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election or manipulation of influence. But a Senator could only be born—the senatorial office was hereditary, passed from father or mother to eldest sister’s-son or -daughter: and the only thing that could remove a Senator from office was death.
    That was what interested Jim right now. For over the past few months, it seemed several Senators had lost their posts in just that fashion. Considered by itself, this fact was unremarkable. Often enough, some Senator or Praetor would antagonize another one possessing more influential alliances, and pay the price by being publicly executed, or ordered to commit suicide, by a majority of the Twelve. But four different senators, from both the proposing and vetoing sides of the Noble House, had died recently…of what were reported as natural causes.
    Jim sat there thinking that an inability to live after being poisoned was natural enough. Yet at the same time he was disturbed, for as he understood it, assassination was not the Romulan style. It was supposed to be disdained as a dishonorable act, a sign of barbarity and weakness in the person who hired the assassin: the type of “irresponsible” behavior that made the Romulans despise the Klingons. One more thing that made no sense.
    Irrational. Illogical. And the Romulans are still culturally close enough to their parent Vulcan race not to have given up logic entirely….
    Four deaths are hardly enough to allow me to deduce logically that all hell is about to break loose over there. But the Romulans are so…so consistent…that the irrationality seems huge.
    Damn Fleet! They won’t give me even a hint of what’s going on. Postulating worst case…always a wise course of action, where Starfleet’s concerned…how am I supposed to prevent a war, or at worst win one, if they won’t tell me how they expect it to start?
    Unless… Unless what? Some piece of information hand-carried to Fleet, not yet disseminated? Some highest-level intelligence too sensitive to declassify or openly transmit? What could be that sensitive?
    Or…unless they don’t know what’s going on either…and want us to find out… Jim breathed out, thinking of old stories of how the great cats were once hunted on Earth; with “beaters” who would run into the brush where the tigers were hiding. There the beaters would hoot and shout and hit around them with sticks, banging on pots or on shields, so that the noise would panic the tigers and make them break cover, revealing themselves. Or else make the tigers, in understandable annoyance, attack the beaters. And there we’ll be, three starships and a destroyer, parading up and down outside the borders of the Neutral Zone, shouting and beating on pots….
    The sudden, bizarre image of Spock banging with straight-faced efficiency on a saucepan abruptly made Jim realize how very late it must be getting. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and rubbed his eyes—then rested his chin against his folded hands and stared once more at the screen. Page twelve of the report stared back at him, burning there golden and still. Jim had read Uhura’s careful compendium backward and forward several times now, but page twelve kept pulling him back. On page twelve were listed the Romulan vessels patrolling the far side of the Neutral Zone, and their schedules. The ships were maintaining those schedules to the minute, as usual. Jim would have been very surprised indeed if they hadn’t; Romulans were always punctual as clockwork, in peace as in war. And there on the list were the old familiar names— Courser, Arien, Javelin, Rea’s Helm, Cuirass, Eisn, Wildfire. Enterprise and her crew knew those names well from many brushes in the Neutral Zone, many skirmishes, many long dull patrols spent pacing one another on either side of the line. Jim leaned slowly forward, propping his chin on one fist, and stared at the screen.
    The usual names…in the usual places.
    All the names but one.
    Where the hell is