Altaian Night II

"A Message in Secret."

See Altaian Night.

Points missed in the earlier post:

"darkened city" is an evocative phrase (see Darkness And A City);

the camp fires stretch not to the horizon but to the lake Ozero Rurik which in turn stretches "...in blackness and multiple moonshivers, out to an unseen horizon..." (p. 354);

the two rivers are called "Zeya" and "Talyma" and resemble "...ribbons of mercury..." (ibid.);

the meteors come from the rings which raises the question: how long will the rings last?;

I noted that moons- and star-light make headlights on vehicles unnecessary so presumably that is somewhere in the text? (Later: p. 359.)

Next comes a dramatic escape sequence which we have to accept as a feature of this kind of fiction.