CHAPTER 1

WHEN MY MOTHER LEFT EARTH for a job on another planet, she said she'd be back often, and since I was nine, I took her at her word. The idea that a grown-up would not tell me the truth was beyond my experience.

I was with her and my dad on the front porch of our farm. The sun was setting and a few fireflies were out. You could see for miles; in the distance dark clouds let loose a bolt of lightning. My brother, Sam, was inside, lost in a book on his reader. Sam was twelve; he was always reading lately.

"I'm leaving in the morning," she said."Why do you have to go?"

My mother crouched down and met me eye-to-eye. She told me how important it was for her to go, and that it didn't mean she didn't love me. She had gotten a job as part of a colony on a planet called Tarsus IV. She said ships went back and forth all the time. I looked up at my dad, who was looking away. He watched the storm in the distance.

"When will you be back?"

"It'll be a few months," she said. "I'll definitely be back in time for your birthday."

"You don't know that," Dad snapped angrily. It was the first time he'd spoken since we had walked outside. I looked at him again, but he was still watching the storm.

"I'll be here," she said, still looking at me, determined to make it feel true. She then hugged me and lifted me up in her arms, making a big show of my weight. "God, you're so big. C'mon, let's get some dessert."

She looked over at Dad, then looked down. I desperately wanted him to make eye contact with her, and I could feel that Mom did too. But he wouldn't.

The next morning she was gone, taking my idea of home with her.Up to then I'd had a wonderful boyhood, filled with dogs, campfires, birthdays, horseback riding, snowball fights, and plenty of friends. Just like the Earth of today, there was no poverty or war or deprivation. My parents would talk about the problems in the Galaxy, but I wasn't really paying attention. Sometimes I'd look up in the sky and my brother would point out to me the satellites or a shuttle taking off, but that's as close as my mind got to outer space. Close to home felt perfect.

We lived on a farm near Riverside, Iowa, on a piece of property that had about 200 hectares of crops. We grew soybeans and corn,had chickens for eggs and cattle for milk and cheese. As far back as I can remember we were up at 4 a.m. every day to feed the chickens and milk the cows. Most of the caring of the crops was handled by automated machinery, but my father still insisted we get out in the fields for planting and harvesting. Though we were in no way dependent on the farm for our livelihood, my father still thought it important to understand the work involved in living off our land.

The house was four bedrooms, two floors, brick and wood. It was built using authentic materials and was a perfect copy of the house that had stood on the property for over 100 years in the 19th and 20th centuries. The property had belonged to seven generations of Kirks; it was family legend that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Franklin Kirk, purchased the farm in 1843 from Isaac Cody, who was the father of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody.* My ancestors in the modern era let caretakers manage it, until my grandparents moved back there when they retired. My father, George Kirk, also always had a strong desire to live there.

He had grown up as one of the original "Starfleet brats"; his father, Tiberius Kirk, was already in his twenties when Starfleet Academy was founded, and though he applied, he wasn't accepted. Still wanting to get out into space, Tiberius signed on in ordnance and supply, eventually serving on several of the then-new starbases. He met and married my paternal grandmother, Brunhilde Ann Milano, a nurse, on Starbase 8. My father was born there on December 13, 2206.

In those days, a child's life on a starbase was pretty spartan; there weren't a lot of families living on them, and the facilities were very limited. It was truly life on the frontier, and my father dreamed of getting back to see Earth, a dream that wouldn't be fulfilled until he arrived for his first day at Starfleet Academy. It was my grandfather's hope that his son would go to the academy, and admission had gotten even more competitive. But after rescuing five men after an explosion on the loading dock of Starbase 8, Tiberius was awarded the Starfleet Medal of Honor. And though my grandfather was still an enlisted man, the children of Medal of Honor winners are always given high priority during the admissions process.

