�Yes, I remember. Several people were going to their quarters at odd hours for rest in the initial weeks that we were here,� Teyla agreed. She had had no such problem, rising with the sun every morning and going to bed not long after the sun went down again at night, just as she had since she was a little girl.
Radek nodded. �We could not find any indication of how long a day and night on this planet lasted, and no test we attempted worked the way we wished it to, so it was decided that we would maintain the use of Earth�s twenty-four hour clock.�
�Yes, though the concept of telling time for twenty-four hours on a clock that only goes to twelve has never made sense to me.�
�Which is why many use what people on Earth call �military time�, meaning instead of one in the afternoon it�s thirteen-hundred hours. Still, though, no less confusing, I assume.�
�John had attempted to explain it to me many times. When I failed to grasp the concept he had Rodney make my watch vibrate fifteen minutes before and at the exact time that we agree to meet up again if we split up off-world. It causes a very strange sensation against my wrist, but I have yet to return late because I� what is it that your people say? Got lost in the track of time?�
�Lost track of time,� Chuck corrected from a few feet away where he was dusting the control console. Ever since Grodin was killed and Chuck was promoted to head guy in charge of the Control Room he had been cleaning the room almost obsessively. It was rather unnerving.
�Yes, that is the idiom,� Teyla nodded. �So� because Lantia has longer days� the twenty-four hour clock that we have used since establishing the base� doesn�t work?�
Radek nodded. �Exactly. Colonel Carter was reading some of the Archival files that we sent back and she discovered that days on Lantia average at thirty-six hours.�
�So� the extra twelve hours� somehow made us a week early for the check-in?� Teyla asked, not feeling much less confused than she had before Zelenka started explaining everything to her again.
�The extra hours here compounded over the last three weeks�on Earth�until we had, using the twenty-four hour clock, lost seven days,� Zelenka said, nodding.
Teyla let out a heavy sigh. �I still do not see how such a thing is possible, but as we have a way to correct this now I believe I will cease to worry about it,� she decided.
That decision made Teyla picked up the tablet she had been clutching for most of the day and tapped in a few commands until she found the file she was looking for; a file she had prepared on her own people for someone she had never met and didn�t know or trust, though she had heard about him over the past ten months from time to time. Elizabeth had told her that Doctor Daniel Jackson loved studying other cultures, that languages were his passion, and that he was the reason that the people of Earth had been able to come to Pegasus both ten months earlier and only a few weeks ago; for that, alone, Teyla was willing to give him a bit of a break, though she still wasn�t sure she was entirely comfortable with a total stranger from another galaxy knowing details about her people and their history. Still, Elizabeth had promised that his intentions were nothing but honourable and Teyla trusted Elizabeth implicitly.
A minute and two paragraphs later�she was re-editing for the fifth time that day�Teyla turned to Zelenka again. �So an hour is now no longer sixty minutes long but eighty instead?� she said with a frown that furrowed her brow slightly.
Feeling a little self conscious in jeans with gaping holes in the knees�her most comfortable pair, all soft and wash-worn, faded just the right amount in just the right places�and a tee shirt she�d bought at a concert back in her senior year of high school, Elizabeth tapped her tennis-shod foot while the second of two elevators descended deep into the mountain. She hadn�t planned on coming back to the SGC that day, intending on spending her twenty-four hours without official work off-base. With Simon, she mentally reiterated, though the thought of checking into a hotel or hitting the mall had also been considered when she initially left the SGC after her marathon meeting with Landry that morning. Her clothing choices were more than appropriate for any of the tentatively planned options; casual enough for the mall and comfortable enough for the conversation with Simon with the added bonus of thick strings of cotton fibres to pick at if she needed something to distract herself with when�and she knew it would be when�things got too heavy or tense. She had changed out of her conservative