Allen felt fear inthe pit of his stomach. The hairs stood on his neck. An icy fear ran downhis spine as the footsteps came closer, looking though ever...y bedroom.He heard them get closer to his bedroom and he stood up and ran to aclosetspace and hid there.He was looking though two curtains hiding him and he saw the two slidingdoors open to admit someone. Though the dark, he just saw a lith feminineshape walk though the door.The voice chilled him to his bone. "Alicia, I need to talk to you.. A few minutes after changing vector towards Scott's Landing the master caution alarm sounded and while I was trying to get readings off the holographic displays, everything went dead. I lost every single system on board and as far as I can tell nothing hit us, at least nothing I had ever seen or heard of before.I threw the mechanical master switch on and tried to glide on actuators only, quickly scanning the ground for a suitable stretch of land to perform an emergency landing. I jettisoned. “I would like to find that out myself.”“Someone was criminally negligent in releasing that animal. He was, we believe, going to kill Melody and Agnes here who is her roommate. We were protecting ourselves from them. Attacking us was a serious error in judgement for them.”The officer nodded at me. He looked at Mike’s body and Bill’s unconscious one.Amanda said, “I saw it all. We heard the thumping as Melody must have been beaten around. Agnes opened the door with her key and walked in followed. She flashed her dark eyes at Shifflettin an expression of obvious annoyance. "Distance and bearing to life formreadings?"Shifflett checked the tricorder. "Inconclusive. But the crash site isbearing two-seven-zero, right over that ridge."He pointed where the tricorder readings indicated, right towards therising column of smoke. Commander Xochitl expressed an annoyed snort atthe obviousness of the statement.Shifflett had been in Starfleet long enough to have had his fill ofpersonality conflicts.