Language And Again Wind

Question And Answer. 

Communication problems with aliens are all too plausible but these problems seem so intractable that some of the characters begin to suspect duplicity.

Here we go again with the wind. While Lorenzen ponders the problems and the pervasive sense of threat:

"He lay in his sleeping bag, feeling the hardness of the ground beneath it, listening to the wind and the rushing river, and the hooting of some unknown animal." (CHAPTER XI, p. 85)

The phrases of this sentence have a cumulative effect. The ground is hard, the river is one of the obstacles on their course, a hooting animal represents the unknown and the wind, it seems, is always there, this time in cahoots with the rushing river.

"'It iss murder, I say!'

"The wind whined about von Osten's words, blowing them raggedly from his beard. He stamped cold feet, and the ringing rock gave the noise back." (CHAPTER XII, p. 88)

When von Osten accuses, the wind appropriately whines and blows his words away. His environment is hostile: blowing, ragged, cold and returning his noise to him. Rushing river and ringing rock. Von Osten thinks that the aliens, the Rorvan:

"'...are giffing us a royal runaround.'" (p. 89)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.