DURING the next twenty-four hours I lived through an experience which no human being had ever known before.
DURING At first I was not aware of anything other than the purely mechanical things that were being done on the flight-deck. We were obviously climbing, and at a tremendous rate, but I did not yet have any sensation that we were in anything other than a very large conventional airplane.
I sat at my little desk watching what was going on about me and looking out of the little porthole window at my station. It was night outside and the view, such as it was, was disappointing. The whistle of the air was now very shrill, so high that I could just hear it. I remembered that the limit of human hearing in normal people is about fifteen thousand vibrations per second; on that basis I judge
