Star Trek: The Next Generation: Starfleet Academy #6: Mystery of the Missing Crew (2 page)

A question occurred to him. “If I may ask,” he said, “what ship are you with?”

“We’re with the
Tripoli
,” said Commander Sahmes. “Why?”

Data thought for a moment. “I have no recollections of the
Tripoli
,” he said. “However, I am aware that it is a
Hokule’a
-class vessel. Dr. Ingraham knew the registry number and class of every ship in the fleet. Starships were his hobby.”

Commander Sahmes eyed him closely. “Dr. Ingraham … you mean one of the colonists?”

The android returned his gaze. “Yes.”

“Dr. Frederick Ingraham,” noted the redhead, consulting his tricorder again. “Biochemist. Civilian. Came to Omicron Theta a little more than a year ago, with the second wave of colonists.”

The commander grunted. “Thank you, Mr. McAvennie.”

Abruptly Data remembered something. It wasn’t anything specific … just a vague sense of danger, followed by an eerie silence.

“Dr. Ingraham is gone,” he said suddenly. “They are
all
gone.”

Dr. Reynolds nodded. “Yes, Data, they are. Do you have any idea what happened to them?”

Data wanted to provide her with an answer, but he couldn’t. “I do not know,” he confessed. “I was not … activated at the time.”

“Not activated?" repeated Sahmes. His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the android. “But didn’t you say you knew Dr. Ingraham? That he’d told you about ships and their registries?”

“I did not speak with Dr. Ingraham,” Data replied. “I simply have his memories. In fact, I have the memories of all four hundred and eleven colonists who resided here.”

Dr. Reynolds shook her head. “We don’t understand.”

“I was programmed with information each of the colonists recorded at one time or another,” he explained. “I do not know
why
this was so … only that it
was
.”

The commander frowned. “I see.”

It appeared to Data that he didn’t see at all. Obviously, the android told himself, he had a few things to learn about human nature.

“But if you weren’t sentient at the time … how did you know that the colonists were gone?” asked the doctor.

Data felt something tighten ever so slightly inside him. “It is difficult to put into words,” he said.

“Just … a feeling?” suggested Commander Sahmes.

“I am incapable of feelings,” the android responded. “They were not included in my programming. However, the colonists
did
have feelings, and their records are filled with a sense of …” He searched for the right word. “Foreboding,” he stated at last.

The thin man’s frown deepened. “I see,” he said again.

“Commander?”

Everyone turned in response to the distant voice. There were two more officers, one male and one female, coming over a rise in the terrain. It was the female who had called for Sahmes’s attention.

“Yes?” the commander answered.

“All the plant life around here looks brown,” the woman replied. Jogging almost effortlessly, she and her companion narrowed the gap between them and the larger party. “Maybe it’s just dormant … a seasonal condition. But if you ask me, I think it’s all dying.”

As she caught sight of Data, her mouth opened in bewilderment. But in the next moment she seemed to regain control of herself and closed it.

Why are these people so surprised to see me?
the android wondered. Surely, there were others like him somewhere in the vastness of their star-spanning Federation.

Weren’t
there?

Dr. Reynolds grunted. “Whatever destroyed the colonists must have affected the flora. It’s all got to be related.”

“No doubt,” Sahmes agreed. “But I won’t report that till we get some of our biologists down here to make sure.”

“We should tell the captain,” advised the bearded man.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “But let’s wait until we’ve got some more information. No point waking him when he’s still recovering from that bug he picked up … especially when there’s nothing he can do down here anyway.”

“Commander Sahmes,” Data began, “may I ask you another question?”

“Sure,” said the commander, his curiosity evident in his expression. “Go ahead.”

The android took his time framing his query. What he wanted was really a very simple piece of information, but it was also a very
important
piece of information.

“What will become of me now?” he inquired.

Sahmes looked at him and sighed. “That all depends,” he said, “on what Captain Thorsson wants to do with you.”

“Don’t worry,” added Dr. Reynolds. “We’re not just going to leave you here, Data.” She paused. “That is … unless you
want
us to.”

The android mulled that over for a moment. “No,” he concluded. “I do not think I would like that.” He looked from one flesh-and-blood face to another. “I believe I was built to be among other sentient beings,” he said. “And humans in particular. My appearance certainly suggests that that was what my creator had in mind.”

The doctor looked at him in a new way … a little sadly, Data thought. “Then I’m sure we’ll find a place for you,” she assured him. “
Somewhere
.”

Data sat down tentatively on the biobed that Dr. Reynolds had indicated, then looked from her to Commander Sahmes. “Like this?” asked the android.

The doctor nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Just like that. Now, if you don’t mind waiting here for a couple of minutes, we’ll go get the captain. He’ll be eager to meet you.”

Data wondered why it was necessary for Dr. Reynolds to get the captain personally, when she could have called for him over the ship’s intercom system. However, she was already halfway to the exit before he could ask her about it. A moment later the doors slid closed behind her and Commander Sahmes, leaving the android all alone.

Perhaps he would be supplied with an answer when she returned to sickbay, Data mused. In the interim he would have no shortage of subjects to ponder. For instance … who had created him? For what purpose? And why had he not been destroyed along with the rest of the Omicron Theta colony?

