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I began to imagine, with a sudden rush of regret, what I might do once my flight was over. I’d absolutely no doubt at all that I’d achieve the record I was aiming for; but then what? It was all I’d dreamt of for years, an obsession that had shaped my life, that had even precluded serious relationships. More than one young lady had told me that they might have liked me but for the fact that I had only time for one thing, balloons. I hadn’t cared particularly, for what was a transient love affair compared to my name in the record books, to stand for the ages?

Well, then, today would be the culmination of all that effort; and once it was over, what then? Would I even ever want to get aloft again, knowing that I’d already done all that I’d set out to do?

I must have fallen into a brown study as I ruminated on this, mechanically checking the instruments, because I was surprised when I suddenly discovered that I was being forced to draw in increasingly deep breaths.  The air had become thin, so I strapped on the oxygen mask and turned the valve on the cylinder. I’d been forced to skimp on that, too, to save weight; so I had only one cylinder, and had to make it last as long as I could.

From a balloon, at that height, the world looks like an ocean. Far below, the land is a green-brown smudge spread in all directions, interrupted on the horizon by the rising reef of a mountain range. The sea of air, pressing down on all this, deepens from a light blue near the horizon to a darker hue above, until overhead it’s an aquamarine, interrupted only by ruffles and flurries of cloud like the spume of waves breaking on the surface.

I’d just done checking the instruments again, and was plotting my position on the map, when a shadow fell over the paper for an instant, and whisked away again.

I did not, at first, even notice it. It wasn’t much of a shadow, merely a momentary darkening of the sunlight, gone almost at once. When it came again, larger and longer this time, I thought to myself that it was just some of the cirrus cloud I’d noticed earlier, passing overhead.

And then I frowned as I recalled something. The cirrus I’d noticed had been well to the north, and since launching I’d drifted to the south; so what exactly had cast the shadow? Abandoning the plotting for the moment, I looked up.

High above me bulged the familiar teardrop shape of the translucent envelope.Something shimmered in the light beside it, something so faint that I thought for a moment I was just seeing those specks which float in our eyes.  Then the balloon rotated slightly, and the thing came into clearer view.

Even now, all these years later, I can’t describe it adequately. It was almost totally transparent; I only saw it from where the sun glinted, ever so faintly, off its surface, and where part of it passed between me and the envelope, I could see the faintest stain in the air, like the remnants of a whiff of smoke.

But I can tell you this: it was enormous. More and more of it came into view, and I realised I was climbing up its side, the balloon brushing its almost invisible and intangible surface. In basic form it was, as far as I could see, like a colossal collection of  transparent soap bubbles, each of which was many times larger than my balloon, under which trailed long tentacles like the arms of a jellyfish. It was one of these tentacles which had case the shadow that had flicked over my head and cast the shadow I’d noticed.

I was so amazed at what I was seeing that I’d have rubbed my eyes if my hands hadn’t been covered by thick gloves. As it was, I blinked several times, and then squeezed my eyes tightly shut.

The balloon lurched slightly. My eyes flicked open. The glittering surface before me seemed not to be moving. Then the balloon lurched again, and I looked at the altimeter. The needle, crawling along the scale as it had been doing since I’d launched, moved slower and slower, as though elastic bands were holding me down. And then it stopped.

I hung suspended in the air, held fast by that titanic thing.

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