Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
Yumaar was suddenly and without warning pulled out of his deep sleep. His mind struggled to make the transaction between unconscious and awake, to move out of the soft and foggy world of dreams, into the hard reality of white walls and beeping electronics. His alarm-clock automatically turned on the lights, filling the room with dim, blue light. He had been awaken at a most uncomfortable time, this was the night-shift. He pulled on his shirt and his breeches - both in black velvet with a silver embroidery sewed into it. Like most of Yumaars's clothing it was excellent craftsmanship - well fitted for the heir of the throne.
It was dark in the corridor outside as well. The traditional light-bulbs that illuminated it on daytime had been replaced by dim skirtings that ran parallel with the edges of floor and ceiling. Right now the color of choice was blue, but when morning arrived it would turn soft-white, and then bright yellow. Evenings where orange, and then back to blue - just at it was on K`hmary. Yumaar had the big room at the end-wall of the corridor, just like he had the big chair at the end of the dining-room table. For the moment three out of five crew-members where sleeping, only Tux and Yumaar were awake. Tux was about to end his guard-duty, Yumaar was his replacement.
All but one of the floors where penetrated by a spiral stairway that passed through them alongside the inner wall of the command-section. It was only the bridge that was entered through a simple tube with a ladder, a exception that was made in order to get enough room for the computer hardware and life-support systems.
"Hey, nice outfit!" Tux said as Yumaar climbed out of the hole.
"Yeah, birthday-gift from the Earl of Knoxx" Yumaar answered.
"I put some choory and cake aside for you" Tux informed while pointing at the trolley-table with the thermos and open box. Yumaar walked over to take a better look at the cake. It was brown with a layer of red gel on it. He identified it as kushi-cake, not his favorite.
"Looks good" he said anyway. Choory on the other hand... He definitely needed that. choory was a dark liquid with lots of caffeine - or bayani, as the K`hmynians called it. Yummar poured himself a cup while Tux got up from the command chair.
"Anything out of the ordinary at your shift?" He asked.
"Lots of stars and such. A big rock passed us two hours ago" Tux informed.
"Really? How far out?" Yumaar wanted to know. Asteroids where always interesting, so he decided to pump him for everything he had on it.
"About three thousand kilometers away" Tux said.
"Big?" - "About ten kilometers across, very dense. I had to make some minor course adjustments due to its gravity-pull" - "Wow, how many Gs?" - "0,01" - "That is dense" - "Uncharted?" - "Yeah, I named it after my self and sent its course, speed and size home to ground control" - "Well done" - "If it's alright with you I'm going to go sleep now" - "No problem"
Yumaar had satisfied his curiosity, so Tux climbed down the ladder, leaving Yumaar alone in the command-chair with only his cup of choory for company. His eyes made a efficient sweep across the main consoles without finding anything unusual or unsettling. Then he rotated the chair around to take a look at the hind-screen as well. It was located behind the ladder-tube, filling the wall that concealed the small toilet at the back. All the screens where flexible off course, but so far in the journey they had used this screen to display info concerning food reserves, level of clean filtered water, and other things related to life-support. Right now most of the bars and cakes where green, meaning that they where within acceptable parameters and according to the plan made by ground control.
Having confirmed that this group of systems was in order, Yumaar continued his rotation, bringing the chair back to its original position. Stars, stars, stars... How come space around K`hmary was so dull? Their orbital telescopes where transmitting fantastic photos on a almost daily basis - gas clouds in brilliant colors, supernovas, black holes, and even a occasional stone-planet with clouds and plant-life. The problem was that it was all so very, very far away. Seen with the naked eye, the space surrounding them was made out of white dots evenly distributed against a black background. For the last three thousand years or so their night-sky had consisted of a thick, monotone blanket of stars, and before that it had been the milky-way on one side, and completely empty space at the others. It was not as if one could ever view this from the surface. Seeing the clouds lift to reveal the night-sky behind them was a very rare experience - in ancient times it had been seen as a blessing by the gods. As such it was not at all odd that the K`hmynian people had never cared to plot out constellations of animals or mythical creatures in the night sky. It was first with the arrival of the big orbital telescopes that space got fun, and they actually had a telescope on the ship. Well, not exactly - but the cameras attached to their hull never the less combined powerful mechanical zoom with a resolution of several hundred million pixels. Would this be sufficient to get close and intimate with some of the stars? Perhaps making guard duty more interesting? - It was only one way to find out.
