PROLOGUE

THERE WAS NO WIND, yet there was a rush. the starship was fast, faster than anything, ever. That was the rule. Just from the speed, the bad guys would be too scared to pick a fight. When they saw it go, then, all of a sudden, just magically couldn’t see it anymore, they’d know to back off.

Back away, because I’m going. I’m going ...

“... where no man has gone before.”

Prrrrsssshoooom!

Sure, it was just a paintbrush, but it made the perfect sound, the soft whisk of a starship’s superengines, just the way Jonathan heard it in his head, over and over, the way Dad described the sound—the rush of possibilities. Anything could happen! Space—the final frontier!

“Doctor Cochrane would be proud of you,” Dad said, instead of give me the brush before you paint your own nose.

“I know the whole speech by heart,” Jonathan said.

“Watch out! You’re painting over the cockpit windows.”

Jonathan Archer glanced up at his dad and muttered, “Sorry,” and drew back the paintbrush. Before them on the porch table, where Mom hated them to spill anything, was a good reason to spill. The ship was almost finished—a shipbuilder’s scale model, one of a kind, because Dad was the builder. Jonathan knew he was the only kid on Earth, in the whole universe and even on Mars Colony, who had a model like this. It was only his because Dad didn’t need it anymore, not for planning, anyway.

Jonathan surveyed the ventral plates and complained in his head that the dove-wing paint didn’t quite match the gunmetal of the nacelle housings.

But the model wasn’t suffering any, except for maybe a little overshoot from his brush on the starboard side. Jonathan was more embarrassed that he might keep the crew from seeing some important thing in space. And let the captain down. Captains had to be able to see everything and know everything. It was the crew’s job to help him. Someday I’ll be a heck of a crewman, on this ship! I’ll make sure the captain knows everything. He won’t take a step without me.

The boy pressed his lips together and didn’t say that out loud. He knew what he wanted, and he would get it. Decision made.

Sunlight poured through the sunporch windows. San Francisco’s skyline glittered and enhanced the light shining on the model of the starship. Jonathan was an important person, because otherwise, why would somebody as famous as his father let him work on the actual builder’s model of the starship?

Starship ...

For a few minutes he and his dad were silent as Jonathan put touches of the darker gray on the featureless white nacelles. He saw his dad’s hand twitch, itching to take the brush away and do this himself, but Jonathan leaned closer, signaling that he was determined to be careful and get it right. This was one of those things parents were just croaking to do themselves, but knew they’d be bad kid-raisers if they didn’t let their kid try. So Jonathan was ahead. He was almost ten, and he had parents figured out.

“When’s it gonna be ready to fly?” he asked his father.

“Let the paint dry first.”

“No, I mean your ship.”

Dad shrugged, but his eyes gleamed. “Not for a while ... it hasn’t even been built yet.”

“How big will it be?”

“Pretty big.”

Jonathan immediately began weighing comparisons in his head. As big as a Starfleet troop transport? As big as the Universe Planetarium?

“Bigger than Ambassador Pointy’s ship?”

Dad opened the can of blue paint and Jonathan dipped the brush.

“His name is Soval,” Dad said, “and he’s been very helpful, and I’ve told you not to call him that. Get the leading edge of the nacelle.”

Nacelles ... the magic of faster-than-light drive! Zephram Cochrane’s big discovery would take men to the stars—us, on our own, without any help from pointers. We had it before they found us, so we could take credit for getting ourselves into space. That was fair. We were coming, and they would have to live with it.

“Billy Cook said we’d be flying at warp five by now if the Vulcans hadn’t kept things from us,” he dared.

He knew he was venturing into sensitive territory now, but an explorer had to gamble.

“They have their reasons,” Dad said, holding back. Then more slipped out. “God knows what they are. ...”

Jonathan lowered the paintbrush so fast that the stick hit the edge of the table and spat a blue decoration on the ship’s stand. He turned sharply, bluntly. “What? What reasons? You always say that! You always say, ‘They must have some good reason,’ but you never tell me what. I’m ten, and it’s time!”

Dad tried not to laugh, then chuckled anyway, and bobbed his brows. “You’re nine.”

“Nine and three-quarters! If I’m old enough to ask, then I’m old enough to get told something, and not just, ‘Well, it’s mysterious.’ Why won’t they help? We would help them! I would help!”

Dad’s smile faded to something else. He leaned forward, hunched his shoulders, and gazed directly, in a way that made Jonathan feel important.

Then, all at once, Dad started talking—but really talking, really saying something, as if he had started speaking to another grown-up all of a sudden.

“I haven’t been very fair to you, have I?” he considered. “Treating you the way the Vulcans treat humans ... the way they’ve treated me. ... I’ve been assuming that I’d be the one to decide when you were ready to know things, assuming you don’t have anything to offer because you’re ... you’re ...”

Jonathan flared his arms and spat the word. “Primitive?”

The interruption got just the reaction he wanted. Dad smiled, rolled his eyes, flushed pink in the face, and got embarrassed. For an instant, Jonathan felt as if he looked a lot like his dad—the sun-dipped brown hair, the same brown eyes, pretty good smile that crinkled his eyes, friendly face, not enough of a tan. And the same flicker behind the gaze, like maybe they were both smarter than the next guy about certain things, even if the next guy was each other.

“Primitive ...” Henry Archer murmured. It was a mocking word, one the Vulcans used a lot, till it was more like a joke.

The sadness in Dad’s face, though—it hurt them both. Jonathan shrugged a little, not knowing what to say, but his feelings were hurt. His dad had done everything a human could do to prove that we were ready for space, just as good as the Vulcans or whatever slimers were out there, and still the pointers wouldn’t teach the important stuff, like they thought we were just puppies in clothes who couldn’t learn. They knew how to swim, but wouldn’t teach us. They wanted humans to half-drown, like some kind of punishment, then learn to swim on our own, and if we almost drowned, well, then they’d step in, maybe, and be heroes for saving us. What kind of friend is that, to think your friends are less than you in the universe? Some friends. Couldn’t they see, just from working with people like Dad and Zephram Cochrane? When Starfleet came around, didn’t they get it that we were serious? Didn’t they see how much we wanted to go? Couldn’t they learn? Couldn’t they dream?

So who was primitive, and who wasn’t?

If I can make a person like Dad be honest with me, then I can do it with other people, too. I’ll think about this later, and figure out what I did right. Then I’m gonna use it on somebody. I’ll make the Vulcans talk!

And I’ll make them say they’re sorry to you, Bad. Because they should be.

As if hearing Jonathan’s thoughts, Dad stood up and tapped the lid back on the blue paint. Then he reached for Jonathan’s hand.

“Come on, son.”

Jonathan took a leaping step, because he knew. “Where’re we going?”

“To the Spacedock.” Dad drew a long breath and nodded in agreement with himself. “It’s time for you to see the real thing.”