Ice Henge Observation Post

"Mmm?" Sarah queries, hearing the Major and von Braun speak. She wasn't sure what had been said, but caught things about sensors and the gate, which caught her interest. "We have sensors hooked up to the gate? That could be helpful."

Professor Friedrich Gottjäger

"Merlin was an interesting character.", Friedrich starts suddenly. "There are so many stories about him, whether he existed or not, what he did, what he didn't do. We romanticize the period so much." He pauses for a solid ten seconds, seemingly finished, before he starts again. "As near as we can tell it, if Arthur and Merlin and the whole bit existed at all, it was probably about 400 or 500AD. Do you know what life was like back then in Britain?" He has another lengthy pause before he adds, "It sucked. If Camelot existed at all, it was merely a slightly more peaceful time than the years surrounding it." He pauses again for a long moment, still chewing something over. "All these stories, and books, and movies, descendent from old tales that are distorted by time. The reality was this whole "Camelot" bit just meant you weren't brutally killed and your wife raped by the time you turned twenty."

He sighs, and adds, "It's too bad I can't tell you much more than that. You may be familiar with a tablet of his that was coded. It's possible he ended up out this way, but God alone knows why." He pauses again and adds, "Time travel ethics, bah! What a bunch of nonsense." After a head shake, he finishes with, "That damn air dale should keep her thoughts to herself and just go back to flying toy planes."

"Now hold on one minute," Sarah interjects, looking intently at the elder man. "Arthurian legend is certainly fanciful and have inspired some great stories, at this point we need to consider all possibilities, no matter who brings them up or how outrageous they seem." Her cheeks flushed as she spoke, her voice raised, though not quite shouting. "If everything here operated just like we thought it would," she glances meaningfully over at von Braun, "we would have been off of this ice cube weeks ago and back home. We must keep our mind open."

Sarah takes a few deep breaths before continuing in a more moderate voice. "I really don't care how much sense it makes that the Ancients would have plopped themselves down on Earth thousands years ago and lived in the squalor of the day. And if you think about it, what better place to hide than a place no one would dream of looking? Merlin and Morgan la Fey could easily be considered sorcerers because they knew things that the ordinary folk did not."


"So, what is this about a tablet or book of Merlin's, and do we have any clue about these pentagrams?" she asks with a touch of annoyance in her voice. "We need to figure out wherever the Ancients were trying to lead us, and how we are going to get there." Sarah scowls a little, still not overly fond of being led on a merry chase by a bunch of dead, no ascended beings who were likely sitting back and watching all of this laughing as they froze to death.

Professor Friedrich Gottjäger

Friedrich looks to Sarah, perhaps a bit taken aback by her volume and asks, "Why are you so upset?" He adds a moment later, without even waiting for her to respond, and says, "There's a cipher in one of Merlin's tablets about, you guessed it, time travel. I don't know if he was just particularly smart for his time or if he somehow is an ancient or whatever, but one way or another, he was in the past and wanted to get to the present."

He takes a breath and continues, "One of your Air buddies has speculated that knowing all the velocities of all the particles in the universe could predict the future, but that would lead us right into fate." He looks around the table and says with a grin, "I don't know about you sad sops, but right about now I'm fated to a steak dinner and a cold beer back home."

"Anyway, whoever Merlin was apparently thought that manipulating time itself would be more appropriate than simply trying to predict it or live it, and I think our cipher here is based off of that attempt, futile or workable, I don't know."

He looks to Sarah again and says, "Sarah, really, did you think that air dale remark was aimed at you? You shouldn't be so high strung."

"If I flew planes, I might have," she says levelly. "I'll freely admit that my knowledge of anything even seemingly relevant to our current situation is limited at best, but for some reason I was invited to this party," she says with a glance at von Braun before adding, "But if people's ideas are going to be dismissed," she shifts her look to the other doctor, "because they know how to pilot planes, set bones, or sequence DNA," she says fervently "then we are going to be stuck here a long time."

"So really, I don't quite care who is being insulted." Sarah shifts from her defensive tone to a more neutral one, "I've been called far worse to my face and I'm certain behind my back. What I care about is that ideas are not dismissed out of hand just based on who said them or some preconceived notion of what we would like things to be. That's just bad science."

With a lighter tone and a forced smile she continues,"When we are comfortably enjoying our steak dinner, we can discuss the finer points of Merlin's existence, but for now, let's go with what we have in front of us... stranded on a planet... somewhere, an 11 chevron gate, 45 glyphs that have been seen before in some way dealing with time travel and 10 gate addresses that seem to form pentagrams. Where does that leave us?"

"Stuck in ze snow," grumbles von Braun. "I do note exactly one of ze zekvenzes is in ze reverse order. I zuggest ve try zat one first."

Sarah grumbles, "Which is what I said over an hour ago... " trailing off, though not for a lack of things she wanted to say to the man, as evidenced by the icy glare she directs towards him.

"So with that decided, can we move onto how we are getting up north? I forgot to pack my snow shoes and longboat."

"And this is where calling in Colonel Mitchell and Doctor Jackson would make things so much easier," Eileen grouches. "Myriddin was an Alteran, yes - I guess you missed the mission reports from Glastonbury," she observes, giving Professor Gottjaeger an odd look. "And I concur - the reverse-order dialing sequence is the one we'll try first."

"OK," Sarah comments, "So that's three votes for the pentagon-then-star address." She turns to look at Friedrich, "Dr. von Braun suggested you might be able to shed some light on this... is there any significance in the order you dray the pentagon and star, or was it merely a clue?"