- Prologue

perspective of the times.' 'And,' Father would add if he was there, 'the culture.'

Still smarting under Johansen's scorn, she was determined to produce an analysis that did justice to the topic, and placed the Tables into their proper historical context. Culture didn't seem to matter, unless you thought of piloting as a culture, but the times . . . The original Tables had been developed during a time of trade expansion, coupled with a radical improvement in Jump drives. Those two conditions had created an urgent need for clarifying gravity effects and string constants as tradeships began to travel more than a few hundred light-years from home.

Ships had begun to go missing—lost, or found far too late for the crew to be rescued, because no one had formalized the new conditions. One ship in a thousand was lost, routinely. And all people said—even pilots!—was that piloting was dangerous. Which it was. But what nobody looked at was why it was dangerous, and if the odds couldn't be leveled a little, in favor of pilots surviving and ships winning through.

Nobody, that was, until Master Pilot ven'Tura had dared not only to log, but to share with all pilots—even Terrans, which was considered antisocial in his culture—the information that he and his clan had gathered over dozens of years.

Eventually, Master ven'Tura had become the clearing house and editor for the monumental and necessary task, and his Tables became rote companion to thousands of pilots over generations.

Then, over time, the loss of pilots and ships trended upward again. Most assumed it was because there were more ships and more pilots, less training, and . . . all kinds of things. It had taken someone with keen insight to see that there were tiny and fundamental flaws in the way the ven'Tura Tables were being applied, in the way they were being read by modern equipment . . .

And so, the Tables had been revised. Recently, within the lifetime of pilots still flying. Again, they were making a difference. Had already made a difference. The number of ships lost was down again, in a statistically meaningful way. The person who had done the revision had been a Scholar Caylon, also a Liaden, though not, it seemed, a pilot.

Theo flicked a footnote to access the next level of information.

Well. It seemed that Scholar Caylon was Pilot-Scholar Caylon, though she had come to piloting late, and after her revised Tables had been adopted by pilotkind. She'd been a statistician of a sort, an expert in Sub-rational Mathematics. The text noted that her later work was . . . esoteric—notably a lengthy proof for pseudorandom tridimensional subspaces that, while illuminating her genuis, was of little practical use to working pilots.

The text also noted that her scholarly output had lessened after her affiliation with Clan Korval—

Theo blinked; shook her head.

'Spend your whole life thinking something's made-up and then it starts showing up everywhere,' she muttered, and tapped the screen again, calling back the problem she'd set up to help her think.

Trouble was, it wasn't particularly helping her think. She glared at the screen, looked down at the work in hand, and shook her head again.

She pressed the process button, importing the familiar 'standard cluster' that the class, indeed, the whole school seemed to depend on for training, into the second set of assumptions. How concrete were the numbers when applied to a tiny, sanitary, best-case situation?

But there, the work in her hands was concrete, while space, which the numbers were trying to describe . . .

A noise sounded in the hall, a thump—she shook her head. The kids—she felt like she could call them that even though some were several years older than her—the local kids had been all revved up over a sporting event; charging around the building cheering since early morning, though the game didn't start 'til afternoon. Even Asu had gone out to view the victory, leis woven in layers around her neck.

The noise repeated, and resolved: someone was at her door. Theo sighed, locked the screen, and gathered her lace into one hand.

The click came before she was on her feet, and a tired-looking Chelly smiled up at her as he lifted several large bags into the entry, where they thunked solidly on the floor.

'Chelly, they let you come back!'

She felt her face warm slightly—it sounded like she was pleased to see him, after all . . .

'Treat to see you, too, First Bunk!'

'Well, I am,' she insisted, because it was true, after all, 'glad to see you.'

He laughed and shook his head. 'Don't worry, I'm sort of glad to see you too.' He shouldered the door shut, making sure it clicked tight, and stepped into the room, leaving his bags by the door, where Asu could complain that she'd almost fallen over them when she came back.

'Not out at the game?' he asked, and peered over the top of her screen. 'Oh. Orbital dynamics, huh?'

'I wish,' Theo said, settling back into her seat. 'History of Piloting.'

He blinked. 'Yeah? With that screen?'

'We're doing the ven'Tura Tables,' Theo said, unfolding the lace bit and spreading it out. It was . . . almost right. She leaned forward and unlocked the screen, frowning between the configuration of stars and what she had in hand.

'Still playing with the needles?'

'No,' Theo said absently. 'Not playing. Seeing.' She squinted up at Chelly.

'Why does everybody act like space is flat?'

'Huh? Who said space was—oh, I get it.' Chelly held up his hands. 'You gotta learn your basics first—the tables and the board drills. The math, if you don't mind my saying. After you got all that —'