"How do I look?" I said to Anders that morning as he examined me where I lay, in the dappled shade of the clearing.
"Your eyes are very red, of course," he smiled, "and you have purpuric spots ... what your laymen call bruising, isn't it ... in the creases of your elbows and thighs, but I think you have been fortunate."
"I agree with that statement, Doctor," I said as I looked over at his other patients, lying there so quietly beside me. A horse fly lit on Kang's nose. Feebly his face twitched, trying to dislodge it. He lifted his right hand, bending the arm from the elbow. It stayed there, too weak to go farther. Anders shooed the fly. Kang's hand, poised uncertainly for a time, slowly fell back to his side. To all appearances he was lifeless.
"They're in bad shape, aren't they?" I asked.
"Yes, but they should recover. You saved their lives, you know."
"I did? How?"
"By using that cold water. When I checked them, their temperatures were very low, especially Kang. You might say you had put them into artificial hibernation. They were both in shock but, with the low body temperatures reducing their metabolism during the crucial stage, I am sure they have a much better chance of returning to normal. I maintained their low temperatures with one of our new hypothermic drugs for the first two days. Now they have returned to a more normal state except that they are still asleep."
"They look more dead than asleep," I said and raised myself up to sit. Even that was an effort as my swimming head and pounding heart warned me. In a moment or two I felt better. I inched over to a tree and used it as a back rest. Soaking in the friendly warmth of the sun like a cat on a garden wall, I dozed off.
"Take this, Colonel." Anders' face was close to mine as he woke me gently and held out a bowl of warm rice. The sparse light-colored stubble on his unshaven chin stood out like the tattered wheat stalks on a dustbowl farm. Gaunt with fatigue, bleary-eyed and scruffy though he was, his red-rimmed eyes shone with a fierce determination to pull us through and cheat his former masters of at least three victims. I ate and watched as he gently spooned a thin paste of rice into the cracked and crusted mouths of his patients. As it touched their tongues, they swallowed automatically like patients under anaesthesia, which, in a way, I suppose they were.