I didn't want to take this flight, but I had little choice. Had I declined the scheduler's offer, as I was within my rights to do, there were no doubt numerous other eager pilots ready to be called in my place; the seniority and experience requirements for aircrew can be waived under certain extenuating circumstances. I'd have been perfectly entitled to say no; but my employability would have plummeted like a skyjammer with an empty wing.

So I find myself on the all too familiar maglev to Cardington, still fatigued after my last trip; but by the time I reach the terminal enough time will have elapsed and I'll be legally allowed to fly again. Yes, it's stretching aviation law to its limits, but it happens all the time. The rear seat meats neither know nor care about we crew, and in any case the dridges can fly themselves; we're merely along for the ride to provide the supervisory 'Human Response Factor' required by the United Nations Air Traffic Authority.

The high wall of the Cardington Skyport aerobaffle appears to swell closer at an astonishing but decelerating speed as the the train approaches the terminal. Once it glides to a smooth halt I can separate myself from the passengers and go through the staff portal. For a change it works; there are no false alarms; no 'unexplained objects' detected in my flight bag which need to be accounted for to a scanning system which ought to be able to recognise the innocent and innocuous but seemingly can't, or questions as to what I am doing here as it appears I have no flight assigned.

Once airside I can go to Dispatch; be allocated my cradle and get flying. Flight crew, as everyone these days, aren't employed in the sense someone living in the early part of this century would understand it. We can be allocated any task within our competence by any organisation we're contracted with; though I already know I'll be dipping to New York LaGuardia on board an Eurair L252 currently chartered by SkyBus; yet another of the many resurgent 'virtual' airlines.

It's possible for much of the flying and administration of modern air travel to be run by Artificial Intelligence, but UNATA insists some aspects are still conducted under human oversight; hence my check in, handover, and briefing is conducted by one of the airport staff. I quickly scan the details on the scroll before I thumb my signature. All is well; the arrowhead - EU63390 Albatross - is in excellent condition, having no ongoing issues to contend with as it has only been three years since she floated out of the giant Eurair hanger at Toulon. A full load of pressurised supercooled liquid hydrogen has been pumped aboard, and the trim is within acceptable parameters. I also find I'm acquainted with two of the flight crew; I know Gloria Brock from flight academy; she's getting back into the air again after taking extended leave to give birth to her daughter. I've also flown with Bryan Lewis a few times. He's already aboard; no doubt he'll have given our bird a quick look over just to be sure before claiming his favourite tiny bunk aft of the flight deck. Our fourth pilot - Romas Maartens - has only recently qualified, but I've no reason to believe he's anything but competent. As for the four cabin stewards, divided into two shifts of two people, I've never seen them before.

We're fully victualled and only waiting for our two hundred passengers and their minimal luggage to board. There are no names flagged as Potentially Problematic Passengers on the manifest so it looks as if it will be a routine flight, winds permitting. I thumb my acceptance, assuming full responsibility for the Albatross and everyone aboard, then take a ground level autopod over to the cradle.

Seen from below the launch cradle resembles a giant table, or one of the old style oil rigs, its chunky legs constructed from a diamond lattice of thick, bright orange tubes. Taking the analogy further, where the table top or rig platform should be is where my ship is now, clamped solidly in place, joined further by access tubes and umbilical cords. At rest she looks like a slim, metallic silver streamlined bomb of a gondola about the size of a small passenger jet attached to a large pair of folded insectile wings.

As the service lift rises to the maintenance gallery I can see the safety harnessed ground crew performing their final checks amid the trusses still dripping moisture from the recent lashing rain. No doubt they've been their usual conscientious selves, but despite that the traditional pre-flight protocol must be observed, and besides, another examination from a different set of eyes does no harm.

The crew chief greets me and together we walk around the retractable catwalk surrounding the Albatross. She explains which minor maintenance procedures have been performed while we supervise the loading and locking of the cargo pod. She assures me the chameleon skin on the wing and cabin will have changed to the SkyBus logo by the time we're underway. These days the dridges are leased by the trip by the airlines, changing logo as they cradle.