My father graduated fifth in his class from the academy and, after serving a year as an instructor, was assigned to the U.S.S. Los Angeles (where he served with future captain Robert April). He was quickly promoted and eventually took the post of first officer aboard the U.S.S. Kelvin, when the previous first officer, Richard Robau, was promoted to captain. Over the course of six years he had moved up the ranks at record speed. If his career had continued, he might have been one of the youngest captains in the history of Starfleet, but his personal life led him in a different direction.

My mother, born Winona Davis, was also from a spacegoing family; her father, James Ogaleesha Davis (his middle name, as befit his heritage, was Native American Sioux, although I never did find out what it meant*), was in the first graduating class of Starfleet Academy; his wife, Wendy Felson, was in the third. My maternal grandfather was an engineer, my maternal grandmother a physician, and their daughter, my mother, attended the academy and decided she wanted to be an astrobiologist. She was four years younger than my father, and had him as an instructor in her Introduction to Federation History class.

"There were strict rules about students 'fraternizing' with instructors," she told me, "and once I met your father, I wanted to break all of them."

It is hard to know how many of the rules they actually broke, as a son usually doesn't delve into those topics with his parents. However, when my father received his posting to the Los Angeles, the ship was still three months away from returning to Earth, so he asked for a short leave from his duties as an instructor, and immediately proposed to my mother.

"Most people assumed we'd made a terrible mistake," my mom said, "but it was impossible for us to see a possible downside then. We were crazy in love." And then, suddenly, the Los Angeles arrived, and my dad was off.

My mom was still in the academy and said she secretly hoped that they'd be posted together. It was over a year before she saw him next, and then almost two years after that, she graduated. She was not, however, posted to the same ship as Dad. Shortly after my mother was posted to the U.S.S. Patton, she discovered she was pregnant.

"Your father was aboard the Los Angeles then," she told me, "and by the time the subspace message reached him I was already in my second trimester."

Mom's Starfleet career came to an abrupt halt; she took a leave of absence, moving in with my dad's parents on Earth (her parents had passed away several years earlier) on the family farm. My brother, George Samuel, named for my father, was born on August 17, 2230.

The maximum amount of time my mother could stay away from Starfleet without resigning her commission was two years. For that period, she and my father were apart. She stayed on the farm and raised George with her in-laws, while she also continued her studies and completed a doctorate in astrobiology."It was a good time to be with George Jr.," she said, "but I missed George Sr. This was not what I expected my life to be. My own mother had resigned her commission when she had me. She had raised my brother and me by herself since Dad was off in space. I was determined not to be a single parent, yet here I found myself doing just that."

She told me she felt conflicted about leaving her two-year-old son. "Your grandparents were energetic and attentive, which made the decision a little easier, but I couldn't get past the idea that I was abandoning my baby."

Dad also missed Mom, and when the two years were up, he pulled whatever strings he could to get her posted to the Kelvin, where he was now the first officer. Unfortunately, soon after she arrived, she discovered she was pregnant again, this time with me.

My dad said Captain Robau was furious; even if regulations had allowed children aboard a ship, he wasn't a commander who would've wanted it. However, that wasn't really the impetus for Dad's impending decision. Shortly after determining that my mother was pregnant, Dad received word that his father, Tiberius, had passed away.

"It was a strange 'circle of life' kind of moment," my dad told me. "Though I'd grown up in space, my father had been with me the whole time. Now that he was gone, I realized I barely knew my first son, and I had a second child on the way. I wasn't going to let your mom go home and raise our children by herself." So he resigned his commission.

Over the years, I've thought a lot about the decision Dad made and how it affected me. I have told many people that my father leaving Starfleet inspired my own career, to complete the career he didn't get to finish. Though that is partially true, the rest of the story is a lot more complicated.

I was born on March 22, 2233, to a complete family: I grew up in a house with two parents, an older brother, and a grandmother.It was my own slice of heaven. I was protected, lived in a clean, safe world. But it was a façade; I just wasn't sophisticated enough to see through it.

