There was no point of reference in their minds for it. The normal reactions of screaming, quickened heartbeat, adrenaline flow, fight or flight, were absent. They reacted with only silence and stillness amid the noises of rushing air.
Like a growing tidal wave, the escaping air was gathering momentum.
A baby was sucked out of its uncomprehending mother’s arms and hurled along over the heads of the passengers and out the starboard hole and into the nothingness of space.
Someone screamed.
Three unaccompanied children, a boy and two girls, in seats H, J, and K, aisle 13, near the starboard hole, had not fastened their seat belts and were picked up by the howling wind and sucked out, screeching with terror.
Everyone was screaming now as the sights and sounds around them began to register on their consciousness.
A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seat belt failed and the seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged down the aisle by an invisible and extreme force. Her long blonde hair was pulled taut and her skirt and blouse were stripped from her body. Her eyes were filled with horror as she continued to fight against the unseen thing that wanted to take her. She dug her nails into the carpet as the racing air pulled her toward the yawning hole that led outside.
Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their seats. The events in the cabin took on a horrific aura of pantomime.
Some of the bolts that held other damaged seats to their tracks began to fail. Several gangs of seats broke loose in sequence and rammed into rows of seats ahead, some of the seats tumbling over the tops of other seats as they rushed toward the hole. A gang of four seats, the passengers still strapped in, wedged into the smaller entry hole, partly blocking the hole and causing more suction at the larger exit hole on the starboard side. At the starboard hole, a gang of loosened seats seemed to pile up like paratroopers nervously bunching up, waiting for their turn to jump. Another flying seat loosened the logjam and one after the other they all shot out into space, the passengers strapped in them screaming, kicking, and clawing at the air.
John Berry, unaware of what was happening outside, turned the handle of the lavatory door and pulled inward on it. It seemed to be stuck. He tried again, pulling with all his strength, but the fiberglass door would not budge, though he could see the latch disengage. He braced both feet against the jamb and with both hands on the latch pulled with every ounce of strength he could summon. Still it would not move even a fraction of an inch. He was frightened and puzzled. He repeatedly pressed the assistance call button and waited for help.
As the internal air escaped from the Straton’s tourist cabin, then its first-class cabin and upstairs lounge, the flow of cabin pressure still being pumped into the aircraft was literally piling up in those areas where it could not so readily escape-the five lavatories with inward-opening doors. The pressurized air poured into these lavatories through the normal air vents, and though some of the pressurized air leaked out from around the edges of the lavatory doors, the net trend was positive. Those five inward-opening fiberglass doors were sealed shut with a differential air pressure of two pounds per square inch, which added up to four thousand pounds pressing them shut.
The seven outward-opening lavatory doors blew open into the vacuum, hurling their occupants into the cabin and toward the two gaping holes that awaited them.
In the lounge on the upper deck, drink glasses and liquor bottles were sucked toward the spiral staircase that led down to the first-class cabin. Books, magazines, and newspapers were ripped from passengers’ hands and sent into the vortex of rushing air. Every loose object in the lounge spun around the stairwell like a tornado.
The passengers who had chosen to stay in the lounge when the seat belt signs came on watched in horrified fascination as every movable thing in the room was sucked toward the growing vortex of debris around the stairwell.
Eddie Hogan, the piano player, had been playing “Autumn Leaves” when the sudden burst of airflow pulled him backward off the rigidly mounted bench. The bench had been equipped with a special seat belt, but Hogan had declined to use it. He was pulled, head-first, down the staircase, across the main cabin, and then swiftly out through the gaping starboard hole.
A blind man, seated near the piano, screamed repeatedly for someone to tell him what was happening. His body strained against his seat belt and he pulled against the leash of his Seeing Eye dog. The golden retriever seemed to be pulling away from him with an unnatural strength. He yelled at the dog. “Shannon! Shannon! Stop that!” The dog whimpered as she dug her claws into the soft pile. The leash broke and the dog was taken into the vortex and carried down into the first-class cabin, where its limp body wedged under an empty seat.
As the dozen lounge passengers watched from their secured seats, the piano and bench danced in their mounts but continued to hold against the maelstrom. Everyone in the upper deck became hysterical almost simultaneously.
In the first-class cabin below, objects from the lounge ripped through the accelerating air, cutting and smashing against heads and arms held up in protective gestures. The cloud of debris raced through the curtain into the tourist cabin and joined the other, incredibly numerous objects in their headlong rush out into the vacuum as though this void could be filled, satiated, if only enough objects and people were sacrificed to it.
In the tourist cabin, a big man strapped to his seat in the aft section was bellowing at the top of his lungs. He was raging against the wind, against the hurtling objects, and against the fates that had conspired to put him on this aircraft for his first flight. He had seen his half-dressed wife pulled out of one of the seven outward-opening lavatories and watched her as she seemed to run, tumble, and fly toward the hole, screaming his name as she went by and looking at him with puzzled eyes. Suddenly, he unfastened his belt and jumped to his feet. He half flew, arms and legs outstretched over seated passengers, skimming their heads as he sailed along. At the starboard-side hole his big body smashed into the jagged aluminum skin, opening his throat and severing his left arm as he was vomited out of the sick and dying aircraft.
In those lavatories that had opened, water gushed out of the taps and commodes into the low-pressure environment. From the bowels of the giant airliner, waste tanks flowed backward and their contents came up through the sink drains and toilets.
In the galleys, water valves ruptured and water overflowed the sinks. Pantries and refrigerators swung open and their contents flew out into the passageways and into the cabins.
In the pressurized baggage compartments below the cabin floor, aerosols and pressurized containers ruptured and disgorged their contents throughout the luggage. The cats and dogs that rode in kennels beneath their masters were banging wildly against their cages in fear.
The outward-opening cockpit door held for a moment. It strained against its lock and aluminum hinges, but the difference in pressure between the cockpit and the cabin was too great and the door finally burst outward into the first-class upper lounge.
Captain Stuart heard the door go. Suddenly, every loose object on the flight deck-maps, pencils, coffee cups, hats, and jackets-lifted into the air and converged on the open door, then disappeared into the lounge and down the stairway. Stuart felt himself pulled back into his seat. His arms flew up over his head and his wristwatch ripped loose. He pulled his arms down into his lap and waited until the initial rush of air subsided. He sat still trying to steady the hard beating in his chest. He calmed his rushing thoughts and tried to reconstruct what had happened in the last few seconds. He remembered that he had felt the jolt of a mild impact on the Straton only seconds before, but he had no idea what had caused it. What he did know was that the autopilot was still functioning and the craft was still under control. He glanced quickly at McVary, then glanced quickly back at Fessler. “What happened?” he yelled.
McVary kept staring silently at his instruments.
Fessler was looking back at the open door and didn’t respond.
“Descend!” Stuart commanded, and yanked shut the power levers controlling all four engines, then disengaged the autopilot and pushed forward on the control wheel. The Straton transport abruptly nosed downward. But at their incredibly high cruise speed, the forward momentum slowed their initial descent. Stuart watched the ground altimeter as they moved slowly downward. Fifty-eight thousand feet. Fifty seconds had gone by since the impact.
