This sort of space navigation was good enough to keep a ship on course, but far from precise enough to pinprick a true position. But, after all, a crude positioning in the middle of interstellar space is good enough. One literally has cubic light years to float around in. Once the spacecraft begins to approach a destination, the space positioning can be made.
Again, few spacecraft pause in mid-flight between stars long enough to care about their interstellar position. After all, space flight does provide a mode of travel where the destination lies within eyesight. Or rather, it has lain within eyesight ever since it became commonly accepted that these ultimate destinations were places, instead of holes poked in an inverted ceramic bowl.
Then, in the middle of the communications confusion, came a call from one of Commander Hatch's scout flights.
"Pilot Logan, Flight Eighteen, to Commander Hatch. Report."
"Hatch to Logan. Go ahead. Find something, Will?"
Will Logan said, "Solid target detected on radar, Commander. Approached and found. I am now within five thousand yards of what appears to be Lifeship One."
The entire fleet went silent, except for the detector ship, the scout craft, and Wilson's flagship.
Allison asked, "Was that our target, Logan?"
Logan replied laconically, "Nope. I was on my way back from a gas cloud—I think—when the radar got a blip."
In the background, they could hear Allison saying, "There's a real target out there where Logan went. Haven't you got an infrawave response out there somewhere—" The mike clicked off. Allison probably had remembered that he had his thumb on the "Talk" button and removed it.