Planesrunner is a 2011 young adult science fiction novel by British author Ian McDonald, and the first installment of the Everness series. The book follows British teenager Everett Singh as he travels between alternate universes in search of his missing theoretical physicist father. Plot British teenager Everett Singh witnesses the kidnapping of his father, theoretical physicist Dr. Tejendra Singh, and begins to suspect a conspiracy when he receives from his father an automated software download called the Infundibulum. Tejendra's colleague, the offbeat research fellow Colette Harte, gives Everett video evidence that Tejendra's theoretical research into the existence of multiple universes is no longer theoretical. Using Heisenberg Gate technology, Tejendra and his team have discovered and contacted nine alternate universes so far. An alliance called the Plenitude of Known Worlds is already in place among the government leaders from these parallel universes—termed planes—which have been numbered E1 through E9, with Everett's plane labeled E10. Before Tejendra's disappearance, he discovered a map of the seemingly infinite number of planes: the Infundibulum. Everett deduces how to manipulate the Infundibulum thanks to a clue from his father, and lets its existence be known to the mysterious people who have been pursuing him in search of it. He is taken by the glamorous but sinister Charlotte Villiers—the Plenipotentiary/ambassador of E3—to the underground bunker where his universe's Heisenberg Gate is located. During a demonstration of his ability to choose any destination in any plane, Everett escapes through the Gate to E3, where Charlotte has put Tejendra to work on the Gate technology. E3 is an Earth without oil, where giant airships dominate shipping and transportation. Plastic does not exist, but E3 has developed nanotechnology that allows the use of carbon fiber in many applications. Everett meets and is taken in by Sen, the willful adopted daughter of Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth of the airship Everness. Sen is the ship's pilot, Mchynlyth is the engineer, and Miles O'Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey is the weighmaster. Hired as Sixsmyth's chef, Everett enlists Sen to infiltrate Charlotte's headquarters, the Tyrone Tower, to determine where Tejendra is being held. This leads Charlotte—brandishing a jumpgun, a weapon capable of shooting people into a random other plane—to Hackney Great Port, where the Everness is moored. She and her team are rebuffed by a mob, and the Everness leaves for the Goodwin Sands, where Sixsmyth has been challenged to an airship duel by one of her