Then he settled back to wait. How long, Paul could not tell. Actually, the measurement of this matter was the basic reason for Paul's being here. The books set Alpha Centauri at 4.3 light years from Sol. Ergo a beam of light or a radio wave should take 4.3 years from transmission to reception. Ten percent error would cause a variable of almost five months; an error of one percent adds up to two weeks. The observatories had admitted an error of one percent as a maximum and considerable space travel between Proxima I and Terra had diminished this error to an absolute of about three days plus or minus the nominal. Paul had been gratified to discover that despite his delayed take-off, he had arrived at Proxima before the radio signal arrived from Terra. Paul had been worried about his delay and he had driven his ship hard. Not during the days of faster-than-light travel, of course, but after Paul had come down out of the blackness and could set a course by inspection. He had been either lucky or proficient. Even using a not too precise method of aiming his ship, he had still emerged from the blackness less than five million miles from Proxima, which was very good aiming indeed. Pilots always aimed for their target on the nose. For one thing, the dispersion was huge because the slightest irregularity in any phase of the maneuver would throw off the point of aim by millions of miles. In years and years of spaceflight, the first direct hit upon target had yet to be recorded. In fact, five million miles was considered brilliant piloting--or as is more possible, it was brilliant luck! Then as Paul found his landing-spot, he had pushed the BurAst P.G.1 hard enough to make her plates creak and Paul had descended at a full four gravities all the way to the ground. He had arrived before the radio signal had reached the planet and that was all he cared about. So he settled back to wait. There was little to do but sit and think, and to watch the occasional meteor shower land on the dusty ground. There had been an extensive shower about ten miles from the station shortly after his arrival. The impact was, of course, both invisible and inaudible. But upon impact the dust spurted upwards, billowing and flowing like the column in miniature that came from an atom bomb explosion. Since there was no air on Proxima I, the billowing dust rose and spread apart until the individual dust mote lost its energy and fell back to Proxima I by gravitational attraction. He would have liked to inspect that particular spot because the shower had been spectacular. A number of meteors in a close-knit group had landed, sending forth a series of dusty columns--some of the larger of which were still visible when the radio chattered into life three days after his arrival.