Yumaar got up from the command chair and moved over to the navigational console from where the cameras where controlled. The system-menus where pretty logical and pedagogical in their layout, so it was easy for Yumaar to find his way around. It did not take long before he had taken manual control over the front camera. Getting the image transferred to the big main screen was a bit more difficult though, several huge menus with lots and lots of options. When done he zoomed in at a random star, enhancing the image as much as possible without making it grainy. It was a pretty bright star, but several filters kicked in as it grew bigger on the screen. The result was... Still boring. It turned out he had zoomed into a blue giant. It looked dead, no big blazes shot out of its surface, no black spots rotating around it's equator. The info-box at the lower right corner informed him that it was 123 light-years away, and that it's name was "Uby-31" - nothing extraordinary about that.
Yumaar suddenly realized that he had gotten so caught up with his star-gazing that he had forgotten about his choory. When he picked it up for a sip he found out that it already had gotten cold and sour. It was no disaster though, all he had to do was to walk over to the trolley and pour another one from the thermos. On his way back his eyes where drawn towards a blinking screen on the navigational console. A object had popped up on the radar, and now the computer under his feet was busy calculating its course. When the result was brought back up on the screen a second later, it came together with a short "Beep!" from the console speaker - it's is way of summoning the interest of the watcher. Yumaar had almost reached the seat when the consequences of it's discovery finally dribbled into the circuits responsible for activating red alert. The alarm started howling and the lights switched from dim blue to blood red. Yumaar failed to follow the sudden switch from relaxed work-mood to high drama, so he remained calm and tired as he sat down in front of the console, still with the choory-cup in his left hand. The main screen displayed a irregular white dot moving down a almost vertical red line that tilted slightly to the left, splitting the screen in two. The problem that had caused the computer to panic was that the red line passed straight through the icon with the ship-shaped silhouette at the center of the screen. Luckily for Yumaar it managed to remain constructive despite the dire situation. It took only two seconds for it to figure out the most energy-efficient way to avoid the collision.
"Engage evasive maneuver?" the computer asked in red-blinking letters at his screen. Yumaar did not hesitate to click "Yes", that way outsourcing ship-control to the navigational computer for the time being. The propulsion engine took several minutes to heat up, so it was useless for sudden course-changes such as this. Everything had to be done with the guidance-thrusters, powerful hydrogen-oxygen rockets that was attached to the hull at strategic points. The computer ignited all the engines positioned below the bottom floor, sending huge flames into space. Sensing that the movement caused considerable down-pull, the computer turned of the gravity plating, now maintaining gravity on upward acceleration only. The ship was not built to be pushed in this direction, so the construction shrieked and wined in protest against the rough treatment. The computer ignored this plea to stop, determined to save the ship from destruction. Gravity increased to way above two Gs, and than the forward engines were ignited as well. The sudden deceleration felt more like a collision than a course-adjustment. Yumaar suddenly found himself hanging over the armrest, pulled towards the front screen as if the gravity plating stored behind it had suddenly engaged without the propulsion engine working to balance the quotation. The trolley-table, its cakes and thermos slammed into the screen, Yummar dropped his now empty cup in order to use both hands to push himself back up in the seat.
Analyzing the information on the screen, he came to the conclusion that the computer had made the right decision in its choice of evasive maneuver. They were now passing above several fast moving objects, decelerating while simultaneously pushing up and away. There was however one important detail that the computer had completely ignored: Warp-drive was still running. Yumaar put the radar image up on the main screen, opening the main menu on the navigational console. As he found his way to the warp-menu, he felt that the gravitational pull was starting to put a considerable strain on his joints and muscles. The pain in his neck and lower back intensified, Yumaar figured that if this was allowed to continue it would turn him into a hunchback long before the hull-thrusters ran out of gas. Yumaar failed to find the menu that shut it down completely, but at least he managed to find a barometer where he could minimize its effect by dragging a red dot down to the bottom of the jar. The sudden drop of speed caused the computer to pause its maneuver, gravity dropped to zero before climbing up to one. Up to now, several large asteroids had been avoided at the expense of correct speed and course. Sensing that it might be useful, the computer sent out a powerful radar pulse. Its waves moved like ripples through water, hitting three blocks at thousand, two-thousand and four-thousand five hundred kilometers distance. "Damn!" Yumaar thought – they had stumbled across an uncharted asteroid-field. Huge, deadly rocks where all around them, rushing past at breakneck speeds.
