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coordinates to the helm. Mr. Chekov, get a move on and plot us a course. We’re not getting any closer to phi Trianguli just sitting here….”
    “Begging the captain’s pardon,” said Chekov, straight-faced, as he touched various controls on the helm and passed Uhura’s coordinates on to the navigations computer for a course. “But both local starstreaming and galactic rotation are carrying us roughly toward the phi Trianguli patrol corridor at a velocity of some eighteen kilometers per second….”
    Greatly amused, Jim looked from Chekov over to Spock. “Mr. Spock,” Jim said with mock severity, “you are corrupting this man.”
    “Indeed not, sir,” said Spock, glancing up from his science station and speaking as innocently as Checkov had. “I have merely been encouraging Mr. Chekov’s already promising tendency toward logic. A characteristic, might I mention, that is entirely too rare in Terrans…”
    “Yes, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said, unable to resist. “So I noticed earlier this evening….”
    All over the bridge, faces turned away in every possible direction, and hands covered mouths, to spare Spock the sight of much smiling. Jim took no official notice of this, while once more noticing the truth of the old saying that the only thing faster than light in otherspace was starship gossip. Spock merely gazed across the bridge at Jim, one more look of tolerant acceptance in a series of thousands. Very quietly, Chekov said, “Course plotted and laid in, sir.”
    “Very good, Mr. Chekov. Get us going—warp eight: Fleet seems to be in a hurry. Uhura, if you would be so kind, log me off the bridge. Thank you for a pleasant game, Mr. Spock, and a good night to you. Good night, everyone.”
    “Sir,” Spock said, and various “’Night, sir’s” and “Good night, Captain’s” came from about the bridge as Jim stepped into the lift wall and let out a tremendous yawn.
    “Please repeat,” the lift’s computer said sweetly. “That did not make sense.”
    Jim laughed. “Oh, yes, it did! Deck five.” He yawned again, thinking for the moment less about the vagaries of Fleet than about his bed.
     
    Much later in the evening he was still yawning, but the thoughts behind the yawns were very different. Jim sat as he had been sitting for nearly an hour now, with the twelfth page of Uhura’s report burning on the screen in front of him. An annoying document, this; like the dispatch from Starfleet, what it did say was less revealing than what it didn’t.
    The first part of it concerned civilian and military shipping, and was utterly unilluminating. Fleet ship movements in the sectors bounding the Neutral Zone, and in the sectors farther away, were routine and undisturbed. And business was progressing as usual in the Neutral Zone, as far as long-range sensors based in the Zone inspection stations could tell….
    Those few agents whom the Federation had managed to insinuate into the Empire knew that their chief value lay in staying alive and unnoticed; so they dared do nothing that would attract attention to themselves—such as pry too closely into areas of real interest, including the seats of government and the counsels of the great. As a result, their reports tended to be brief and scanty of detail. But in the reports for the last three months, Jim found more than enough to interest him.
    He had long been fascinated by the “modifed tri-cameral” or three-house legislative-executive branch of this Emperorless Empire. The Tricameron was comprised of a “Senate”—evenly divided against itself into a half that proposed and passed legislation, and a half that vetoed it—and a “Praetorate,” a sort of quadruple troika or duodecimvirate: twelve men and women who implemented the Senate’s decrees, declared war or peace, and (it seemed to Jim) spent most of the time squabbling amongst themselves for power. That was partially due to the nature of their office, since a Praetor could be “made,” by