Cold Crucible Bob Shaw The agent must have been a tough, efficient operator in his day because he had managed to follow the expedition for some time without being seen. Now, however, his day was almost over. He lay submissively in the snow, looking up at the group with sane, worried eyes. The five white-hooded men comprising the expedition stood over him, each uneasy movement of their feet feathering dry snow into the wind.
‘Why did he give himself up? He can’t be all that sick?’ Dorian stared down at the trembling man in disgust, trying to imagine himself in the same situation. Dorian was a big, heavy man of the type that makes a profession out of being big and heavy.
‘Sick enough,’ Hollerith, the electronics expert, said. ‘Looks like lobar pneumonia to me. His lungs must be turning into solid lumps of putty—that’s why he’s breathing like that.’
...