" Am I glad to see you!" Yumaar screamed, relieved by the view of Tux climbing up the ladder.
It looked as if he had taken quite a beating on his way up. His white-cotton night-tunic was ripped up at several places, his hair was all messed up, and blood was pouring out of his left nostril. He grumbled unhappily as he saw the messy state of the bridge. The chairs and consoles where still standing on their correct places, bolted to the floor as they where. The problem was the food and drink that had smeared itself all over the front screen before gathering in a mud-like pond between the two foremost consoles. Yumaar got up from the chair in order to leave the navigational chair to Tux.
"Warp is off by the way" he said while strolling over to his usual position in the command-chair.
Tux said nothing, obviously prioritizing his console over chatting with Yumaar. He worked in silence for a while, sending out radar-pulses of different kinds in order to get a better overview of their surroundings. Then he ordered Yumaar to fasten his seat-belt so that he could make some minor course-adjustments without him falling around. The hull-thrusters started working again, sending several hitches and jerks through the ship - this time much gentler though.
"Warp off-line, speed at 6,7 kilometers a second" He said after about half a minutes of deep concentration. Yumaar could see on his face that he had more on his mind, things that he was not yet ready to speak about. He rubbed his left hand against his chin, looking thoughtfully at his screen. The other crew-members arrived, all equally shaken and beaten. According to the rules regarding red alert, they where all to gather at the bridge when the alarm went of. The problem was that the journey from bed to bridge got rather hazardous during turns as sharp and sudden as the ones they had been through. For the servants this was much easier, as their only task was to strap them selves to the closest bed or chair. Yumaar's thoughts flowed over to his servant Kesh, was she okay?
"Can you call up the servants quarter?" He asked Sappi as she sat down by her console. The order was quickly carried out, a link was established between the two rooms.
"All good, no serious injuries" A man replied. It was the same unknown voice that had replied when she had asked everyone to buckle up for acceleration two days back. It was rugged and a bit dark.
"Who's servant is that?" Yumaar wondered.
"It's mine, I brought with me the janitor from my palace back at Duumo." Sappi answered.
Duumo was a small suburban village outside the capital, a place referred to only as "Capital city" or alternatively "Throne city". Yumaar had never been to Duumo, but from what Sappi had told him during earlier conversations, it was pretty nice.
Tux broke into the idle chattering, - "I have a plan" he said. Than he brought the radar-screen back up on the main monitor. According to the map, they where surrounded by pretty hairy space, and unfortunately it looked like they had the worst part ahead of them. The blocks they had passed where all huge stones, sharply defined and several kilometers across. Now came the small pickings, a huge cloud of stone and sand that seemed impossible to avoid. Yumaar cursed, D`jumo sighed, somebody swallowed. Uncertain about the level of direness, everyone looked to Tux for answers. Feeling the eyes of the others resting upon him, he put on his most confident expression.
"Do not worry" He started. "Its not as bad as it looks"
"Reversed tractor-beam, but it's going to cost us" Yumaar proposed.
From his perspective, this was the only way to get through, and it was indeed also the "plan" that Tux had coughed up up. The tractor-beam was a wonderful piece of Ferengian technology that could be set to attract or push away mass, and as long as the space-gravel remained small it could keep them safe even at high speeds. "The plan" was also something that was written into the programming of the navigational computer, so as the computer's plea for emergency course-adjustment was denied, the tractor beam would be turned on when the gravel at collision course came within one kilometers distance.
The ship shook and creaked as they plowed through the cloud. The alarms started howling and the power plant overheated in its heroic attempt to keep the beam going. Loup and Sappi got so scared that they held hands and started crying. Emergency-power could only keep the beam going for so long, and if they were not through when it died they would be shredded to peaces in no more than a few seconds. Watching their energy-levels drop, Yumaar got rather scared himself. Cold sweat started dripping down his forehead, and his throat felt uncomfortably swollen. By the time they finally punched through, he was on the edge of bursting into tears himself.
Silence fell upon the ship as it laid the asteroid-belt behind. The sore sound of Sappi and Loup weeping was perhaps even more uncomfortable than the alarm had been, but it was less intense. Cillion ran over for comfort, the rest remained in their seats.
"That was certainly a disaster" Yumaar stated.
