light-minute n.

We traveled about a light-minute or so, in neutral, right past Horleggor.

That is the voyage’s final acceleration; the ship will maintain this rate for two and a half days, until it clocks in at Scylla, the main deceleration station for this part of the galaxy, where it will be seized by a spongy web of forces twenty lightminutes in diameter and slowed to sublight velocities for the entry into the Abbondanza system.

The transmitter in his skull, powered by his own body’s electricity, had a useful range of no more than a light-minute or two, and while the sender of the message might not have a ready answer, he or she—or it—would surely have stopped the endless repetition immediately upon getting a response.

Unfortunately, the bogies, whoever and whatever they truly were, were now only five light-minutes back.

Formally the Reciprocity Agreement granted Cinnabar only the right to land warships on Kostroma instead of staying ten light-minutes out like those of other nations.

While I waited for the Outbreak Team to arrive from some other starbase, I used the captain’s vidscreen to watch outside the ship. I didn’t see much—nothing came or went at Starbase Iris, not even in-system shuttles. Once I noticed a merchant vessel passing within range of Willow’s hull cameras, but it didn’t come very close; it was aiming for the planet Celestia, a light-minute nearer the local sun.

Unexpected fringe riders are developing new ecological niches on the edge of the human information space, light-minutes and light-hours from the core, as an expansion that has hung fire since the 1970s gets under way.