Wind And Stars

After the lack of radio response (see previous post), Flandry comments:

"'The circumstances could be more promising. The big computer should've responded instantly to a distress call.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT Chapter Seven, p. 244.

And what happens next? After such a speech, it is almost automatic that the elements should somehow underline the seriousness of the circumstances and, sure enough, the following two sentences are:

"He sighed. The wind blew, the stars jeered." (ibid.)

Wind blowing signifies nature at best indifferent to human concerns, at worst hostile, even threatening. We have heard much of the wind before. On one occasion, it even whips Dahut and almost becomes a character but I cannot find that post among all the others about the wind.

The stars do not literally jeer although a character in an extreme situation can come to think that they do. The idea that the stars, remote and (apparently) unchanging, mock our mundanity and mortality appears, e.g., in Olaf Stapledon's works.