Huddling Place----Clifford D. Simak(7)

The three of them turned and left the crypt, took the path back to the house, looming like a huge gray shadow in the mist.
A fire blazed in the hearth and the book lay upon his desk. Jerome A. Webster reached out and picked it up, read the title once again:
"Martian Physiology, With Especial Reference to the Brain" by Jerome A. Webster, M.D.
Thick and authoritative—the work of a lifetime. Standing almost alone in its field. Based upon the data gathered during those five plague years on Mars—years when he had labored almost day and night with his fellow colleagues of World Committee's medical commission, dispatched on an errand of mercy to the neighboring planet.