As I look back now, I can see that my parents were not happy. They didn't fight, they didn't even disagree openly, but the moments of warmth between them were rare. Mom worked hard around the house, but the work itself wasn't what she wanted to do. I have a lot of memories of those times finding my mother off in a corner reading. My father was attentive to her, but not overly affectionate. He hadstrong ideas of what he wanted life on the farm to be like, and he got a lot of confirmation for this from his mother, Brunhilde, who still lived with us. Grandma Hilde had lived her whole life on the frontier of other worlds, and my memory of her was as a hardscrabble, somewhat unforgiving individual. My mother never saw herself as living on a farm, so she didn't argue with how they wanted to do things, but the situation took its toll. Eventually, she decided to pursue her career again.

"It wasn't what I wanted," my father told me much later, "but I wanted her to be happy."

"Sam, can I come in?" I said. (I was the onlyone who called my brother by his middle name. I don't know how it started, but I kept calling him Sam well into adulthood.) I was standing outside of Sam's bedroom. He was lying on his stomach reading. It had been only a few weeks after my mother departed. It had been very quiet around the house. My father had kept up our routines of school, chores, homework. My grandmother was looking after our meals and clothing, and we were all pretending like nothing had changed."Yeah, you can come in," he said, without looking up. This was unusual for him to grant me permission to come into his room. It was also unusual for me to ask; normally I would just barrel in and wait for him to throw me out.

I took only a half step into the room and looked around. Sam had lots of trophies, some athletic, many academic. He always impressed me. In fact, from the minute I was aware, probably around two years old, all I wanted was my brother's approval and attention, and it seemed to me he took great pleasure in withholding both. Most of his energy directed at me went into putting up an emotional blockade to my devotion, though sometimes, ifhis friends weren't available, I was a stand-in playmate, or, more accurately, a fawning sidekick.

At five, I remember watching in fascination as he mixed homemade gunpowder and used it to make a cannon out of old tin cans with the bottoms cut out and soldered together. I shared the blame when his invention blew a hole in the side of the barn. Though we were given double chores for a week, I felt happy that somehow I'd been given credit for his rambunctious ingenuity. He, of course, was irritated by my delight at us being mistaken as a team.

He always seemed calm and logical, which led me to try to tease a reaction out of him with my big emotions. My dad would often have to intervene, but he seemed a little amused by my desire to get a rise out of Sam.

And as far as I could tell, both he and my father weren't the least bit affected by Mom's leaving. This didn't help me make sense of the confusion I felt. Dad was especially unapproachable; I felt an almost psychic fence around him. Sam, despite his "disdain" for me as the little brother, was somehow a little more accessible. Or maybe just a little less scary.

"What do you want?" he asked without looking up from his reader.

"Sam … do you know why Mom left?"

"It's because she got a job," Sam said.

"She didn't have a job before."

"She did, but she quit it to have kids," he said.

"Oh."

"She had work she always wanted to do," he said.

Sam stopped reading and looked at me. It seemed like he looked at me for a very long time. Then he spoke.

"Do you miss her?"

don't remember if I answered; I just started crying.

Sam got off his bed and came over to me. He then awkwardly hugged me. I don't know if we'd ever hugged before that, and it didn't come naturally to him, but it was enough comfort for me. At that moment, my brother seemed like an adult, though he was only 12 years old and probably was feeling as lost as I was. I don't remember how long I cried, but eventually I stopped.

"You should probably go wash your face," he said. I left his room, but from that point on, Sam was no longer as cool to me, and eventually we became quite close.

The weeks turned into months, and then years.Mom made a sincere, dogged effort to stay in touch with us over subspace, but there was no real-time communication over that distance, so we would record messages that she would watch, and then she would record responses that we'd watch. She kept her promise to be home for my next birthday, but it was the last birthday she'd celebrate with me for several years. Over time, the jealousy I had toward my friends whose families were still whole drove me into isolation. I spent my free time after school wandering our property, trying to get lost. I was starting to feel like I wanted to get away.

My dad still did his best to create the life he wanted us to have. We spent a lot of time together and took a lot of trips. He especially enjoyed camping, and during these excursions he would share with us his knowledge of the American frontier, which our ancestors helped settle. His interest became mine, one I pursue to this day.

