I was a good enough student in my book work to enter university at the age of 17, and I chose to follow in my parent's footsteps, majoring in geology,...specifically in mining geology, with the intention of joining the family company. At the age of 21 that is just what I did. I had not reckoned on the physical demands of the work. It is all very well to go down a mine and observe, but that is not all of it by any manner of means. When a lode is drilled to establish the grade of gold, for. The second largest group comprises men in their fifties, who’re unable to talk about their problems to family and friends and prefer to vanish.Six hundred disappearances a day in Britain. One every two and a half minutes. And this is the second decade of the twenty-first century! Even if ninety percent of those people return, or are traced, it still leaves sixty a day; predominantly – who’d have guessed it? – men. But if even a tiny handful of those men suffered a fate like Specimen Five’s,. I mean--" the smile turned to a laugh "--you can't be in there alone, and I imagine that this could be considered part of your therapy." She looked at me still smiling. "Do I assume that you don't want to use the bedpan?"I looked at the doctor. "Absolutely not. I mean it's my arm that's broken not my leg. I just have a sprained ankle." I tried sitting up, and with doctor Lois's help managed it. "I mean surely I can use a crutch or something?" Of course you can," said the doctor. She laughed. ”“Tell me what happened, Ed.”Ed shifted in his chair, swallowed once or twice.“Tell me now, Ed. We don’t have all day.”Ed watched Vladimir carefully. This was the tricky part. He didn’t like bad news, Ed knew that from earlier jobs he’d given the boys.“We screwed up, Vladimir. Not going to lie to you. With the kid it was just bad luck. We got him but we lost two guys. And there’s still his friend or girlfriend or whatever the hell she is. We couldn’t get her when we went for Josh, you know that.