"Doctor Lee?" Sam tried, fiddling with her own radio. "Bill? Daniel, are you and Bill all right?" She looked up, eyes wide and brow furrowed. "I'm not getting anything, sir."
Jack hissed a curse between his teeth. "They were standing right here! They were fiddling around with something on the wall and Lee pushed a button on a doohickey and they just... vanished!" He toggled the radio again and said curtly, "Teal'c, get back here. Daniel and Lee are missing."
"On my way," Teal'c's deep, reassuring voice replied.
Sam took a deep breath and moved into scientist mode. "How exactly did they vanish, sir? Was there a flash of light? Any humming, or some other sound?"
Jack opened his mouth to snap at her, then closed it again. He took a moment to consider.
"It wasn't like an Asgard beam," he said finally. "A kind of yellow light washed around them, and then they weren't there. And no, there was no whine or humming. I'd have recognized humming," he added, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Was it instantaneous?"
Jack drummed his fingers on the barrel of his P-90 as he thought. "No, it took a few seconds."
Sam carefully circled the area where Daniel and Doctor Lee had been standing, not daring to get too close to the innocent looking hieroglyphs incised on the wall and the not-so-innocent looking panel with three exposed Goa'uld crystals and lots of mysterious wiring. "Did the light come from the floor? The ceiling? The panel on the wall?"
Jack frowned, trying to picture that alarming moment in his head. "If anything," he muttered, "I'd say that the light came from Lee."
***
"Nothing," Daniel sighed, fiddling with his earpiece. "Well, it's no big surprise, I guess."
"No, not really," Bill agreed. He took another mouthful of water from his canteen before he added, "Our sound waves have been altered to a completely different frequency. The radios wouldn't be able to pick them up."
"And we can rule out yelling," Daniel continued. "They certainly don't seem to hear us."
"Not for lack of trying." Bill cleared his throat to rid himself of the last hoarseness.
"So we're going to have to find a solution on our own," Daniel concluded. He gave a half shrug. "Well, Bill, you're good at improvising in insane situations. What should we do to get back to our regular selves?"
"Daniel, I don't even know where to start!" Bill moodily prodded a perfectly-shaped oar with his boot. "This doesn't really make any sense."
"Oh, it was pretty routine for the pyramids built in the Middle Kingdom to include grave goods," Daniel said absently. "If you're going to gloriously live happily ever after once you're dead, there's no point in doing it without all the creature comforts you can get. So why not do it in style?"
"No, I meant that - wait a minute. They thought that they could build all these tiny model boats and weapons and dishes, and then they would get them full-sized after they died?" Bill stared at the ranks of carved soldiers, and added, "And come to life, too?"
Daniel settled carefully into a beautifully carved armchair, relaxing when it didn't creak warningly under his weight. "That's what we always thought, yes. But considering what happened to us..." His eyebrows quirked upwards. "Who knows?"
Bill squeezed his eyes shut, gave his head a quick shake, and tried to drag the conversation back on track. "I meant," he said patiently, "that there doesn't seem to be much sense in a Goa'uld installing a miniaturization beam in a pyramid. What would be the point?"
"Hmmmm... Good question." Daniel rubbed a finger absently against his lips as he thought it over.
Bill wandered through the heaps of grave goods, marveling at the sheer effort that must have gone into building an entire flotilla of ships out of sticks and glue. Not to mention the racks of little wooden swords, two dozen horses and chariots, carved platters of delicacies, and all the furniture.
All of it tiny and perfect, carved and twisted and fitted and slotted together.
And now, he and Daniel were miniaturized to match.
"I can think of one possibility," Daniel said at last. "It's a little far-fetched, but... From what we've seen here, Mentuhotep was cut off from the Stargate system for centuries, right?"
"That's certainly what it looked like," Bill agreed. "The DHD crystals were completely smashed. If he didn't have a ship, he was stuck here for good."
"So, maybe miniaturization was a way of conserving his resources."
Bill blinked. "How? By zapping all his Jaffa into tiny versions of themselves, to save on upkeep?"
"Or miniaturizing himself." Daniel frowned. "It's kinda hard to appear all powerful when you're only a few inches tall, though." He sighed. "I think we'd better forget the why for now, Bill, and focus on the how."
"As in, how to make ourselves the right size again?"
"That would be the one, yes."
Bill looked down at the scanner in his hands, grateful that it hadn't gone on the fritz when it was shrunk. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "Daniel, we didn't actually touch anything. I have no idea what triggered the beam in the first place."
"Well, what were we doing?" Daniel rose from the chair and began to pace in a slow circle.
