Under his layers of windproof nylon, Gore-Tex, wool, polypropylene, he could feel his heart beating at twice its normal rate, a prisoner hammering frantically at his chest. But he would be dead before the morning came. His oxygen cylinders were long since empty, the valves frozen up, the mask nothing but an encumbrance. Always there was the struggle-the last struggle, really-to breathe oxygen from this air of eight thousand meters above sea level, where humans weren't meant to live. They had battered him for so long that he could hardly distinguish the sound from the cold and the stinging on his face. Perhaps if he could make sense of what had happened. He should do something to save himself but he couldn't think what. And he knew dimly, somewhere far inside himself, that he ought not to want to die.
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