The power plant had gulped down its hydrogen fuel at overload, spending god knows how many gigawatts at the tractor-beam. Than came the unplanned loss of speed and the deviation away from the course plotted out for them by ground control, loss of fuel for the hull-thrusters, and several other negative effects. This could very well lead to the cancellation of the entire journey, a thought so depressive that it made Yumaar tired. His body weighed heavily against the soft and comfortable command-chair, right now he just wanted to sink into it and die. He allowed himself to lean back so that he could stare into the monotone whiteness of the ceiling. The surface reflected the emptiness of his head, and therefore it was relaxing for the spirit.
"The plan worked" Tux said, an attempt to keep the mood up or something equally annoying
"The plan was not a plan" Yumaar protested angrily.
It took some time for Yumaar to pull himself together, and when he did he went straight to bed. Putting the ship back in its proper course was too complex for him anyway, so he would not be of much help to Tux at the bridge. Than came morning, and the light shifted from blue to white. Yumaar overslept, so he did not wake up before it went yellow. The pace of everyday life returned pretty fast, a good and relaxed life that was not all that different from the life they where used to live home in their palaces at K`hmary.
The inactivity made Yumaar restless, and in the evening he went for a spin in the tread-mill to blow of some steam. The 3D screen in front of him projected the beautiful landscape of Knoxx, a place of dense forests, rivers and waterfalls. The narrow path he ran on followed the curves of the landscape, its small hills and slopes. The treadmill adjusted its angle so that it correlated perfectly with the image projected. Right now it was going downhill towards a small wooden bridge that would take him over a narrow river, continuing past a snug looking little farm at the other side. One of the many charming things about Knoxx was that everything was small. The path would take Yumaar towards the regional capital, a small town with cozy looking houses made in the traditional way. From there it would go uphill, and if he bothered to run through the whole program he would arrive at the castle of Knoxx in an hour or so. Yumaar came to think about the Earle of Knoxx, a giant of a man that perhaps was ill-suited for the place and position – considering the small stature of both his castle, and Knoxx-style architecture in general.
Yumaar reached out for his bottle of blue energy-drink at the plastic shelf that stood beside the treadmill console. Actually he hated the artificial sweetness of that foul drink, but he knew from experience that it made his exercise runs last longer. Today he was feeling fit and energized, so he was thinking about running all the way up to Knoxx castle. The sound of his feet against the ground changed as the underlay switched from fine gravel to old wood. The planks squeaked and groaned as he ran over the bridge, a sound that was mixed with that of crystal clear water flowing through the river below. A flock of koyo-birds twittered as they past over his head, they where flying towards the forest-line some hundred meters behind the thick lawn at the right side of the path. At the other side of the bridge, some kind of odd farm animal grunted happily while chewing a equally odd looking fruit. The farms of Knoxx were weird, involving completely different plants and animals than those used by farmers elsewhere in the kingdom. Yumaar did not know the name of the round spiky fruit that the animal was chewing on, and neither did he know the name of the animal itself. It was pretty big and fat, its four stub feet supported a long, round body. The animal lacked eyes, but to compensate it had lots and lots of long whiskers that went all the way around its snout. It's sharp teeth covered the entire inside out its mouth, giving good protection against the spikes of the fruit. They where also well suited for the task of breaking the solid looking shell that surrounded the soft and juicy interior. The powerful jaw-muscles tightened, causing the fruit to crack open. The animal threw its head backwards and sucked out the good stuff. Than it spit out the remains of the shell. It seemed as if it had a lot of work ahead of it, cause a huge pile of similar fruits were lying behind it, leaning against the blue barn where the creature probably rested when not eating.
Sensing Yumaar's presence, it pointed it's snout towards him while stretching its whiskers out over the low fence that separated them. Having found the spectator acceptable, it's tail started wagging from side to side.
"They don't behave like that in real life you know" A feminine voice suddenly said.
Yumaar sighed, annoyed with the intruder that had sneaked in to burst the bubble of romantic peasant-life that had enthralled him for the last hour or so. He wiped some sweat of his forehead and turned around to face her. It was Loup, the engine-operator on board. Her most attractive features were the radiantly blue skin and big lively eyes, but the nimble and feminine pair of antennas was a good number three. They stood out from the blanket of short yellow hair that covered her well-formed head. Another thing that was well-formed was her body. It's sexy curves were perfectly...
"Stop driveling at me and end the stupid program!" She said, annoyed with becoming the subject of such intense scrutiny.