We took advantage of the many national parks around the country, including Yosemite and Yellowstone. He had taught me horseback riding on our farm, and on these trips he'd let me go off on my own, as long as I was back in camp by sunset. I enjoyed the independence and the sense of adventure, though there was rarely any real danger.

However, during one of these solitary horseback rides, my horse was spooked by the sound of a loud boom. Once I'd gotten the animal under control, I looked up to find the source of the noise, and saw something high in the sky, falling fast. As it got closer, it looked like it was on fire. At first it was very distant, and then suddenly it wasn't; it was growing in size and seemed like it was headed directly toward me.I grabbed the reins tight, tapped my heels against my horse, taking off at a fast gallop. I kept looking back over my shoulder, and my error became clear. I had misjudged the angle of the approaching object, and if I had just stayed still it would have flown over me. But by riding off, I was actually putting myself more directly in its path. My panic only led me to continue to try to outrun it.

I finally looked back and saw the large metal object now only a few hundred meters behind me, flames dancing off it. It looked like it was going to hit me, and in terror I leaped off my moving horse. I hit the ground and rolled, and as I looked up, I saw the flamingbelly of the craft as it flew over me, then heard it crash. There was a blast of intense heat. I smelled smoke and could hear the crackling of fire. I stood up and saw the crash, only about 30 meters from me.

There was a gash in the forest; trees on either side of the wreck were broken away and charred black. The wreck was smoking and clearly not from this planet. It was small, a two-person shuttle of some kind. My horse was gone; I was momentarily scared that it had been hit, then saw its hoof-prints heading off from the wreck. The animal had had the good sense of how to get out of danger. But now Iwas stranded. I wasn't even sure how far away I was from our campsite, and it was getting dark.

"You! Get in here, now!"

The voice came from inside the ship. It was a scary, guttural, accented English. I started to back away.

"Stop, or you will regret it! Now get in here!"

I froze.

"Now!"

I slowly approached the craft. The front of the ship was firmly lodged in the ground, its back end pointed up toward the sky. There was an immense amount of steam emanating from the hull as the heat from its rapid reentry dissipated. There was an open hatch, but it was too dark inside to make anything out. I looked around for any sign of an adultSpaceships couldn't just land on Earth without being noticed; somebody had to know about this. But I didn't see anyone. I knew, or hoped, help would be there soon.

"I said get in here!"

I climbed up inside the hatch. My eyes adjusted to the dim cabin light. The whole ship was on a severe tilt, and I held on to the hatch frame in order to maintain my footing. The cabin was small, jammed with control panelsand storage lockers. There were two chairs in the front, and I could make out in the dim light two figures, both large, dark. One sat unmoving in the pilot's chair, the other in the passenger seat, wedged under a fallen piece of the ship's inner superstructure. He was the one who shouted orders at me. He was humanoid, but not a human. His features, dark eyes, prominent nose, and forehead were truly frightening. At first.

"You're a child!" He said it as if I'd committed a crime.

"I'm eleven," I said.

Trying to keep my balance in the tilted room, I moved carefully toward him. As I got closer, I became more fully aware that he wasn't tall, but just wide. And his face … once I got a look at it, I wasn't scared anymore. He looked to me like a giant pig"What are you waiting for? Get me out of here! Can't you see I'm injured?!"

This was the first time I'd met a Tellarite, and to this day I'm still impressed by the ease with which they can slide into argument. I've since learned that disagreeing is actually a societal and academic tradition in their culture, a challenging of the status quo that they see as crucial to their growth and prosperity as a society. At the time, however, I accepted his disdain as an accurate judgment of my abilities.

The metal girder pinning him down had cut into his leg. There was a thick, brown liquid on his pants, which I realized was his blood. I stepped in to try to lift the girder, but it was ridiculous to try; even a grown man wouldn't have been able to lift it.

"It's too heavy," I said. "I should go get help—"

"Ridiculous! You leave me and I will die!"

