The wind from the east had died. The smart kite’s wiring, once taut and angular, now hung in the sky in a listless swaying curve. The wind had been smothered in a tense, gelatinous stillness, a deadly calm that was baking greased sweat from his flesh. The rumbles of distant western thunder were louder and more insistent, as if something just over the horizon were being clumsily demolished, but the unnatural calm around the aerodrome truck seemed as still and solid as the smothering air in a bank vault.