"We need to vent," I said. Swiveling in the right-hand pilot's seat, I reached down behind me to operate the pneumatic system that controlled the valves that released helium from the top of the envelope. Our natural inclination was to retain as much helium as possible, because we had no reserve supply. But we soon found that one discharge was not enough. We had to vent again and again before we brought our climb under control.

We both kept thinking uneasily of other balloons that had burst in similar circumstances. The most recent had been the Global Hilton, in January 1998; pilots Dick Rutan and Dave Melton both managed to escape by parachute, which was more than could be said of Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier 200 years earlier: Rapidly expanding hydrogen burst his envelope, came in contact with smoldering straw in the burner, blew up, and killed the inventor.

Jones, March 1, 22,310 feet over Italy
Anyone with a tendency to claustrophobia would have been horrified by the dimensions of the capsule into which we had sealed ourselves for the duration. The gondola was in essence a short tube with rounded ends, 16 feet from nose to tail and seven feet in diameter. All its inside surfaces were padded with knobby white fireproof foam insulating material to cut down noise and condensation. The biggest single space was the cockpit at the front, where there was just enough room for both pilots to sit side-by-side facing two 12-inch portholes and an instrument panel.

Immediately behind the right-hand seat was a tiny kitchen shelf, no more than two feet square, with a washbasin set in its working surface, and a little water heater mounted on the bulkhead. The central corridor, about two feet wide, was just high enough to allow us to stand upright. On the port side of the corridor was the bunk, seven feet long but only two feet wide. When the curtain was drawn to shut the bunk off from the passage, the occupant was enclosed in a space not much bigger than a coffin.

Yet if our living conditions were fairly basic, our equipment was as high-tech as money could buy. Electric power came from 20 solar panels, each three feet wide and eighteen inches tall, trailing below us on a long line in an array like a four-sided kite, so that no matter what heading the balloon was on, some of them were always facing the sun. The moment the sun came over the horizon every morning—bang!—they sprang to life instantly, and we could see the charge coming through. Two radar transponders automatically gave our identity, altitude, and position to air traffic control centers along the way. A global positioning system continuously gave us a readout of our altitude, position, and speed; for voice communication we had short-range and long-range radios and a satellite phone. But most of our exchanges with our ground team, stationed in the Geneva airport, were via satellite fax.

A regular pattern of life quickly developed. We each wanted eight hours' rest, and Bertrand, preferring to sleep while it was dark, would turn in during the early evening and sleep through the first part of the night. I would wake him a few hours before sunrise and then go to sleep myself until the middle of the day. In our domestic habits we were very gentlemanly: Whenever I got up, I would clear the bed and leave it ready for Bertrand, and vice versa. On one occasion he left a chocolate on my pillow. From the start we had a marvelously open relationship. He had always insisted on complete openness, and early in the flight he said, "Brian, if I do anything you don't like, you must say so. Or if I start to smell and have bad breath, for goodness' sake, tell me."

In matters of personal hygiene, we did try to take care. There was no question of having a shower, but when we got up or went to bed we would generally have a complete rub-down with wet wipes, and neither ever complained that the other was becoming noisome. There was practically no dust or dirt in the gondola; the few clothes we had with us remained remarkably clean.

The toilet was a pan with an airtight cover: Whenever we had something to dispose of, we would drop it in the plastic bag lining the bowl, seal the lid, close the top valve, and open the bottom valve, so that the pressure trapped in the toilet would blow the contents downward. We were fairly careful about where we dropped anything—but it was with some reluctance that we rejected the idea of attaching to each offering a label saying "Virgin Atlantic Airways."

Piccard, March 2, 20,400 feet over the Mediterranean
Our route was to first take us south to Morocco and then east over Africa, the Middle East, India, southern China, the Pacific, the United States, and the Atlantic Ocean. If all went well, we would land somewhere in northern Africa in about 20 days.

For as long as we were heading south we had 24 hours between sunsets; but when we turned east and started traveling at 100 knots, there were only 20 hours between one sunset and the next. With eight hours' sleep apiece, we had only four hours together, and it seemed a very short time.

By talking together all the time, we got rid of the need to have one chief and one person obeying orders. In the end, I think, we were three. There was Brian, there was myself, and there was Both of Us—and Both of Us was the one who always did the right thing.

Jones, March 3, 17,700 feet over the Atlantic
Minor technical problems began to plague us. Our warning system that monitored the cabin air set off an alarm when it began to show a sulfur dioxide content of 0.4 parts per million. I thought the gas might have been given off by the backup lithium batteries we were carrying, but because I wasn't sure, I faxed our electronics specialist, Kieran Sturrock, who suggested passing our handheld detector over them one by one.

In the end the episode degenerated into farce: We waved the detector around over the batteries and couldn't find anything. We began to think that something in our human wind might be setting it off, so we faxed down and asked, "Could it be the fact that we were farting in bed that set it off?" And the answer was, "Possibly." In self-defense, I felt bound to point out that "it was Bertrand in the bunk at the time of the alarm. Mine are distinctly Eau de Givenchy."