Inaction In Action

A stationary object is a collection of spinning atoms on a spinning, orbiting planet and is gradually eroded so the apparently unchanging continually changes.

Action-adventure fiction presents non-stop action even when its hero temporarily endures enforced inaction. In "A Message in Secret," the opening paragraph of Chapter VI presents ostensible peace and quiet. Long, yellow-green grass ripples in the wind. The sky is high and blue. Sinking Krasna reddens the steppe. The planetary ring is visible in the south and the reflection off a snowfield to the north. (The opening word is our old friend, "Wind...," which, of course, is not always mild as here.)

The second paragraph discloses that Dominic Flandry of Terra and Bourtai Ivanskaya of the Tebtengri Shamanate are concealed in the long grass but are certainly not able to take their ease. High overhead, a hovering airboat hunts them:

"...with telescopes, ferrous detectors, infrared amplifiers." (p. 362)

It and others cover the planet in a search pattern. The fugitives have remained on the run for two Altaian days only because Bourtai knows how both to confuse pursuit and to find waterholes. Their varyaks' (motorcycles') energy cells are nearly drained and, even if they were able to drive further north, they would have to either turn on their detectable heaters or freeze. They need to join Bourtai's fellow nomads but she does not know where they are on a steppe nearly twice the land area of Terra.

Thus, the two new allies are not at peace but exhausted and desperate. Of course, after a moment of realization, Flandry devises a plan both to escape pursuit and to attract the attention of the Shamanate.

Flandry's career continues.