Oleksander set the tent up quickly to prepare for the long day of waiting. The Saraha had proven more challenging for him than he could have imagined. The long days of sitting in the makeshift shelter waiting for the killing sun to go down. His party moved only for a few hours each day at dawn and at dusk. The rest of the time was just waiting. Still the scientist said they were close but how did he know? Everything was brown and orange. And their water rations ran low. Jorge was now fully sober and more of jerk than ever before. He grated on Oleksanders nerves. But they pressed on, trying to find a place for this precious seed, to restart a little bit of the world again, in this dead place. 

His company had run across some Berbers the other day. They were strange people to him, wholly unaffected by the outside world, just living their desert lives the way they had for thousands of years. They exhcanged goods then and Oleksander was happy for the Jellab he had traded for. Its wool kept him warm during the cool nights.  Often he would lay in the sand and look up at the universe above. One common thing here in the desert and Siberia was there was no artificial light to block out the stars. It made him feel small and unimportant. But also hopeful that there was something else out there. Something shimmering and beautiful.