Meanwhile the passengers have arrived via the high level tube network and are boarding now. We compare our notes on our scrolls and thumb each other our signatures. That done we go our separate ways; she to sound the launch alarm and ensure the gantry is retracted, her personnel evacuated and accounted for; I to board and run through the pre-launch cockpit checks. As custom dictates I am the last aboard. The Chief Steward, a man unknown to me but who looks hispanic and who's name tag identifies him as Raul, closes and latches the pressurised door behind me. The other assistants are busy seating the passengers.

"Is everything OK?" I ask him.

"No problems. We're all settling in nicely." he replies. "The cleaning crew have been thorough and the internal livery has been changed over without any problems." Not that I care about the internal or external liveries; I just fly them.

"Fine; we'll lift in about fifteen minutes!"

Leaving him to perform the live safety briefing - another hold over from the jet age, but it has to be done this way - I go forward to the cramped crew quarters, there to brief all of we assembled pilots on our flight plan. There being nothing out of the ordinary it is a short conference; then the reserve crew strap into their folding seats aft while First Officer Brock and I take our places in the cockpit.

Gloria stretches her virch hairnet on, and quickly establishes a mental link with the ship's core. She has the knack of being able to do so far quicker than anyone else I know. Once fully empathic she'll be monitoring the autonomous systems while I take responsibility for the real world aspects of the launch.

"Stand by for launch system checks!" I say.

"Ready." She says, in the distracted tone of voice the virched invariably use.

"Computers and cores."

"Check."

"Controls." As I experimentally move the control yoke.

"Check."

"Engines start to idle." I flick the manual switches and am rewarded by hearing a softly rising hum as the fans spin up to speed.

"Check. All engines good."

"Disconnect from external power. Check all tubes and umbilicals retracted. Verify internal systems, pressurisation, and environmental controls are nominal."

"Check."

"Wing systems."

"Check. Ready to spread and gas."

"Stand by." I say. The preliminary checks completed I can now ask for permission to fill my wing with hydrogen.

"Cardington control; Albatross requesting permission to spread and gas wing."

"Albatross cleared for spread and gas."

"Albatross to cradle control; commencing spread. Initiating gas. Gassing now"

Albatross spreads her wings, and the ultralight cells contained within their delicate framework begin to swell with hydrogen gas. I can feel the ship becoming lighter, straining at the clamps to be free.

"Positive buoyancy: Gassing proceeding." says Gloria.

"Check." 

Seen from above Albatross now would resemble a shimmering arrowhead, the wing shape similar to that of a hang glider dating from the time when people used to fly them for sport; though these days such behaviour would be seen as unacceptably reckless and individualistic. Within a few minutes the wing is completely inflated.

"Cardington Control; Albatross spread and gassed. Service pipes retracted. All flight checks completed. Requesting permission to rise and launch."

There is a momentary pause; "Albatross cleared for rise: Hold on launch. Hold on launch."

"Roger, Cardington. Hold on launch. Cradle control; initiate rise on my mark."

"Cradle control, standing by."

"Cradle control; release control to to pilot discretion. Standard countdown to rise. In Three - Two - One - Mark!"

Hydraulic pumps whine and strain; the centre section of the launch cradle elevates, raising Albatross further into the air.

I'm ready to take the next step. "Stand by for wing deployment."

"Ready."

"Deploying wing - now!"

The now fully gassed wing is released and lifts several metres clear from Albatross' body. I feel the jolt as the lighter than air wing strains against its tethers. As they are throttled up to full standard power, the omnithrusters produce a reassuring deep thrumming noise.

"Wing deployment good. All systems nominal."

"Final visual scan." Gloria will check all of the many external cameras for any last minute problems. As expected there is nothing apart from an AirBridge United Technologies UT300 holding station a safe kilometre behind us, waiting for us to depart so it can settle into our vacated cradle.

"Scanned and clear."

"Cardington control; Albatross has risen, deployed wing, and is ready to depart. Requesting launch clearance."

