A Curious Gesture And The Wind

The Fleet Of Stars, 21.

Fenn to Kinna:

"'...it has to be a zero-kelvin secret. No word, no hint to your parents, to anybody, no, not to Taffimai Metallumai or the wind.'" (pp. 277-278)

I have said that the wind often seems to comment and even to become a character. Fenn almost acknowledges it as such.

Kinna's response:

"She made a curious gesture, right forefinger flitting from left to right shoulder, then from brow to breast." (p. 278)

I had to repeat this gesture myself to see what Anderson was getting at. See here.

They enter a domed life-support shelter on the rim of a Martian crater and remove their helmets. At a dramatic moment in their conversation, they confront each other and:

"Without their helmets, they could not hear the Martian wind, and the dust devils afar spun in silence." (pp. 279-280)

Conversation is punctuated this time not by the sound of the wind but by its silence and by silent spinning dust devils.