Flight of Fancy

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White and delicate, high tech yet oddly primitive, the plane looks like some elegant insect or a sleek, latter-day pterodactyl. With her reedlike central wing slicing across three slender cylinders, she might have been designed by an austere modern sculptor rather than an aeronautical engineer. In an age of space travel and supersonic flight, her mission is a throwback to a different kind of odyssey: to fly not faster, but longer. Not higher, but farther. Voyager is a flight of fancy, of quaint possibility.

A round-the-world flight without stopping and without refueling is one of the last firsts of atmospheric aviation. Perhaps because such a feat had become almost an anachronism, no one before had tried to accomplish it. The flight was always considered impossible because no plane could carry enough fuel to take it 23,000 miles. But last week, while the attention of the nation was directed toward weightier, more dispiriting matters in Washington, Voyager sailed over the Pacific, over Africa and into the South Atlantic, more than halfway home, offering the world a needed distraction. Voyager's journey called to mind Charles Lindbergh's daring solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, and last week the Lone Eagle's widow was tracking the plane's progress. "I am holding my breath for them," said Anne Morrow Lindbergh of the crew. "What they are doing takes great courage and faith."

The mission came about through the faith of three principals: the two pilots, Dick Rutan, 48, and Jeana Yeager, 34; and Rutan's brother Burt, 43, who designed the plane. Burt Rutan, one of the U.S.'s most innovative designers, is president of his own firm, Rutan Aircraft Factory; Dick is a gaunt and prickly pilot par excellence, much decorated for his 325 combat missions in Viet Nam, who had been chafing as a test flyer for his younger brother; Yeager, Dick's constant companion, is a shy, petite former engineering-design draftsman who holds nine world flight records after just ten years at the controls. (She is no relation to Test Pilot Chuck Yeager, who went out of his way to belittle the mission in a quote to U.P.I.: "The Voyager is old technology. It's not a breakthrough.") Voyager began, as have so many fine notions, as a hurried sketch on a paper napkin. Five years ago the three were sitting in a greasy spoon in Mojave, Calif., when Burt Rutan turned to his brother and asked, "How would you like to be the first person to fly around the world without stopping to refuel?" The idea seized the test pilot. Burt dashed off a rudimentary drawing of a flying fuel tank -- which is precisely what Voyager is -- and they were off.

Over the next five years, the three set out to raise enough money to design, build and fly Voyager. The project took shape in Hangar 77 at Mojave Airport; the plane was put together by dedicated volunteers and a few paid workers who were determined to assemble a dream. Dick Rutan became the driving force; two years ago he bought out his brother's half interest in the plane. He is proud that the group is accomplishing its mission without one cent of Government money.