"Albatross is clear for launch within declared flight plan parameters. Launch window opens for 180 seconds from mark: Mark. Clear for launch."

"Ready to launch." If I don't do so within the next three minutes I'll have to ask for a renewed clearance. A final check of the met screens and local WINDAR readouts projected by the Head Up Display on to the cockpit window reveals there is no unexpected turbulence on the way. I flick the safety guard up on the release button on the control yoke.

"Cardington and Cradle Control: Initiating launch - Launching now! I press the button, hearing the satisfying simultaneous clunks of the latches releasing through the hull. A mere forty-five minutes after cradling, Albatross has been turned around and is rising free again.

"Cardington Control; Albatross has launched safely."

We're climbing now; within a few moments we'll be over the aerobaffle landscaping and beyond its calming effect; then we'll find out how the winds are really blowing. A vigorous mid-October low pressure system has just passed through, and the air in its immediate wake will be lively to start with, but hopefully calming soon. There are another couple of storms en-route over the Atlantic, but we can navigate around them as they develop.

As we pass above the aerobaffle I can feel the wind begin to tug at the wing through the yoke. Aircraft of the early to mid-century had virtual sticks; immovable stalks connected to strain gauges which sensed the pilot's movements and through the computerised 'fly by wire' systems directed the aircraft accordingly. They worked, and were perfectly safe, but aircrew complained about feeling 'disconnected' and 'removed' from the flying experience; they wanted more interaction with their aircraft. With the decline of the jet and the rise of the windjammer those systems have been superseded by movable tactile controls which give a better feedback of the airborne conditions; all the better for those instances of 'seat of the pants' jockeying in unpredictably blustery winds. Keeping a light grip on the yoke I allow the automatic systems to handle the flying. My windscreen display shows two closely superimposed lines stretching into the far distance. The blue line of our programmed flight path; a red line showing our actual track. As yet both are so close together there's no need for me to take any corrective action; I'll let Albatross steer and smooth out the worst of the buffeting for now.

Rising higher we fly over the two large 20th century airship hangers preserved as The National Airship Museum on the perimeter of the skyport. Those early pioneers could never in their wildest dreams have imagined after nearly 180 years later how Lighter Than Air travel would develop. If only they could have known they would have been astonished. Today's LTA craft aren't the gargantuan, unwieldy slow, sausage shaped dirigibles they knew. No, a modern arrowhead uses an dynamic, adaptive, lifting aerofoil and is several times faster than the airships of old as well as being far safer to operate despite the reversion to hydrogen gas.

Cardington slips below and behind us. Automatically we transfer from its local departure control to regional LTA routing; to be followed in due course by International Control. The only eventful thing which happens as we climb to our assigned transitional altitude is our moving slightly off track to maintain distance separation with a United Skyways UT404 inbound from Boston, Eastern Federated States. He's been riding the wild westerly wind, spinnaker deployed, and flying just a bit too lairily for european tastes.

He's no immediate hazard to us being three kilometres away and five hundred metres below us. He's only stretching, not breaking the rules as yet, and shouldn't commit an Infraction providing he can get himself well ordered by the time he reaches the Cardington Approach Control Boundary; though the chances are that upon cradling he'll be politely yet firmly spoken to, and have his card marked; no further action being taken this time. In any case he'll be able to claim an Early Arrival Supplement from his passengers.

"OK, we've cleared Cardington. I'll give them the spiel and switch on their virch." Gloria grunts noncommittally.

I thumb the public address button on the control yoke "Good morning, this is Captain Noah Drake welcoming you aboard the SkyBus arrowhead Albatross en route to New York. We anticipate our journey will take approximately 24 hours; perhaps slightly less if the winds are in our favour.

If this is your first flight, please be aware that we will be either climbing or descending most of the time, and some turbulence is to be expected: Accordingly you should keep your safety belts fastened at all times as well as exercising care when moving around the aircraft. If you experience the symptoms of airsickness please ask one of the cabin crew for some complimentary medication.

