She made her own way back to Hut 19 from there. The climate-control engineers had been experimenting again that day and had created strange conditions around Novyi Kazan, in which evaporation from the reservoir and other nearby bodies of water formed a mist below the roof that reduced the ribbon-suns to indistinct, watery blurs. A month previously they had managed to produce a miniature cyclone that wrapped itself around the town’s central tower and sucked all its windows out. Half of them still hadn’t been replaced. She walked past the Recreation Building, where the gymnasium and hobby rooms were located, and turned right onto the path running between Huts 10 and 17. Several of the green-clad figures who were out nodded or called a greeting as she passed. The session with Protbornov and Major Uskayev had followed the course that had long ago become usual. Why couldn’t she communicate with her government? she had demanded to know yet again – they must be pressing for information.
