Free SG1-15 The Power Behind the Throne by Steven Savile Page A

away. By the time the dust cleared Jack could see a series of uneven handholds where the bullets had bitten into the face. He holstered the pistol and climbed quickly hand over hand.
    The others came up behind him.
    Five red spurs of oxidized iron rimmed the opening of the old man’s eye. Jack grasped one and heaved himself through. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to find on the other side, other than an all-encompassing darkness. But it wasn’t dark, not properly. A peculiar phosphorescence emanated from the lichen lining the passage as it twisted away down into the belly of the rock. The weird illumination was enough to light the way, but not enough to banish the hiding places offered by the shadows. Stalactites dripped down from the roof of the passage, in places meeting the stalagmites that had risen up beneath the steady drip, drip, drip.
    “What do you make of this place?”
    “I’d say it satisfies the basic needs of shelter,” Carter said, “and if that fungus is edible, sustenance.”
    “If you’re asking
me
what I think,” said Daniel. “I’d say it’s creepy.”
    “You think? Teal’c?”
    “Major Carter is correct in her assumption that the cave offers the basic necessities of warmth and shelter,” Teal’c agreed, looking around at the curious constructions.
    “So we’re talking possible Mujina refuge?”
    “Possible,” Sam said. “But there could be an entire planet of possible places.”
    “But not through the old man’s eyes,” Daniel disagreed.
    “That’s good enough for me. Okay boys and girls, in we go,” Jack gave the order, indicating eyes right to Sam and Teal’c, eyes left to Daniel. He peered deeper into the darkness. He was sweltering within his suit despite the respite from the fluctuating freeze and burn extremes of the world above. The world below offered its own set of torments. Suffering wasn’t unique to the surface.
    “Would you look at this place,” Jack marveled. He reached out, his fingers lingering over the crystalline base of one of the pillars. It was huge, more than double his arm-span in circumference, and appeared to be pitted with hundreds upon thousands of these intricate hexagonal flaws, like the facets of a diamond. He felt his words resonate through the structure, amplified by the crystals. “Weird.”
    It wasn’t only the sound, it was the light as well; the phosphorescent lichen imbued the strange walls with an eerie glow all of their own. Jack peered at — into — the glassy surface, trying to make out what, if anything, was hidden beneath. The more he concentrated on a patch of the peculiar light the less he was able to actually focus on it until his vision became a complete blur and a strange ache took root behind his eyes. And still he stared at the wall until it looked as though life pulsed away deep within the crystals.
    He felt a hand on his shoulder, the contact breaking the hypnotic lure of the light.
    The deeper they went, the more remarkable the structures of the tunnel became. At first it looked as though the stalactites and stalagmites had simply fused together to form a honeycomb but it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t the case. There was a damn sight more than nature’s intelligence at work here — there was the grand design of madness to it all, to every fissure and join of rock.
    “It’s man-made, everything, every last detail. Amazing,” Daniel breathed. “Well, not man, of course, but just look at it, it’s incredible. I mean all of it, right down to the smallest manipulation of the existing strata. Every crystal has been shaped to reflect some bigger pattern. It’s almost as though—”
    “Spit it out, Daniel,” Jack said.
    “Don’t you feel it?”
    “Feel what?”
    “There’s something about the entire place, an atmosphere. It feels almost holy.”
    “Are you saying it’s a temple?”
    “Possibly,” Daniel said, “I mean, look at it, if ever there was a case of a mind searching for some