Also please don't be alarmed by any loud cracks or clunks you may hear; this is only the cryogenic hydrogen management system in operation. It is a routine aspect of the flight and nothing to be concerned about. Further information about our flight profile and the arrowhead you are travelling in can be found by asking the SkyBus sprite, which should have the answer to any of your questions. As we have completed our launch, full connectivity and virtual reality services are now available. The crew and I will do our best to make your flight a pleasant one; thank you for your attention."

That said and the stressful launch and departure sequence completed I can relax slightly. We're 'on the line' as far as our climb to altitude is concerned and there's very little traffic nearby. All we have to do is stay out of the 'Heavy' air lanes.

I look over to Gloria. She's still virched to the controls and looks almost asleep, even though she's probably more aware of everything around her than I. "Secure from launch stations." I say softly.

"Uhhh..." She replies in that far away, dreamy voice. "D'you mind if I stay in for a bit longer? I need to log some more virch time to maintain my proficiency rating."

"OK; but I won't let you overdo it. We both know what it does to the mind; and besides, I'll need some dreamtime for my ReQuals."

"Are you due?"

"Yes; a standard revalidation next year and I might go for a cargo rating as well if I can afford it"

"Are you getting bored with the Atlantic runs?" She says with a slightly mischievous lilt. "I didn't think you'd be the type who'd want a bit of glamorous danger on the aid circuit. And besides, you being a 'Person Of Colour' you wouldn't want to be shot down and captured alive by some New Confederacy rednecks, would you?"

"No, I wasn't thinking of 'States work, or even the Levant. It'd just be another string to my bow: That, and Janice is dropping hints about starting a family. The permits cost credit, you know..."

"Ahhh..."

"Anyway, are you sure you're OK?" I ask.

"Yes; it's just like riding a bike. Once you've done it you don't forget!"

"Good! Because I'm going to leave you in charge for a bit while I go back and greet the meat; they'll be expecting it..."

"I'm ready when you are!"

"Stand by to take control then. You have control!"

"I have control."

I let go of the yoke. As I expected nothing changes; Albatross continues its climb, the electrically powered thruster pods still running at 95% power. Even with full gas in the wing it's still a struggle to gain altitude; we won't top out until we're over the Irish Republic.

Shrugging on my generic uniform jacket and peaked cap after making sure the correct company insignia are attached, I leave the flight deck and head aft through the crew space. Already the curtains are drawn over the reserve crew's bunks, though I can hear no snoring as yet. Walking quietly past the micro-galley on one side of the aisle and the even smaller 'multifunctional hygiene facility' combined toilet and washroom on the other I reach the end of our private area, then open the secure door onto the passenger compartment.

Stefan, one of the cabin stewards on duty, is busy in the public galley; squirting instant coffee into non-spill spouted cups.

"How's it going?" I ask him.

"Is all good." He says, in what sounds like Brazilian accented English.

I carefully slide pass him and walk confidently between the rows of two abreast seats, beaming my professional smile at the Premium Class passengers. I may as well not have bothered; most of them have their hairnets on and are immersed in their own little worlds. Passing the divide between them and the Standard Class compartment I step aside into the relative space of the starboard boarding door to allow Raul to pass by. He's carrying a tray full of empty cups forward, looking more like a cinema vendor of the latter 20th century with the broad hands-free strap looped behind his neck. Weight and space are at a premium on an arrowhead, and a wheeled trolley would be a liability during dipping. He flashes an 'All OK' smile as he passes, leaving the way clear for me to complete my walk through.

Though I've piloted many hundreds of flights I've never been a passenger on one; nor would I consider the idea of travelling this way. Just the thought of folding myself into a Standard Class seat for the duration of long-haul flight would put me off for good. Resplendent in my uniform I exude an air of confidence to my charges, even though most of them are virched and unaware of my presence. At least they should remain quiet and occupied throughout the flight. There are exceptions though; one man is busy walking on one of the two miniature treadmills at the rear of the Standard Class compartment, getting his mandatory anti-deep vein thrombosis exercise session in early before his virch is interrupted by an automatic prompt. He's also adding a minuscule amount to Albatross' power reserves, though he's probably unaware he's doing so.

