He tried to speak, to babble something—gratitude perhaps, or last words, or an eager yell for more—but there was only silence. His lungs were like two casts of plaster and bonemeal, each filled to brimming with hot liquid rubber. His muscles heaved against the taut liquid bags like two fists clenching two tennis balls, and his ears roared, and things went black. Suddenly he could hear his heart straining to beat, thud-thud, thud-thud , each concussive shock of the ventricles passing through his liquid-filled lungs with booming subaqueous clarity.