"Yeah! Yeah!" Yumaar said in a state of depression. The cute farm-animal with the fruit disappeared together with the farm, the landscape, and everything else. Everything was sucked back into the screen it had come from, revealing the white boring walls of reality that Yumaar had doomed himself to spend an eternity within. "What did I think about?" He wondered as he struggled to focus on Loup's message rather than her body.
"Ground control informs us that a solar storm is heading in our direction. It will hit in less than an hour, so we need to drop warp and turn our shield around"
"Am I needed at the bridge? Yumaar asked, then adding: "I would really love to finish the track this time"
"According to protocol everybody are needed on the bridge during turns, no exceptions" She answered in a strict and professional tune of voice. The captain of the ship would put up a very bad example for the others if he started breaking protocol, so Yumaar knew that this was a battle not worth fighting.
"Give me fifteen minutes to freshen up" he said.
"Acceptable" Loup answered before heading out.
Short and efficient strech-out session, Hot shower, fresh clothes. Everything happened in a hurry, so Yumaars hair was all wet when he crashed down at the captains-seat. Yumaar was the last person to enter the bridge, they were ready to start as soon as he had buckled up. The operation ahead of them was very basic, his leadership was hardly needed.
"How far away is the solar storm now?" He asked Tux. Tux had all the radar-images and maps on his console, so if anyone, he would know.
"According to the details given to us by ground control it will hit us in half an hour if we maintain current speed and course"
"What is our current speed and course?" Yumaar asked. It was not as if he didn't know this stuff already, but there was a microscopic chance that deviations or adjustments away from proper course had occurred during his off-time from the bridge.
"Still approaching Snowball at twenty one kilometers a second, full warp" Tux answered.
This was only one half of their top speed, but they had talked it over early in their journey and decided not to spend everything to reach maximum velocity. Unexpected events could occur, events that would require them to burn fuel at unexpected times and places. This had in fact already happened with the uncharted asteroid-belt that almost got them killed. The sudden deceleration done by the front hull-thrusters had to be made up for, and in order to not spend all the fuel at the hind-thrusters they had decided to make a gentle push with the propulsion engine in order to get them back on track, using a small portion of their helium surplus.
"Goody. If we switch of warp in twenty minutes and turn about, will that be okay with you guys?" Yumaar wondered.
"I say we do it right away, better safe than sorry" Tux opined.
"Any other opinions at the matter?" Yumaar asked while looking around the room for cues of dissent.
"Isn't the engine vulnerable to incoming space-dust and gravel without the shield?" Sappi wondered.
"Good point" Tux agreed "But the solar storm is much more dangerous, We will be showered in particle-radiation and ionized gas"
Everyone in the room knew the basics of space-physics from various crash-courses, but only Tux had proper knowledge about the math behind it. And ground control of course, ground control would know.
"What does ground-control say?" Yumaar asked Sappi. As their communication operator, she had the entire message on the console in front of her chair.
"I'll put it on the main monitor" She answered, not bothering to read the whole thing out loud.
It turned out that ground control had done their homework well. The message was extensive, filled with graphs, videos, math and other complexities.
Tux uttering a small "Hmm" every now and then as she scrolled through it.
"We definitely need to turn around, this is a big one" he said after she had arrived at the bottom.
"It would be cool if we had a reserve shield that we could move to the back" D`jumo fantasized.
"To much extra weight" Tux answered shortly.
Everything went smoothly and without drama. Tux turned the warp-drive off, and then Loup turned the ship around in a slow, gentle move. The solar-storm was a bit boring though. By the time it reached the ship it was so out-watered that nothing could be seen by the naked eye. According to the scanners however, some very intense radiation was going on there. Had this been in the old days of space explorations everyone would have had to take their space-suits on and crawl together inside a box of lead or gold, but these days new innovations within radiation-blocking materials and technology had made it much easier to cope with this invisible killer. The electromagnetic radiation-shield soaked up a lot of radiation, only a small percentage made it all the way up to the outer hull. Most of the particles who made it that far were blocked by several thin and light layers of rad-blocking wonder-materials built in between the outer and inner hull. The microscopic percentage that made it all the way into the interior of the ship was under normal circumstances not bigger than the solar radiation one would expect to receive during a nice summer day at K`hmary.