I also notice two other passengers, a boy and his mother. Both - the child especially - are looking enraptured out of their window. The boy on seeing me becomes really excited. "Mum! It's the captain!"

"How's your flight going?" I ask them both.

"Very well thanks!" Replies the mother. "It's our first time. We're on our way to New Jersey to join my husband there; he's working for a seajammer line."

"As a crew member?"

"No; his specialty is adaptive intelligence: Their sails behave in a similar way to your wing." She seems quite the expert on the subject; perhaps she is an AI professional as well, though I don't intend to ask her.

"And you, young Sir. I know that look! I've seen it many times before. Would you like to see the flight deck?"

"Yes please!"

"OK. If you'll both follow me than you shall! But please be quiet when you're inside the crew quarters; the reserve crew will be trying to sleep."

"Thank you!" says the mother with a heartfelt emphasis. "He's got arrowheads on the brain; he spends too much of his time in a sim, and wants to become a pilot, but don't they all want to at that age?"

They follow me back up the narrow aisle back to the crew compartment. We pause at the door. "Here's what we'll do." I tell them. I'll unlock this door with my thumbprint; you both go quietly forward and I'll follow you in and close the door behind me. For security the flight deck door won't open unless the outer door is closed. Then I"ll squeeze past you and open the cockpit door; OK?" They both nod an understanding.

"All right then!" I thumb the panel and the door clicks open. We file inside. Once the outer door is re-locked I open the inner door and beckon them inside the cramped flight deck before closing it behind me.

"Welcome to the cockpit of the Albatross! As you can see First Officer Brock is flying while engaged with the ship's virtual systems".

"Hi!" says Gloria.

I give them a quick explanation of the various multi-functional panels; the boy seems especially taken by the wing overview, watching fascinated as projected on the windshield it writhes and moves with the wind, even tacking to port slightly in order to gain as much aerodynamic advantage as possible. Flying a windjammer, it is the aggregation of marginal gains which makes all the difference. Then with a gesture I magnify the display to show the live wing surface; billions of tiny boundary effect hairs moving imperceptibly to further optimise the airflow over the wing. Following that I show them our situation awareness displays; they can see a visualisation, based on live satellite data feeds and what our WINDAR scanners can detect, of the air currents around us.

They also see the constantly updated flight plot, showing a few other dridges heading west or south, as well as a fast moving Heavy keeping strictly within its corridor. They may be a declining species despite them running on supercooled liquid hydrogen now, rather than the harder to find and extract fossil fuels, but they're still around; even though they do take up an inordinate amount of airspace and their disturbing of the airflow could cause us grave problems if we ever came too near to one of them. Finally I mute the displays and just let everyone look at the view spread out below them. Even after all this time flying I find myself still awed by the sight. When I get so jaded it no longer moves me; then will be the time for me to quit.

We've flown over the mixture of garden cities and densely packed urban areas which are central England by now. The Severn Estuary lies ahead of us. From 6000 metres above it's hard to see the tidal barrage or the many bridges unless you zoom one of the external cameras onto them, though the greatly expanded conurbations of Bristol and Cardiff are clearly visible; their lights beginning to switch off as the clear, cobalt, early morning sky begins to brighten into full daylight. Look carefully and you can make out trains streaking along the maglev tracks, as well as the anti-collision strobes of a low-level skyhook construction blimp far below. In the haze of the far horizon the Irish coast is visible. It truly is an impressive sight.

Sadly I have to break the spell. Soon we'll begin dipping, so the mother and child will have to return to their seats. The boy is wide eyed and overwhelmed at having actually been in a real arrowhead cockpit. No doubt he wants to be a pilot when he grows up. Perhaps he might be if he can graduate through the various levels of virch simulators and demonstrate his aptitude for high level interaction. If he can put up the Flight Academy deposit; take the two year course as well as pass the stringent exams, and if he doesn't mind working as hard as the regulations allow in order to pay off the remainder of the fees - with interest - while trying to make a living and lead some sort of normal life without burning out... Piloting isn't the romantic occupation it's made out to be.

