Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #6: Mystery of the Missing Crew Read Online Free Page A

Chief Griffiths was gone .
    Data and the Yann just looked at one another in the eerie glow of the emergency lights. None of them knew what had happened—not to the room, and certainly not to Chief Griffiths.
    “Now what?” asked the Yanna called Felai. “Where has the chief disappeared to?”
    “The captain told him to remain at his post,” recalled Odril.
    “So where is he?” inquired Lagon. He swallowed. “And why didn’t we see him leave?”
    Sinna looked up at the overhead lighting grid, where only the emergency panels were lit up. “Computer,” she said, “restore normal lighting to Transporter Room One.”
    The computer’s answer was quick and to the point. “The Yosemite is operating on battery power,” it explained. “Normal lighting is not a priority life-support system.”
    Battery power ? Data wondered why that should be. As unlikely as it seemed, perhaps the computer had made a mistake. He asked it to confirm its previous response.
    It did just that. “The Yosemite is operating on battery power,” it repeated. “Primary power is off-line.”
    The android mulled the information over. “Apparently,” he noted, “the ship was hit hard enough for its power relays to be damaged.”
    “Hit?” echoed Lagon. “Hit by what?”
    Data shook his head. “I do not know. However, we seem to have been hit by something . Otherwise, the deck would not have pitched and thrown you across the room.”
    “I’ll bet it was that other ship,” suggested Felai. “The one Captain Rumiel called the yellow alert about. It must have fired on us.”
    A possibility, the android conceded. However, an unsubstantiated one.
    “Let’s worry about one thing at a time,” advised Sinna. “Computer,” she said, “where is Chief Griffiths at this moment?” Like any other officer on the ship, the chief could be located through the communicator badge he wore on his uniform.
    The computer seemed to hesitate just the slightest bit before answering. “Chief Griffiths,” it announced, “is not present on the Yosemite .”
    It took some time for that to sink in. They all looked at one another, trying to make sense of the computer’s response.
    “Not on the ship?” said Felai. “But how can that be? He was here just a minute ago.”
    “That information is not available,” the computer told the Yann.
    “We have to tell Captain Rumiel,” decided Odril. “He’ll know what to do about this.”
    “You’re right,” added Felai. “Transporter Room One to bridge. Come in, bridge.”
    They waited for a reply. There wasn’t any. Data knew there were only two possibilities: either the communications system wasn’t working properly or there was no one on the bridge to respond.
    Normally, he would have expected that the first answer was the correct one. However, with Chief Griffiths’s disappearance still unexplained, he wasn’t too certain of anything right now.
    “Computer,” said Lagon, “why won’t the bridge answer us?”
    The computer’s reaction was as short as it was ominous. “There is no one present on the bridge to do so.”
    “What about the rest of the ship?” asked Odril. “Where is there someone present … someone who can tell us what’s going on?”
    “There is no member of the crew present on the Yosemite at all,” the computer informed him.
    Felai shook his head. “No. There must be some mistake. This ship was full of people just a few moments ago.”
    “Chief Griffiths was here a few moments ago as well,” Data pointed out. “But he is no longer here, either.”
    “The corridors,” said Odril, eyeing the exit. “All we have to do is go outside, and we’ll see that it’s not so. We’ll see that there are still plenty of people here.”
    “Good idea,” Lagon maintained. “That is, if the doors still work.”
    The doors worked fine. But what they saw out in the corridor didn’t reassure them. In fact, they saw nothing . Nothing and no one.
    “There’s no one here,”