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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.”

Chapter 03: Alive
     
    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