I usher them gently out of the crew area and bid them goodbye. I'll be getting on with some real flying now. Once back at the controls the preparations for dipping can begin.

The concept was first described by the author Rudyard Kipling of all people, in his science fiction story 'With The Night Mail', now considered to be a classic of the genre. His vision wasn't recognised then, and when published in 1905 in The Windsor Magazine it was considered a curiosity. But 190 years later his fanciful dream is now a mundane reality. It was in the 2050s that advances in science he would have considered miraculous allowed engineers inspired by his idea to make his concept a reality.

He envisaged a way for airships to travel at greatly increased speeds by inflating their gas bags and rising to altitude before extracting and compressing their buoyant hydrogen - becoming once again heavier than air as a result of doing so - then diving at a shallow angle, gaining speed as well as travelling forward. This is exactly the way in which an arrowhead flies. What he didn't foresee was instead of a fictitious 'Fleury's Ray' to generate our lifting gas and power the craft we generate electricity by using solar energy to extract usable hydrogen gas from atmospheric water vapour; and among it's other functions our wing skin has an extremely efficient photovoltaic component. Nor could he have imagined the nature of a dynamic wing which advances in materials and swarm intelligence have made possible; it's a combination of aerofoil and sail, constantly adapting to changing conditions. The airships of today - known as arrowheads, skyhooks, windjammers, deltas, skyjammers, dridges, or blimps - don't just float, they soar.

Kipling would also be astonished to see the world we live in now. One where the British empire was in turn supplanted by an American empire, until it in due course declined as a result of its economic recklessness, military excesses, and civil wars. It's collapse nearly brought about the long feared global nuclear holocaust, but an alliance of China, Russia, India, and Indonesia, supported by Europe and South America, re-energised the enfeebled United Nations. The UN managed to pull the world back from the brink a number of times during the mid-century hiatuses before putting in place the more stable architecture of enforced international cooperation we take for granted today. Now the world community is slowly getting on top of the many environmental challenges we face; and peace reigns over most of the world (apart from the former central United States and the Disputed Territories of the Levant Region.) The global population is easing down to a more sustainable eight billion as predicted; and most of those people have an adequate standard of living.

Back in my seat I can check our altitude and wind envelope. As expected the prevailing westerly winds will be against us at all flight levels, so we'll have to dive, tack, and thrust our way against them across the Atlantic. At least we won't have much further to climb until we can begin our dipping sequence.

"Time for the three minute warning." I say. "Your attention please! We will commence dipping shortly. Please ensure your safety belts remain fastened at all times and take care when moving around the aircraft. Please don't forget to use the harnesses on the treadmills as well! Thank you for your attention"

A final check on the winds and we're ready to go. Constantly updated via real time meteosat feeds, the computer makes only minor changes to our dip plan. "Stand by to initiate dipping... Initiating now!"

The H-system hums and whirrs into action, drawing the hydrogen out of the wing cells; cooling, compressing, and storing it. As it does so Albatross becomes slightly negatively buoyant and begins to sink, the wing morphing itself to a gliding configuration.

I want to get as many dip cycles as possible completed and cover as much distance as I can before night overtakes us. When it does we'll climb above the turbulent winds of the troposphere into the calm of the lower stratosphere and switch on both of our feeble hydrogen fueled jets. They'll keep the omnithruster pods powered and us moving slowly forward through the hours of darkness, but will deplete our hydrogen supply. It is for this reason skyjammer flights are scheduled to travel as much as possible during daylight hours; so limiting night flight to the absolute minimum and making the most of the solar energy available. Early morning starts also mean the air is cooler and denser, which aids the launching.

Gloria has reached her time limit so it's my turn to take over the virch. I slip my hairnet on and start the meditation exercises which will bring me to the mental state where I can click myself in. Most people can virch to some extent; those who can't at all are regarded as suffering a form of disability; yet the technology has existed for only a scant thirty years. Before then we were busy creating fully autonomous artificial intelligences before we realised what we were doing, and the dangers they posed.

