approach as close as you can
by using other beacons, then finish the trip in normal space. This can
take months, and often does.

This job didn't turn out to be quite that bad. I zeroed on the Beta
Circinus beacon and ran a complicated eight-point problem through the
navigator, using every beacon I could get an accurate fix on. The
computer gave me a course with an estimated point-of-arrival as well as
a built-in safety factor I never could eliminate from the machine.

I would much rather take a chance of breaking through near some star
than spend time just barreling through normal space, but apparently Tech
knows this, too. They had a safety factor built into the computer so you
couldn't end up inside a star no matter how hard you tried. I'm sure
there was no humaneness in this decision. They just didn't want to lose
the ship.

* * * * *

It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middle
of nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all the
stars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finally
rang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece.

A fast reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and a
comparison with its absolute magnitude showed its distance. Not as bad
as I had thought--a six-week run, give or take a few days. After feeding
a course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the acceleration
tank and went to sleep.

The time went fast. I rebuilt my camera for about the twentieth time and
just about finished a correspondence course in nucleonics. Most
repairmen take these courses. Besides their always coming in handy, the
company grades your pay by the number of specialties you can handle. All
this, with some oil painting and free-fall workouts in the gym, passed
the time. I was asleep when the alarm went off that announced planetary
distance.

Planet two, where the beacon was situated according to the old charts,
was a mushy-looking, wet kind of globe. I tried to make sense out of
the ancient directions and finally located the right area. Staying
outside the atmosphere, I sent a flying eye down to look things over. In
this business, you learn early when and where to risk your own skin. The
eye would be good enough for the preliminary survey.

The old boys had enough brains to choose a traceable site for the
beacon, equidistant on a line between two of the most prominent mountain
pe