Star-Pilot Grainger I. In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. Grainger and the Swan are to be contestants in a lethal race through cosmic storms in the dark nebula of the Halcyon Drift to find a legendary treasure-laden wreck. With a makeshift crew and an alien mind-parasite that’s determined to share his brain, it looked like a fashionable way to commit suicide…Cover art by Angus McKie.