The episode gives us some pretty solid datapoints. Initially, O'Brien says it will take two months to cover the 160 million kilometers (or about one Astronomical Unit) between Bajor and the wormhole. Dax then comes up with the mass reduction idea, and there is a lengthy cut to Sisko dealing with the Prophets. We return (for about two minutes) to the station struggling towards the wormhole; at the same time, Kira flies ahead in a runabout and tries to talk to the Cardassians, then dives into the wormhole. More Prophet madness, and then a "First Officer's Log, Supplemental" stating that the station has finally reached position.
Hardly an instantaneous trip. We know it must have been less than two days, because the Enterprise would return then. We can deduce it's more than two hours, because that's how much it otherwise takes to fly a runabout from Bajor to the wormhole.
The numbers make good sense in the end. If it's 1 AU and two hours from Bajor to the wormhole when the two are aligned the closest, and if Bajor orbits her star at 1 AU like any good Class M planet should, then it naturally is 1+1+1 = 3 AU between Bajor and the wormhole when the two are aligned the farthest, and it should take 2+2+2 = 6 hours for a runabout to span that distance.
And 1 AU in two hours is good going. It's about 1/15 lightspeed on the average, well below the limit where time dilation would cause practical complications but still high enough that a small craft capable of achieving it could be considered quite a stallion. The station might have done something like one-fourth or one-tenth of that and still made it to the wormhole nicely before the return of the E-D became an issue.
Timo Saloniemi
