Hyperspace

Science fiction works aspiring to be “hard scifi” all need to solve the fundamental problem that the distances in space are too large to cover in any sensible time, even with the theoretical upper limit of near light speed travel. The most common way to handle this pesky problem is to introduce some kind of portals, gates, or worm holes which quickly transport to another such destination arbitrarily far away. But that would be almost too easy, so what many works instead do is conjure a “special space”, often called hyperspace that the portals go to. It’s always a very dangerous place, a kind of counterpart to the fantasy “underworld”. Often strange aliens lurk there, akin to deep sea creatures.

Star Control 2 has more than one variant:

As some of the aliens describe it, Hyperspace is “above” regular space, and Quasi-space is “above” Hyperspace. The Orz come from “below”.