L. Ron Hubbard

“ The Saturnians would be too clever for that. But he could no longer trust himself to wait, and he used his time by examining the whole of this cell. The walls were huge, unyielding plates and there was no window; but, passing back and forth, he repeatedly felt the roughness of a grate underfoot. This he finally investigated, a gesture more than a hope. For this served as the room's only plumbing and was foul and odorous and could lead nowhere save into a sewage pipe.
For the space of several loud and shattering drops De Wolf stood crouched, loose grate in hand, filled with disbelief. ”

“ No man who had survived a crash, survived bullets, survived the paralyzing rays of the guards, had a right to be calm. And it was not like him to be calm; his slender hands and even, delicate features were those of an aristocrat, those of a sensitive thoroughbred whose nerves coursed on the surface, whose health depended upon the quietness of those nerves.
They threw him into the domed room, and his space boots rang upon the metal floor, and the glare of savage lights bit into his skull scarcely less than the impact from the eyes of the enemy intelligence officer. ”

“ Not until Morrison had been gone an hour or more did Captain de Wolf begin to crumble within. The irregular, loud drop, the continued shocks of a body sweating in the hot air and then touching the icy metal, the fact that Morrison—
The man was not a regular; he was a civilian less than a year in the service. Unlike Captain de Wolf, he was not a personality molded into a military machine, and a civilian, having earned a personality of his own through the necessity to seek for self, could not be drawn too far down the road of agony without breaking. ”