The title of the story “Four Pilots” clearly indicates who exactly will carry the clanking plot colossus on their muscular shoulders. However, the center of the story is not at all the pilots - Mamontov, Nitkin, Paper and Sarzhev - but aviation itself (albeit aerospace). The most heartfelt verbal adagios of this text are dedicated to her, dedicated to flight and everything that makes it possible: the qualities of the aircraft of the future and the qualities of people with this technology, considered fused. Their discipline, audacity, courage...