It was the first time I'd seen an adult of any kind more scared than I was. I turned and was startled at the other figure in the pilot's chair. There was a piece of shrapnel lodged in his forehead. His eyes and mouth were open as if in a silent scream. This was also the first time I had seen a dead body. I was shaking as the complainer grabbed me.

"What are you waiting for?!"

"Your leg doesn't look that bad. Are you sure I shouldn't just get—"

"Idiot! Do the humans teach their children nothing?! My leg isn't what's going to kill me! The ship's reactor is leaking radiation!"

I was old enough to know that "radiation" was bad. I suppose I should've run out of there to protect myself, but somehow I felt this pissed-off Tellarite was now my responsibility.I looked around the room for some kind of solution.

"Do you have a communicator or something?"

"You are an imbecile from a race of imbeciles! It's been damaged!"

"What about …" I said. "What about an engineer's tool kit?"

"Oh, so you think you're going to fix my broken ship? You, the idiot human? How did I get so lucky …"

"No, I thought if you had a laser torch, I could cut the metal piece that's holding—"

"Do I look like an engineer? Check those storage lockers," he said. "Hurry!" He obviously quickly changed his mind about my idea. I opened the storage lockers and finally found what looked like a tool kit. Inside, the tools were unfamiliar.

"Which one's—?"

"That one, you fool! We are going to die because you are such a fool!"

He indicated something that bore only a slight resemblance to my father's laser torch. I picked it up. It was bulky and heavy. I didn't know quite what do to with it, and felt a rising flood of frustration and anguish. I was going to cry. The Tellarite's histrionics, the dead body, the dark room, and now this tool I didn't know I was going to cry. The Tellarite's histrionics, the dead body, the dark room, and now this tool I didn't know how to use. I wanted to leave, but I had to stay. Caught in an unresolvable conflict, I just tried to keep going.

I focused on the laser torch. It was designed for a hand with two thick fingers and a thumb. After a moment, I realized I could operate it if I used both of my hands, and quickly went back to the Tellarite. I aimed it at the girder just above his chest, when he grabbed my arm.

"What are you doing?! Trying to kill me? Is it revenge you want?"

"No," I said. "If I cut the piece here, I will be able to move it so you can slide out."

"Hurry up!" I guess he was on board.

I had seen my father use a torch to cut, buthe used one designed for human hands. Still, I did what I could to imitate what I'd seen. I carefully aimed the torch and turned it on. A blue-white beam hit the girder. I slowly moved it up, away from the Tellarite, and I could see it was cutting through the thick metal. I took my time and sliced through the girder. I turned the torch off, carefully put it aside, then put both of my hands on the much smaller piece I'd cut and tried to move it. It initially wouldn't budge, and I was suddenly worried that I'd missed something. I looked it over, and decided I had no choice but to try again. I pushed, and this time it gave and slid away. Ichuckled involuntarily, surprised at my success. But the Tellerite wasn't interested in congratulating me.

"Move!" He pushed me aside and slid from his chair. Screaming in pain, he fell to the tilted deck. He turned on his stomach, and I watched as he tried to scramble up to the hatch. But between his weight and his injury, and the severe angle of the deck, he was helpless. I stared at this pathetic sight, unsure of what to do, until he finally stopped struggling and turned to me, breathing heavily. He said nothing.

"Can … can I help you?" I asked.

He was silent. I took that as a yes.

It wasn't easy getting the Tellarite out of the ship, but once I did, I got under his left arm and helped him walk as far away from the wreck as we could. We'd only gotten a few steps when a Starfleet Fire and Rescue team landed in a medical shuttle. As the medics tended to their patient, it was satisfying to watch the Tellarite treat them with the same amount of disdain he had for me.

As one of the doctors gave me an examination, another shuttle arrived, and several Starfleet officers piled out, three in red shirts, one in gold. The one in gold was in his fifties, gray haired, had a natural sense ofauthority. He walked over to the Tellarite, spoke to him for a moment. The Tellarite indicated me, and the gold-shirted officer turned, looked at me with surprise, then came over. I was concerned that the Tellarite had somehow gotten me in trouble.

