### 55

You are less than a hundred feet from the top when the pain begins to fade. Eventually, you no longer feel anything with your hands: all sensation below your forearms is totally numbed by frostbite.

With one last effort, you reach a narrow ice shelf where you can kneel and rest. But you soon discover to your dismay that it is impossible to climb any further--you are faced by sheer walls of ice that offer no hand holds in their smooth surfaces. You will have to return the way you came. It is over four hours before the feeling returns to your hands. The frostbite is serious and you lose 5 ENDURANCE points. In addition to this, you also lose 2 points from your initial COMBAT SKILL. This loss is permanent and will affect you for the rest of your life.11

It takes a further five hours to reach the bottom in safety. Exhausted and in great pain, you steel yourself to find another exit from this icy hell-hole.

Turn to 182.

[11] The permanent loss referred to here is probably just the COMBAT SKILL loss, and not the ENDURANCE point loss.

Text copyright © 1984 Joe Dever.
Illustrations copyright © 1984 Gary Chalk.