Thirty-six hundred colonists were incinerated in the blast. Every living thing, every building, everything on the surface of the planet was destroyed in the fireball. Only one ship could have been responsible for such wholesale destruction - the USS Enterprise. Recalled to Earth by Starfleet, Captain Jonathan Archer is only too well aware that the Vulcan High Command is citing the disaster as irrefutable proof that humanity should never have been allowed to explore deep space. And yet . . .

The mysterious Crewman Daniels, who claims to be a soldier in the temporal Cold War, thrust back in time from the thirty-first century, offers Archer a lifeline. According to Daniels, history recorded no such disaster. No colonists died. The Enterprise was never recalled. Armed with new hope, Archer sets out to prove the innocence of his ship and his crew. But time is a swiftly moving river, in whose treacherous eddies Enterprise and her captain are caught. Against all odds, can Archer unmask the forces that are manipulating the fabric of truth?