"I was trying to scan the panel for power fluctuations," Bill said promptly. He held up the scanner. "I had to keep adjusting it, because the base numbers seemed off. I'd just modified the readings for the magnetic field, and..."
"Poof?" Daniel suggested.
Bill nodded morosely.
"Something with the magnetic field, then?"
That doesn't seem very likely. Magnetic fields are usually inconsistent, unless you've got controlled circumstances..." Bill's voice trailed off.
"What is it?" Daniel asked.
"Pyramids," Bill said. "Pyramids and magnetic fields."
"Oh, that's right. Sam tried to explain it to me once," Daniel remembered. "Something about how the mathematical and geometrical shape of the pyramid collects and focuses gravitational and magnetic fields. The popular theory is mostly used to peddle crystals online, and advertise sharp razors, but - the scientific principle behind it is sound, isn't it?"
Bill nodded, enthusiasm building. "That's right. I mean, most of it is just New Age pseudoscience. That's Patrick Flanagan territory. On the other hand..." He chuckled. "Look at where we are! It only makes sense that some of it is based on scientific fact."
"The Great Pyramids in Egypt are all aligned very precisely north," Daniel pointed out. "The Goa'uld might have had a reason for that."
"Okay. So if we look for a sharp flux in the magnetic field, and..." Bill's words trailed off to a subvocalized mumble as he checked readings and made rapid-fire calculations in his head. Daniel fiddled with a beautifully-rendered urn as he waited.
"Got it!" Bill crowed. "Uh, Daniel? You may want to move closer. I don't know how large the field is going to be." He waited until Daniel was practically breathing down his neck, then flipped a switch.
There was a wash of pale yellow light...
...and they found themselves full-sized again, facing the same set of inscriptions and the miniaturizing technology that had zapped them three hours before. They both backed away hastily.
"Daniel! Doctor Lee!"
They whipped around as Major Carter and Teal'c came charging into the room, closely followed by Colonel O'Neill. Bill edged slightly behind Daniel, where he felt a bit safer from the wrath of SG-1.
"What happened?" Major Carter demanded, her gaze flicking over them both as she checked them for any visible sign of injury. "Are you all right?"
"We're fine, Sam," Daniel reassured her. "We just had a... little accident."
Bill choked, turning red in his effort not to laugh out loud. The expression on the colonel's face suggested that he wasn't just relieved they were both alive and well; he was also well and truly ticked. Chortling would only fuel his temper.
"Care to explain that?" Colonel O'Neill drawled. As Daniel opened his mouth, the colonel added, "In three sentences or less, for the moment."
Daniel closed his mouth, his lips going pursed and his eyes narrowing. "Would you also like that in words of three syllables or less, Jack?" he asked with acid sweetness.
The colonel crossed his arms. "Try me."
Daniel flicked a glance sideways at Bill. "We found something that makes things little. We got little. We got big again."
"Daniel!"
"Oh, you want more that that?"
"Miniaturization?" Major Carter breathed, her eyes lighting up with excitement. "Is that what that panel in the -"
"Don't touch it!" Bill and Daniel chorused, blocking her as she tried to move towards the wall.
She blinked at them, then flushed. "Oh, of course. Sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"Daniel Jackson. Doctor Lee." Teal'c stepped forward. "I am pleased that you are both well. Do I understand that you were miniaturized by Goa'uld technology?"
"Yes, Teal'c. We were about three inches high, wouldn't you say, Bill?"
"Between seven and eight centimeters, yes," Bill agreed. "We could take a look at the grave goods and try to determine a more accurate measurement by scale, but -"
"You're lucky we didn't step on you!" Colonel O'Neill snapped. "For crying out loud, couldn't you have waited before you decided to push the big red button to see what happens?"
"Oh, you wouldn't have stepped on us, Jack." Daniel waved a hand dismissively at the floor. "We weren't scurrying around down there. We were transported to the grave goods in the next chamber."
"You were there all along?" Major Carter asked, incredulous.
"Yep!" Daniel said cheerily. "Just think, Sam - if you'd taken them as doll house accessories for Cassie, we could have been the walking, talking action fig-"
"Daniel!" the colonel exploded.
"We didn't actually push any buttons, Colonel O'Neill," Bill said hurriedly. "The Goa'uld technology reacted adversely with our own."
"So how you'd get back?"
Bill started to reply, but Daniel held up a hand. "I've got this one, Bill." He turned to the colonel, his smile bright and wide and much too innocent for anyone to believe for an instant. "One word, Jack."
Colonel O'Neill glared. "Oh, yes?"
Daniel's smile slowly morphed into a truly wicked grin. "Magnets."
