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The Swan Pilot

BY L. E. MODESITT, JR.

Ieased myself into the control couch of the ISS W. B. Yeats, making certain that all the connections were snug, and that there were no wrinkles in anything. Then I pressed the single stud that was manual, and the clamshell descended.

You could call a trans-ship a corade or a cockle guided by will across the sea of endless space. You could, and it would be technically wrong. Technically wrong, but impressionalistically right, and certainly the way it feels when you’re alone in the blackness, balancing the harmonics and threading your way from the light matter and through the dark matter and faerie dust of overspace, guiding the ship and all it contains out from light and into darkness and then on to another minute isle of solid warmth once again. Or you could refuse to call it a ship at all, nor the ocean it sails a sea. There is no true sea, the theorists say, just a mist of the undermatter that fills overspace, a mist that stretches to eternity, in which float the brilliant blocks of light matter that can incinerate you in a nanoinstant or the solid dark blocks upon which you can be smashed into dust motes tinier than the stitches on a leprechaun’s shoes.

A pilot is more like a light-blinded night bird with gossamer wings that soars across the mists of undermatter against and through the darkness and light that are but the representations of the universe above. Or perhaps those denizens of overspace perceive us as under-space, blocky and slow and awkward. I could call every flight a story of the twelve ships of the Tir Alir, and that would be right as well.

How many ways are there to explain the inexplicable? Shall I try again?

None of what I experience would make sense to, say, François Chirac, or Ahmed Farsi, and what they would experience would not make sense to me, either. But I’m Sean Shannon Henry, born in Sligo and a graduate of Trinity, and in the universe of the trans-ships, that has made all the difference, for the sky roads are not the same for each of the swan pilots, though the departures and the destinations—and the routes—are exactly the same. Nor can there be more than one pilot-captain on a ship. A second pilot wouldn’t help, because if a pilot fails for a nanoinstant, the ship is lost as well. Oh, the scientists have their explanations, and I’ll leave those with them.

With the clamshell down, I was linked to all the systems, from the farscanners to the twin fusactors, from the accumulators to the converters and the translation generators, and from the passenger clamshells to the cargo holds. I ran the checklist, and everything was green, and both cargo and the handful of passengers were secured.

“Alora,” I pulsed to the second, who handles cargo and passengers from the clamshell in the compartment aft of mine, “systems are go.”

“Ready for departure, Captain.”

A last scan of the systems, and I pulsed control. “High control, Yeats, systems green, ready for delocking and departure this time.”

“Yeats, wait one for traffic in the orange.”

“Yeats standing by.”

Another wedge shape, formed of almost indestructible adia-mante composite, so solid in the underspace we inhabit, slipped out from the glowing energy of Hermes Station, out toward the darkness up and beyond, where it would rise through the flames of translation, phoenix-swan-like, to make its way to another distant stellar hearth, and there untranslate, and glide like a falling brick back into the safe dullness of the reality we require.

“Yeats, clear to delock and depart.”

“Control, delocking and departing this time.” After releasing the couplers and giving the faintest touch of power to the steering jets, I eased the Yeats—a mere thousand tons of composite and cargo—away from Hermes Station, that islet of warmth in the black sea of oblivion that is space.

Like a quarrel arrowing through space, where there is no up or down, the Yeats and I accelerated away from Hermes Station and the world of Silverston. Once we were clear of satellites and traffic, I spread