“Yeah.”
Mel still looked like she was going to cry, and he hugged her. Not you know, boyfriend hug. Just friend hug. “You can count on me.”
“I do,” she said. She saw something in the papers around her, reached for it as he let go. “What’s that?”
“Oh. My scores.” He would have taken it, but she’d already opened the envelope.
“Jesus, John.” Mel unfolded it, skimming all of it. “You’re in the 99th percentile on the AFOQT. Do you have any idea how rare that it?”
“It means 99 guys out of a hundred do worse,” he said.
“It means you’re going to get approved for camp,” Mel said. “Lt. Col. Raymond will take you for sure. You’ll get a scholarship next fall if you want it. It means you might get rated TAC.”
“It’s kind of cool, isn’t it?”
Mel looked at him keenly. “It hasn’t sunk in, has it? With all the shit you’ve got going on?”
“I guess not.”
“This is the last time you grovel,” she said. “You go make nice this semester, and you’ll never have to grovel to your dad again. You won’t have to worry about paying for school, and you’ll have a job when you graduate. You can tell him off if you want to. Like, in May.”
“Yeah.” It ought to make him feel better, but it didn’t.
“And you’ll be twenty in May, right? It’s not like you’re a kid. He can’t do anything about it.”
“Yeah.” That would feel good in May, probably. It just seemed like a lifetime away. A lot further than the day after Christmas.
Mel put the paper in her lap, took his hands. “Look, John. We all make compromises with life. We have to. I have to suck it up and not date if I want to be an astronaut. And you have to suck it up and deal with your dad one more semester. Or we can walk away. That’s the choice. We can walk. But you and me, I think we’d rather fly.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dawn was coming over the sea. Radek thought perhaps it was the slowest dawn he’d ever seen in his life. He had seen dawn many times, studying through the night for an early morning exam to sleep in the afternoon, in a bar with friends laughing or crying over the day’s events, working all night to repair fried circuits while Atlantis’ dawn came up pearl soft, even dawn after a night spent in love. But he had never seen dawn take so long to come as it did clinging to an overturned fishing boat in the midst of an alien sea.
Ronon was silent. Perhaps he’d gone to sleep. Radek could see his chest rising and falling in the dim light, and it was hardly cold enough for Ronon to be succumbing to hypothermia.
At last the sun rose out of the sea, a sliver of unbearable brightness sliding over the horizon, preceded by the pink and azure shades of dawn. This was why the ancients had sung praises of the sun, Radek thought. After a night as long as this, he felt like bursting into hymns himself.
Ronon stirred, one hand dipping over the side into the water. He sat up abruptly, flailing as he woke, and Radek held on tight.
“Don’t move so quickly!” he said. The last thing they needed was to somehow sink their frail refuge.
Ronon grabbed on, centering himself on the hull. “Shit.” The word encompassed a world of disappointment.
“Yes, we are still lost at sea. No, I have not seen a rescue jumper. No, I have not seen anybody,” Radek said.
“Right.” Ronon blinked, looking east into the dawn.
“They will be looking for us by now. But we do not have the radios. Fortunately it is clear and if they fly low enough they may see us.”
Perhaps leaving the island had been…precipitous. Perhaps it would have been better to stay where the rescue team might reasonably have looked for them. But of course they had not meant to lose the radios. And caution had never been his strong suit.
“Yeah.” Ronon considered. “I wonder if we can turn the boat over.”
“We can try,” Radek said. It was clear and the seas were calm. If they could flip the hull, perhaps they could have something like a working boat again. The waterlogged boat would be heavy, but Ronon was strong.
“Let’s give it a go,” Ronon said, and slid off the hull into the water beside.
“Ok.” Radek slid off on the same side. The water was colder than yesterday, but not chill. The storm, no doubt. A thermal layer of cold rainwater that would last until the sun warmed it.
Ronon treaded water holding onto the side of the boat. “Ok, when I say lift, lift. Let’s see if we can flip it over. Lift!”
Radek lifted. It didn’t seem to make much difference. He could not lift higher than his chest without even the ground to push against.
They put it down and considered.
“Let me try something,” Ronon said. “Can you let go and just swim a minute?”
“Of course,” Radek said. He did.
Ronon took a deep breath, then pushed himself down underwater, letting go of the side of the boat. For a long moment he vanished beneath the waves.
Then one hand appeared, grasping at the side of the boat in a strong grip, though Radek didn’t see the rest of him anywhere. It suddenly occurred to him that Ronon had come up under the boat.
With a massive heave, the side of the boat rose from the surface, flipping in the other direction as Ronon let go. Wallowing, it came to rest right side up. Ronon surfaced beside it, flipping the water out of his long braids.
“Fantastic!” Radek exclaimed. “You are Hercules, my friend!”
“Whoever,” Ronon said, and swam the couple of lengths to the side. “Let’s start bailing.” The boat was half full of water, but with the seas calm surely they could bail it clear if they…
“Do we have anything to bail with?”
Ronon pulled himself over the side and pulled up the rusty bucket secured to the boat with a length of sodden rope. “Yes.”
Radek swam over to the side, and Ronon reached down to help him aboard. “Perfect. Our luck has changed!”
They began bailing, and Radek considered how much better the world looked from the right side of the boat. Infinitely better. They might still be lost in the middle of an alien sea, but at least they were no longer swimming. They might get out of this yet, turn this into the kind of story that someday no one would believe. Once I was shipwrecked with this friend of mine in a storm at night… No one will credit it, but he would tell it anyway.
“They’re not here,” Lorne said.
Rodney fought his way up from strange unsettled dreams, and for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. Asleep. In the jumper. With early morning sunlight glancing off the front window. The tail gate was down, and he could hear people moving around while a cool sea breeze played around the corners of the seats.
“Dr. McKay?” Lorne shook his shoulder gently. “They’re not here. We’ve looked all over the area around the Ancient ruins. There’s no sign of them now. They were here a while ago, we think. We found some footprints and places where the grass was compressed from someone sitting or crouching, but there’s nobody around at all. I’ve sent Cadman and a team down to the village at the other end of the island in case they went looking for food and they’re hanging around down there.”
“Zelenka and Ronon aren’t here?” Rodney felt he was being a little slow on the uptake.
“No,” Lorne said again patiently. “They’re not here now.” He looked at Rodney with an expression Rodney thought was almost kind. “We let you sleep while we looked around since you’d been up all night. They might have gone down to the village. Cadman’s checking it out, like I said.”