That got everyone’s attention. “Care to clarify?” Azem-Os asked.

“Here.” Chekov moved to the wall console and called up a listing of the Enterprise’s ports of call from 2266 to 2267, scrolling backward in pace with his commentary. “We took shore leave on Argelius on stardate 3614. About six weeks before that, on stardate 3378, we attended the inauguration on Altair VI. On stardate 3287, we rescued Deneva from the neural parasite infestation.” He faltered. “Well, not ‘we’—I was still on my engineering rotation, not yet part of the bridge crew. The fourth was just before I came aboard, when the ship laid over at Cygnet XIV for computer maintenance on stardate 3109. And finally—or rather, first—the Enterprise visited Makus III on a medical supply run on stardate 2826.”

Beach shook his head. “Okay, that’s pretty wild. But it’s still not much to go on.”

“There is more,” Chekov said, working the controls to call up orbital charts of the five systems, subdividing the screen into multiple windows. “Here are the current positions of the systems’ planets, and the locations of the vacuum flares.” He superimposed the latter.

Azem-Os peered sharply with her raptor’s eyes, no less piercing for her age. “I see no pattern.”

“But here are the orbital positions of those planets at the time of the Enterprise’s visits twelve to thirteen years ago.” He linked the windows to the dates he’d highlighted in the itinerary chart, and the planets realigned themselves to their earlier positions. While none of them aligned exactly with the vacuum flare positions, all five now came near enough to make the pattern evident.

“They aren’t bull’s-eyes,” Nizhoni said, “but at least now it looks like they’re actually aiming at the dartboard.”

Beach frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. “But if there is a pattern there, why would it be backward?”

“And why target places the Enterprise has been?” Terrell added.

Nizhoni shrugged. “We always were popular. Even before I got there.”

“More to the point, why only those places?” Azem-Os asked. “Major interstellar ports visited by the Enterprise. Why not its other destinations? The frontier worlds it charted, the research outposts it resupplied? Why not Organia or Cestus III?”

“Not only that,” said Chekov. “There are other major ports the Enterprise visited during that period that have not experienced vacuum flares. Just before Altair, we were at Vulcan. Shortly before Deneva, we were at Starbase 12. Just after Cygnet, the Enterprise had a two-week layover in the Sol system, to repair damage after a close call with the Black Star. That’s when I joined the crew, in fact. And between Makus and Cygnet, the ship visited Starbase 11 twice.”