well yeah duh, six for the destination, and the seventh for the point of origin," I replied, rolling my eyes.

"Except there's only six symbols in the cartouche," Myers stated.

"Well the seventh actually isn't inside the cartouche, it's just below it, here designated by a little pyramid with two funny neat little guys and funny little line coming out of the top," Daniel answered, drawing it.

"They did it," Catherine muttered.

"No, that symbol isn't anywhere on the device," Myers exclaimed.

I looked up at him questioningly. Device?

"Uh-what device?" Daniel asked.

West looked over at Jack and Jack just shrugged at him.