When we hit the ground, it can be a real jolt. Bend your knees to absorb the shock, hold the handles on the side of the gondola. Piccard squeezes the throttle to prevent the balloon from descending too fast. We feel the hot blast of the burners. Piccard points to a barnyard where a dozen or so pigs are running frantically in a circle.
Pigs always go berserk.
Sometimes one of them drops dead of a heart attack, and the farmers make us pay for it. Notwithstanding the porcine panic, Piccard eases the craft toward a field less than 100 m from the pigpen. I brace for the jolt, gripping the sides of the basket to avoid the indignity of being ejected into a pile of cow manure. But the gondola lands like a soap bubble on water. As far as I know, all the pigs survived.