The standard interstellar ship is the tetrascoper, capable of navigating Deep Four. Pentascopers, ships that fly Deep Five, are not generally used for travel within the empire, as the brevity of perceived travel time makes overshooting one's goal a very real danger. Pentascopers are used by planet hunters and intergalactic traders. With a pentascoper, travel time to the Andromeda Galaxy is a little over two imperial years, with perceived time of about a minute.

Imperial ships contract spacetime by rearranging the patterns of the matter composing them and their cargo into a form that can be acted upon by deep-level forces.