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The Sea Knight helicopter started its engines. The two rotor heads, fore and aft, began to turn. The passengers waited on the flight deck as six blades spun up to speed. The junior crewman led the passengers in through the main cabin door. The cabin was almost tall enough to stand up straight. The passengers took their places on the bench seats along both sides of the cabin and belted themselves in.
The crewman closed the cargo ramp in the back. The ships crew removed the chains that anchored the helicopter to the flight deck. Moments later they felt the aircraft lift into a hover, slide sideways over the edge of the deck then climb out on course.
The crew chief sat next to the cabin door facing aft. The junior crewman sat on the opposite side of the cabin next to two orange life rafts that hung from slings on the wall.
The two pilots were telling jokes on intercom. The crew chief signaled the junior crewman to do his station checks. The crewman stood and began to walk to the back of the cabin. His stride was interrupted by a tug on his flight vest. He looked down and saw that something had snagged on his equipment. It was a metal handle with a thin cable hanging from his vest.
He recognized it. It looked like one of the handles you pull to inflate a… Before he could finish the thought, he was rudely shoved from behind. He stumbled to the deck and turned to see the orange life raft rapidly inflating and filling the cabin above him.
Carbon dioxide gas rushed from a small tank and pressurized the growing raft. It was pinning the passengers to the walls and pressing the crewman to the deck. The heavy pressure was increasing by the second.
The crew chief was cornered against the cabin door and the cockpit bulkhead. He wrestled with the thick vinyl fabric and got his hand to his survival vest. He drew his knife from the sheath and began to stab and slash the orange beast.
The pressure was relieved and the fabric slowly relaxed. The crewman climbed out from under the deflating raft. He was grateful that disaster was averted. But he knew he would have to endure many jokes as the stories of his error spread among the fleet.
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