With warp of they where back at their standard non-warp speed of 7,5 kilometers a second for the duration of the storm, and the minutes that it would take to turn back around. Since nothing happened, Yummar started to think about D`jumo's idea about a movable reserve-shield. Such a shield would have given them a extra benefit as it would allow them to maintain warp also during solar storms. In theory they could maintain warp now as well, but if they turned the warp-engine on while facing the sun it would contract space they had just moved through, that way slowing them down instead of speeding them up. Their speed of 7,5 kilometers would be divided instead of multiplied with the space-contraction achieved. 7,5 divided by 2,8 would give them a speed of... 2,5? Yumaar was not so good at math, but...What if he was incorrect in his general assumption? Perhaps it was time for a field test?
"We could test it, but it will take some time to get the results" Tux replied when he aired the idea. Nothing interesting was going on at his console, so he had leaned back in his chair, looking at Nibulus who shone towards them from the middle of the main monitor. She was not as bright now as she used to be, but it would still hurt to look straight at her without image-filtering. The camera automatically dimmed the light down, choking many of the smaller stars in the process. Only a few exceptionally bright ones managed to carve through.
"How come?" Yumaar wondered.
"We measure our speed by swopping radio-waves with an orbital satellite. It would take time to get the results in" Tux replied without turning his head away from the screen. He seemed completely fascinated by the yellow ball that was Nibulus. From this distance one couldn't see the flames shooting out of it, thus it looked less angry and more stable than it did from K`hmary. Yumaar hadn't quite understood Tux's answer, at least not the explanation for why it would take time. He was not in the mood to stuff new knowledge into his head right now, so he skipped past the "why" question, instead expressing the next thought in line:
"If we can do a test before the storm passes we won't loose any time"
"work, work work" Tux replied tiredly. Then he pulled himself up in his seat and bent forward over the console.
The warp-engine worked just as they thought it would. The ship slowed down, and went back up to normal speed when they turned it of. This was interesting stuff because it could help them save a lot of rocket-fuel on acceleration and deceleration in and out of orbit. It was too bad that their supply of hydrogen for the power plant and warp-engine was even more limited than their supply of helium for propulsion, but everyone agreed that this might be something to keep in mind.
"I'm going back down" Yumaar said when everything had returned yo normal. With the front shield pointing the right direction, full warp and no solar storms there was no reason to stick around, or so he thought:
"You are on guard duty!" Loup reminded him.
"Fuck me sideways!" Yumaar screamed spontaneously before he managed to suppress his reaction.
"Wow!" Loup said, shocked by the sudden outburst.
"Don't worry, I'll keep you company" Sappi shot in while Cillion simultaneously urged Yumaar to watch his language. Yumaar folded his hands together and sighed, he was not at all in the mood for five hours of boredom, stuck in the command chair.
But guard duty it was, there was no way to avoid the bridge. "work, work, work" Yumaar mumbled for himself as the others had left, copying the way Tux had said it about half an hour earlier. Only Sappi remained, just as she had promised. Guard duty turned out okay though. Sappi ordered her servant to bring some food up, and then Kesh arrived with her broom and bucket. While the nobles had guard duty, the servants had clean-day, and today it was Kesh's turn. She had been through all the floors in the command-section, so it was not at all odd that she was dead tired when finally done with the bridge.
"Good as new" She said while dumping down on the floor beside Yumaar.
"Take the guest chair" he said. The bridge was equipped with a extra chair beside his command-chair, but usually it was concealed under the floor. The arm-rest had a special button that opened the hatch and brought it up.
"Comfy" She said while leaning back in it.
"Isn't it cool to think about how big space is?" She added after some seconds of silence.
"Yeah, it takes almost an hour for messages from ground control to reach us" Sappi informed with her mouth filled with Urayha-beef and Singh-juice. She had lowered her console so that she could use it as a table, her plate and glass rested on it.
"And radio signals travels almost as fast as light, Isn't that so?" Kesh wondered.
"Almost" Sappi confirmed, but she did not bother to spell out the exact number.
As his communication operator she undoubtedly knew it by heart, but Yumaar didn't, and it annoyed him. He had heard it a couple of times on lectures and such, but forgotten. Both numbers were pretty equal though, very close to 300 000 kilometers a second. Yumaar was a bit angry at himself for always forgetting the exact numbers, a weak spot in his intellect.
"And in a few days we will pass Ke`hem`eshet, and then we will be further out in space than any K`hmynian before us"
Seeing the fascinated look on Kesh's face, Sappi had decided to add a little extra candy for her mind.
"Wow!" She said joyfully, her eyes sparkled in wonder.
