Each completed link between star and star would improve the surveying of the galaxy and bring Neosol's dimensional error down and down through the banks of figures best stated by exponents of ten. Astronomers work in light years, man works in miles. An error of a 'light month' in one-forty light years is not much error, but an error of 2,000 million miles is still a long way for man to correct-for.
So Paul made a planar chart of the galaxy between Sol and Neosol, and from memory and calculations he filled in, week by week, the completed links.
The first linkage had been computed and started so that a small group of men (of which Paul was one) could race from star to star checking-in the arrival of the radio beam. It took ten days to go from Sol to Proxima, the rest of the network had been started so that—at the best of astronomical calculations—the whole pattern would end up, one after the other, spread apart long enough to enable the group of beam-checkers to go from station to station.
The map would not be fixed. Stars move with respect to one another, and this factor would be part of the measurements. On a star map or planetarium, this motion was impossible to show from one year to the next, these were 'fixed stars.' But for data fed into the Elecalc to determine the time of drive, the angle, and the velocity, the finest measurement of distance was none too good.
But even some grasp of the true immensity of space, with its tiny pinpricks of solid matter scattered sparsely in a vastness of sheer, black nothing, was lost on the travellers between Sol and Neosol. For as far as they were concerned the journey was not much longer than the famous voyage of Columbus. Miles meant nothing; there were too many of them. Time was the essence, and ten long months passed between take-off and the ultimate recovery of their own time and space, where the cheerful stars winked out of a coal-black sky.
The dispersion was not too bad. Neosol was a light-week away, at about a forty-five degree angle from their course and position. The small-copy of the Elecalc went to work in the course computing room and once more the ship took to the silent, black vastness of supervelocity until the second drop into reality. They were a half-million miles from Neoterra on the second hop, and there was no room to use supervelocity now, so the next few hours were spent in matching the galactic drift of Neosol, and finally Neoterra. But after ten months of living in an electric-lighted capsule of metal, a half day of jockeying before landing was pleasant.
But as the ship started to drop down toward the planet, Paul realized with a shock that it was not Neoterra. As space-trained as Paul was, even he could not tell one star or one sun from another until something more featureless is offered for comparison. The planet was definitely not Neoterra, and this Paul knew only because it obviously bore no atmosphere. All he could be sure of was that this star was close to Neoterra as stellar distances went, but which star he had no way of knowing. He knew that the star was not Neosol because none of the planets of Neosol were without atmosphere.
Such an absolutely minimum of negative evidence could only tell Paul where he was not; he was not on a planet of Sol nor Neosol.
As the ship came close to the surface of this planet, Paul noted the radio-relay station below them, and here his recollection bore fruit. This planet was of a star about five light years from Neosol.
He thought carefully. The star from Sol bore no more than a catalog number, being of insufficient size to warrant notice by the ancients who gave the stars their names. Someone had dubbed the planet Harrigan's Horror in dubious honor of Lew Harrigan, who had been the engineer who put up the relay station and had lived in pressure-buildings for several months.