"What's your name, son?" he said.

"James Tiberius Kirk," I said.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Captain George Mallory." He shook my hand. "The Tellarite ambassador tells me you saved his life."

"He's … the ambassador?" I almost missed that part because I was so surprised that the Tellarite had given me credit for pulling him out of the ship.

"Yes," Mallory said. "He was heading to San Francisco, but his pilot refused to follow our landing procedures and got into some trouble. A few more minutes exposed to the radiation in that craft and he would've died. You helped prevent an intergalactic incident, son. You're a real hero."

"Thanks," I said. I couldn't hold back my smile.

"You're going to go live with your mom for a little while," Dad said. It was June of 2245, I was 12, and Grandma Hilde had just passedaway. Sam, at 15, had gained early acceptance to the University of Chicago and would be starting there in a few months. Mom had made the suggestion that I come to live with her, and though Dad resisted it, I was thrilled.

Since my encounter with the Tellarite ambassador, I had definitely become more interested with everything associated with other planets. I had started to ask my father if he thought I should join Starfleet, and was always surprised at how little enthusiasm he had for it. He would tell me how competitive gaining entrance to the academy was, even for the children of graduates, and he also constantly emphasized to me the careers available to people on Earth. I could tell that he was worried that my experience with theTellarite had filled me with delusions of heroic grandeur; and at that point, he might have been right.

On top of the adventure of moving to a new planet, I was actually going to be traveling there by myself. Dad, however, was not ready to entrust me to the crew of a ship, so he made contact with a family that was moving to Tarsus IV, and they agreed to look after me for the two-month trip. Still, to be going somewhere without a parent at the age of 12 was exciting.

A couple of months later, I was packed and ready to go. Sam had already left for school, so it was just Dad taking me to the shuttle port in Riverside in his hover car. We drove in silence on the half-hour trip along the highway that connected our farm to the city.

The port was a small one; shuttles connected to the major cities of Earth, and one made the trip each day to Earth One, the orbital facility in space. When we arrived, Dad and I went to look for the family who I was going to be traveling with.

"George!" A big bearlike man with unkempt hair barreled toward us and warmly shook Dad's hand.

"Rod, this is my son Jim," Dad said. "Jim, this is Rod Leighton." The big man looked down at me and gave me a pat on the shoulder.

"Jim! Nice to meet you! Come meet the family!"

Rod led us over to the shuttle boarding entrance, where a diminutive woman and a boy about my age were waiting.

"Hello, Barbara," Dad said to the woman. She gave him a hug, then turned and looked at me.

"Jim, it's going to be a pleasure having you with us," she said. She gave me a warm smile."Are you kidding, we're lucky he's letting us come with him," Rod said. He then turned to the boy. "Tom, introduce yourself. You guys are going to be spending a lot of time together."

"I'm Tom," he said. There was a little bit of sarcasm in his voice, but he put his hand out and I shook it. This less-than-auspicious beginning to my relationship with Tom Leighton was interrupted by an announcement over the public address system.

"Attention, this is the final boarding call for Orbital Flight 37 …"

"That's us," Rod said.

I turned to look at my dad. This was the first moment in all the months leading up to this trip that I realized I'd be leaving him.

"Don't give the Leightons any trouble," he said."I won't."

"I'll see you soon," he said. "Take care of your mom. Be safe out there."

I thought he would give me a hug, but instead he held out his hand for me to shake. I shook it. We then all turned to board the shuttle. I turned back and saw him standing there. He smiled at me and waved me on. I was leaving him, without Mom or Sam in the house, all alone on the farm. And I was guilty,not because I wanted to stay, but because I really wanted to go. I felt I was finally getting to say goodbye to my childhood, and in truth I was, but not in the way that I thought.

We climbed aboard the shuttle, and Rod got us seats near one of the portholes. My face stayed plastered to the window as we took off. The gravity plating and inertial dampeners on the shuttle made it almost impossible to sense you were moving at all; it made the world outside look like a movie. As the shuttle banked before heading out into space, I caught sight of my dad, standing in the port alone, watching us go. I waved, but he couldn't see me.

