2^nd May 2, 2011

Captain Mochalov was a man whose very appearance did not permit him to pass the captaining profession by. His body was well-proportioned, his eyes-dark blue, hair-a silvery gray, skin-tanned. Perhaps all that kept him from being the very image of a sea skipper was his diction-it was the diction of a man who forgot about his subordinates.

He stood on the bridge, bit down on his pipestem and thought, “What next?”

Heidi rejoiced in the flight. She blessed the moment she had made her choice. “My life could have turned out differently,” Heidi thought with light-hearted horror, “But not now.”

The captain did not give useless things a thought. But pipes were another matter. He had nine of them, curved and straight. If one was not suitable for a particular tobacco, he switched it for another that was.

The pipe he was smoking tasted good. Every once in a while he looked through his binoculars. He had long before gotten used to the fact that everything his ship was sailing towards would eventually be behind him.

Heidi glanced at the oil pressure gauge: the needle had fallen.

“Hey, what’s this!” Heidi exclaimed.

The needle fell. Heidi accelerated. The needle fell. She throttled back. The needle fell. Soon it froze at the bottom of the scale. The engine coughed several times, then began to heat up. All thrust ceased. Heidi tried to hold the Cessna in the air stream. The plane lost speed. There was a sudden, loud noise and the engine fell silent. Then Heidi knew that the flight was over. The Cessna’s altitude over the open ocean began to diminish rapidly. Heidi kept the plane from going into a spin and scattered distress signals over the airwaves. She hoped they would be heard. At least in Hawaii they should, she thought.

Faster and faster the plane plummeted towards the water that blinded like broken glass-someone had smashed all the windows in the Empire State Building at once. The world, which had been such a friendly place not long before, expanded until it was frighteningly boundless.

Heidi’s last radio communication was, "I am alone up here, I am descending into the ocean.”

From-
No Man Is An Island