Pete Cawdron - Feedback

He walked over beside her and pulled the poster from the wall. The tape came away easily.

“You’re right,” he added, turning the poster upside down and sticking it back on the wall. “There’s no reason to choose any one orientation over another. If anything, this picture should be viewed the way Cernan, Evans and Schmitt saw it. Looks kinda strange, though, doesn’t it? We’re so used to seeing north as up we assume that’s the way it should be.”

“It looks better,” Lily said, smiling.

Jason stood there for a second, examining the poster of Earth set on a jet black background. Thinking about it, he added, “With the Sahara desert encircling the bottom of the world and the lush greens of South Africa rising up toward the top, Earth looks like an alien world.”

Lily said, “Earth is an alien world.”

Jason raised an eyebrow in surprise at her comment. He started to say something, but Lily spoke first.

“And this one?”

“Oh,” Jason replied, losing himself in another poster. “Those are sand dunes on Mars, but it’s the dark fuzzy sections that are most intriguing. Current thinking is they’re the result of subterranean aquifers bursting through to the surface during summer.”

The two of them sat on his bed and talked into the early hours of the morning, talking about stars and planets, about Korea and America. Jason found Lily captivating, intoxicating. At times she seemed to barely grasp English, at other points she showed a surprising depth of intelligence, as though she knew far more than she was letting on.

There was something about Lily. Jason felt like he’d known her for years. He wasn’t one for concepts like déjà vu, but he could have sworn they’d met before.

When the conversation finally started to slow, Jason offered her his bed. Regardless of how much he protested, Lily insisted on sleeping on the loveseat. She said she wanted to keep watch over the intersection. She sat there, curled up with her head on a pillow, staring out the open window. Jason draped a blanket over her, promising he’d help her look for her father in the morning. He wasn’t sure how he was going to keep that promise, but it seemed to be the right thing to say.

“Jason,” she said, as he turned off the lava lamp and hopped into bed.

“Yes.”

“Thank you for being such a gentleman.”

Lee woke to the sound of waves crashing and gulls squawking overhead. He was drifting with the tide. He could feel himself bobbing on the waves with his head kept out of the water by the headrest on his lifejacket. A chill ran through him. His feet were numb. Blood oozed through the cracks in his chapped lips.

Dawn was breaking. The sky was grey. Rain drizzled in the early morning breeze.

Lee felt his body spasm, jerking itself awake. He turned and saw a jagged cliff looming overhead. Waves broke at the base, crashing on the rocks. Looking around, he could see sand dunes not more than a mile away. Clumps of grass leaned to one side with the prevailing winds, but the beach below the dunes wasn’t visible over the choppy waves.

He tried to swim against the tide, but he was too weak. His chest hurt where bruises had formed following the crash. The seatbelt harness in the Sea King had bitten into his waist and upper chest. It had saved him from being impaled on the control stick during the crash, but that salvation had come at a price.

The rolling swell dragged him toward the rocks. Over the next few minutes, he watched as the surge washed over the jagged rocks before pulling out briefly, and then swirling in again, crashing on the shore, throwing brilliant white spray thirty to forty feet in the air.

Waves pounded the rocks.

Seaweed wrapped around his legs.

How long had he spent floating at sea? Just one night? Could it have been more? He felt as though he’d been drifting for days, but this had to be the morning after. His head ached from dehydration.

Lee kicked to free himself and began mentally timing his swim. If he could drift in on one of the surges, hold himself near the shore and then climb onto the rocks as the swell retreated briefly, he could scramble up beyond the waterline. Lee didn’t like his chances, but he didn’t have a choice. One way or the other, he was going to end up on those rocks, and soon. It was just a matter of in what condition.

Salt spray flew through the air as another large wave broke over the rocks.

Waves surged and crashed, pounding the rugged cliff base.

Lee felt his body being lifted on the swell. He fought to get close to the rocks, drifting to within a few feet of their jagged, black edges. Barnacles and seaweed littered the shore. In the back of his mind, he felt the rhythm of the sea. To anyone watching, it would have seemed like suicide, but he could feel the might of the ocean subsiding briefly as he struck out for the rocks.

As a child, Lee had hunted lobster in the turbulent water off the Chungnam coast in South Korea. He and his father would each don a snorkel, mask and flippers and fish at the top of the tide, taking advantage of the slack and change in currents. Drifting just a few meters from the rocky shoreline, they could easily avoid being thrown onto the rocks. Lobster would scuttle around the rocks beneath the swell, anywhere from ten to fifteen feet below the surface. Their spidery legs and spindly antenna would waver with the current. With a burst of speed, they would pump their tails and shoot through the water, escaping at the first hint of a threat. His father taught him to be decisive, not to hesitate when grabbing at these small monsters of the deep. As long as he grabbed the carapace of the lobster, its massive claws couldn’t reach him.

“Just like the old days,” Lee muttered. He’d never tried this before, but he knew it was possible. Normally, he and his father would swim to a sheltered area or to a waiting boat, but he’d seen other fishermen clamber up onto the rocks.

Lee felt the moment come in the wash of the waves and the rise of the swell. The rising swell lifted him up as his boots scrambled for a hold. He kicked hard at the water, grabbing at the slick rocks, managing to catch hold and climb up. Within seconds, he was level with the base of the cliff, escaping just as a wave pounded the rocks behind him, soaking him in white spray.

Lee was breathing hard as he cleared the lower, wet rocks, surprised by the rush of adrenaline and the tingling sensation in his fingers. He was shaking.

“Ha!,” he cried, stopping for a moment and looking around, enjoying the excitement of escape. The rush of adrenaline faded, leaving him feeling spent.

As the adrenaline wore off, Lee found the world spinning around him. He felt sick. A burp brought the taste of salt water to his mouth. Seconds later, the raging sea seemed to follow and he vomited, spewing into a tidal pool and gagging as bile stretched from his mouth to the rocks beneath his feet.

A bitter, cold wind whipped along the face of the cliff, chilling him. Lee staggered closer to the cliff, wanting to find a wind break.

Rocks gave way to boulders. Landslides marked where the weather had washed away sections of the embankment.

Lee walked on, wiping the spew from his face. His hands were numb. The water in his boots squished between his toes as he struggled over the uneven rocks. His focus seemed narrow as though he had tunnel vision. The world had been reduced to the sharp, jagged rocks and boulders in front of him. He was suffering from the early stages of hypothermia. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to die on those rocks.

The wind howled.

Lee climbed higher.

Gulls glided on the wind above him, casually watching him.

He was alive. For a moment, he stopped and let that realization sink in. Furthermore, if he’d survived, others could have survived as well. His mind flashed to thoughts of his crew, the US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Andrews and his team, and he wondered if any of them had made it to shore. Were they huddling somewhere among the sand dunes, trying to survive the cold? He looked out across the ocean, hoping to make out the sight of a DayGlo-orange lifejacket bobbing on the swell. The sea rolled away from him, dark and foreboding, unrelenting and unforgiving.