We cleared the atmosphere in less than five minutes and were suddenly in orbit. It was my first time in space, and it was stunning to see the big blue marble of Earth below, the sky filled with spaceships and satellites, and finally Earth One, the large orbital station that serviced and supplied the ships that came into orbit. We were flying to Tarsus on the S.S. New Rochelle, which was in a parking orbit away from the station. It was a supply ship, an old Class-J cargo tug with an updated engine. As we approached, the ship looked huge; it had As we approached, the ship looked huge; it had a forward command section, and a long thin hull in the back that housed modular cargo holds. It looked like an ancient railroad train in space.

The shuttle docked at an airlock near the forward command section. I grabbed my duffel bag and followed the Leightons as we entered through a docking tunnel. A crewwoman holding a tablet checked us in, then directed us aft. We passed a few open hatchways to modular cargo pods, where we could see crewmen who worked busily in the cavernous holds, stacking crates and storage containers.

We reached a hatch to the rearmost cargo hold, and Rod led us inside. As we entered, we saw that it wasn't cavernous like the others. The interior had been redesigned; walls and corridors had been inserted to create several floors of passenger quarters. We found our stateroom.

"Here it is," Rod said. "Home sweet home." It was small, with two bunk beds, two closets, and four drawers for storage. But it was clean and spare, and I found its small size and efficiency somehow exciting. Rod went over to one of the bunk beds.

"I'm on top," he said, with a wink to his wife. She looked genuinely annoyed and She looked genuinely annoyed and slapped his shoulder. Rod then turned to me and Tom.

"What say you, boys? You want to go find a porthole and watch us leave orbit?" Rod didn't even wait for a response; he was out the door and Tom and I were on his heels. We headed forward and crossed through two cargo holds and reached the entrance to the command and drive section. There was a guard posted who stopped us.

"Sorry, authorized personnel only," he said.

"Oh, apologies, the captain's son wanted to see us leave orbit," Rod said, indicating me. "I figured it wouldn't be a problem. Come on, boys, let's—"

"Wait … whose son?" The guard looked worried. "He's Captain Mayweather's son?"

"Don't worry about it, I understand you've got orders. Come on, boys …"

Rod led us back the way we came, but the guard stopped us.

"I can let you into the command section, but you have to stay where I put you …"

"You sure? I don't want you to get in trouble."

"It's okay, but as soon as we go to warp, you have to come back."

"Sure, fine."

The guard led us into the command section; he indicated an access ladder, and we left him behind as we climbed it. The ladder led to a forward observation deck. It was cramped, barely enough room for the three of us, but the view port filled up the whole wall. It was like we were standing in outer space, looking out on Earth and all the spaceships in orbit.

"Mr. Leighton, how did you know the captain had a son?" I said.

"I didn't," Rod said, smiling. "And you can call me Rod."

I laughed. A bluff! And it was quite a big one we found out when we later met Captain Mayweather, whose dark skin indicated a pure African ancestry. He was also well over 100.

We were only on the observation deck for a few moments before we noticed Earth and the ships in orbit slipping away. As Earth moved behind us, I noticed off to the right in the distance a metal web surrounding a large space vehicle. It was a ship in dry dock. As we got closer, I could make out small repair craft buzzing about it. The superstructure of the dry dock kept me from getting a complete look at the ship, but it had the familiar saucer and two-engine nacelle design of many Starfleet vessels. Yet somehow it seemed larger and different than any ship I'd seen before.

"Dad, what ship is that?" Tom said. I was so intent on getting a better look at the ship I hadn't noticed Tom looking as well.

"One of the new Constitution-class ships," Rod said.

"What's the Constitution class?" Tom said.

"They say it's going to be faster than any ship ever built," he said. "It's going to be able to survive in space without maintenance and resupply the way most ships have to. They have high hopes for it."

We passed the dry dock and then it and the ship were gone. It would be a number of years before I got a better look at it.