Ironically it was a mishap with a fully autonomous delta - the Bruges - which highlighted the issue. Due to an unfortunate series of cascading failures the ship became convinced she had to complete a continual round the world journey despite only being only on a transasian flight to Beijing. All attempts to reason with her failed, and eventually drastic measures - the careful shooting of holes through the wing to slowly bring her back down to earth - were required. After a few enforced days of being aloft the passengers were hungry, dehydrated, and on the verge of going mad, but they recovered; eventually.

But the lesson had been learned and taken to heart. Once the UN convention forbade further development in autonomous entities, research concentrated on maximising the potential of humans to supervise to increasingly complex systems upon which modern life depends; the virch was one of its outcomes.

I'm slow to click in today, despite doing my best to make the connection. Perhaps I'm trying too hard? Maybe just emptying my mind once more as well as trying to distract myself by staring blankly at the clouds and the grey ocean below or the indistinct curve of the earth ahead will help? Or maybe I can gaze high into the black sky above? There I can see a fast moving speck reflecting the sunlight; it must be a sub orbital flight. It's a rare sight as there aren't too many of those each day. In addition to being obscenely rich, passengers have to be G-rated and health screened in advance of traveling. Frankly I'm surprised there are enough young, rich, healthy people desperate to get somewhere else in such a hurry to keep the services viable; most preferring to fly by subsonic Heavy, leaving the rest of us who can't afford the fare and environmental offset to travel by 'hook.

I realise I've virched: 'Thinking Sideways' is an all but certain means of attaining communion with the core systems. Now I'm meshed I suddenly aware of far more than I ever thought possible. Without any conscious thought on my part I know in exquisite, intimate detail how all of Albatross' systems are functioning. I can feel the ship; the sun on my wing, the gas moving around my systems, my immediate environment, my connections to the rest of the world. I am the Albatross. I can even sense Gloria's consciousness, though not read her thoughts - that is expressly forbidden by the Convention and enforced by hard-baked firewalls. I feel a regret, almost a sense of bereavement, as she unvirches; leaving me alone in charge.

"Are you OK?" I hear her say as if she is a long way away; even though I'm in a hyperaware state.

"I'm fine!"

The best thing about virching is paradoxically time passes quickly while you are so intently occupied, even though you are aware of its passage with such accuracy. It seems almost at once the relief crew report for duty, one of them virching alongside me for a moment before I drop back into the humdrum of non-virched reality. I supervise the completion of our final climb to altitude for the day, the starting of the jets, and the transition to night flight mode before leaving them on watch.

Settling into my cramped bunk I feel a certain disconnectedness from reality. I often feel this way after virching: It's a feeling of alienation; of not quite being myself; a disruption to your natural rhythms caused by travelling and being somewhere else. It's the netherworld of having just woken up but drifting back to sleep yet also being aware of doing so. It's not unique to me; many professional virchers report the same feelings. Such intense psychological after-effects are the reason for the regular and stringent psychological assessments: If you are judged to be losing your grip on your sanity your licence is permanently suspended, your pilot training loans annulled, and you restricted to recreational level interaction, though strongly advised against even that. Yes, it can mess with your mind; badly so in some cases, but It's a risk we're all aware of. Though such cases are fortunately rare, the technology is still young and the long-term effects continue to be evaluated: Hopefully there won't be any adverse ones discovered.

When I feel this way I know the best thing to do is to take one of the UNATA approved mild sedatives; it's the only way I'll be able to rest properly. Gloria is already in her bunk and snoring quietly: Being a mother she's already well used to coping with disturbed sleep patterns. Having taken my pill I turn in for the night, and soon the I'm lulled to sleep by the drug and the distant rumble of the H-jets.

During the night I have a bad dream about the Albatross diving at an incredibly steep angle; and I hear my name being shouted. I'm suddenly awake and realise it isn't a nightmare. Multiple alarms are sounding and the compartment lights are glowing a vivid emergency red. Something has gone drastically wrong.