The android looked around at the otherwise empty medical facility. Judging from the colonists’ memories, the equipment here was a good deal more advanced than anything the colony had had at its disposal. It inspired confidence in him that Dr. Reynolds and her colleagues would eventually find the answers to his questions.

He then inspected the gold-and-black uniform his benefactors had acquired for him. It, too, inspired confidence somehow—not only in the way it looked, but the way it felt against his artificial skin. It was considerably snugger than the coveralls in which he had been discovered—and therefore more reassuring, though he could not have said why.

Abruptly the doors
whooshed
open again. However, it wasn’t the doctor or Commander Sahmes who walked in. It was a gray-haired man with a deeply lined face and dark, shaggy brows.

At first, the newcomer seemed not to notice Data. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice anything but an office on the far side of sickbay, which he approached purposefully and with long strides.

Seeing that the office was empty, he muttered some sort of complaint and made his way to one of the other biobeds, which was positioned parallel to the android’s. Sliding himself onto the bed, he pivoted and leaned back, intertwining his fingers behind his head. And he only took in Data with the most cursory of glances.

“Here for a check-up?” the man asked rather casually. He appeared to be staring at a bare spot on the opposite bulkhead, though the android couldn’t imagine what his motive might be.

“So it would seem,” Data replied.

His neighbor grunted. “Wish
I
was. Seems I picked up this virus back on Tellarion Four, and Doc Reynolds wanted to make sure it wasn’t turning into something contagious. She wants to make sure nobody but
me
manages to expire from it.”

The android didn’t quite know the appropriate response for such a comment. All he could devise was: “That is an admirable sentiment.”

Still intent on the bulkhead, the man frowned, accentuating the lines in his face. “I believe that was a
joke
, son.”

Again, Data didn’t know what to say. “A joke?” he repeated—rather lamely, he thought.

“That’s right, son, a joke. Surely, they had some of those where you come from … didn’t they?”

The android pondered the question. The only way, he could answer it accurately, he decided, was to rifle through the colonists’ memories—an activity which took no more than a fraction of a second.

“Actually,” he replied, “there
were
jokes where I came from. A great many, apparently.”

Abruptly, his neighbor’s demeanor became noticeably somber. Sighing heavily, the human closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his aquiline nose.

“Tell me one, will you, son? A
good
one. It’s been a wretched night, and I could use a little comic relief.”

Data would have liked to comply, but he couldn’t. While the colonists had made numerous references to jokes, they seemed not to have supplied the complete text of any of them. Or perhaps they had, and he simply didn’t recognize them as such.

“I … cannot,” was all he could utter in response to the man’s request.

His neighbor’s expression took on a slightly pained quality. “You can’t … tell a joke?” he concluded incredulously. Finally turning to face the android, he opened his eyes and said: “Of all the
absurd
—”

For the briefest moment, the man seemed to freeze—deprived of the ability to move or speak. Then he swung himself into a sitting position and let out a strangled sound.

“What in … what in blazes
are
you?” he asked, his eyes wide beneath his ample brows. And then, regaining control of himself: “Where did you come from, Mister?”

Data returned the man’s stare. He began to explain that he was an android.

However, before he could get very far, the doors to sickbay opened again—and this time, it was to admit Doctor Reynolds and Commander Sahmes. As Data’s neighbor turned to face them, they stopped in their tracks.

“What’s going on here!” the man rumbled. “Reynolds? Sahmes?
Anyone
…?”

The commander swallowed. “We thought we’d tell you more about our … friend here … in person, sir. To prepare you for him, that is. You see,
he’s
the artificial lifeform we were telling you about.

The doctor grunted softly. “Captain Thorsson … meet Data, the only survivor of the Omicron Theta colony.”

The captain’s brows met over his nose as he turned his attention to the android again. “
You’re
the thing they found in the ruins?” he whispered.

Data nodded. “I am indeed.”

Judging from Captain Thorsson’s expression, the android expected that the man would need comic relief even more than before. He hoped someone on the
Tripoli
knew a good joke.

Or perhaps several.

CHAPTER
1

Earth Date 2341

As the being called Data walked along the length of the ship’s corridor, he was reminded yet again of how very
different
he was. Different not only from everyone here on the
U.S.S. Yosemite
, but from everyone else in the entire universe.

He noticed it in the way various crewpeople stopped their conversations as they approached him. He could see it in their long, curious stares. He could hear it in the way they whispered about him, when they thought they were out of earshot.

“He’s so
pale
. It looks as if all the blood’s been drained right out of him.”

“Fact is, he’s
got
no blood. From what I understand, he doesn’t need the stuff.”

“Did you see his eyes? Are they really
yellow
?”

“More like gold, I think. Or some kind of metallic chips. Kind of spooky, if you ask
me
.”

He didn’t blame them for their stares, or for the remarks they made. After all, curiosity was a human trait, and they had never before seen anything like him.

Data was an android, an artificial intelligence in human form. Where real humans had brains and nervous systems, he had a positronic network. Where they had skin, he had only a synthetic material designed to
look
like skin, and where they had instincts and emotions, he had …