Chief Engineer Nancy Conlon backed away from her latest handiwork in the da Vinci’s cramped engine room, carefully, as though afraid to take her eyes off the patchwork of connectors and relays lest it all fall apart.

“Okay,” she breathed at last. The petite brunette lieutenant turned to face the operations console, which was, at present, manned by her best junior engineer, Ensign Max Hammett. “Let her rip.”

Hammett reached out to play the controls. “Alrighty then,” he said. “Engaging impulse power.” He tapped more keys. “While that warms up, we can patch the new intermediary modular into the grid.” Conlon watched his fingers flash across the touch screen, her eyes flicking every few seconds to the new unit as though expecting to see smoke pour from it.

A green light flashed and Hammett turned to smile at Conlon. “Online and checking out at optimum, Lieutenant. Nice little patch job there.”

“Well, they’re going to need more tractor beam for the job ahead than the da Vinci’s rated for,” Conlon said. “Figured I should be able to reroute the power feed through the main impulse engines to amp her up to where we need it.”

“You figured right.”

“I’m clever that way.” She grinned. “Okay. So, let’s power down for now. We won’t be able to field test this contraption until they’ve cleared the first targets for removal anyway.”

Hammett gave her a thumbs-up and began to key in the shut down commands. After a few seconds he said, “This is weird.”

“What is?”

“The panel’s not responding. I can’t take the new module offline.”

Conlon squinted over at her suddenly troublesome creation. “Why not?”

“Good question. There’s nothing wrong with the interface. Scans are still reading optimum.” He paused and scratched at his chin before shrugging. “Must be a bug we missed.”

Conlon laughed without humor. “Oh, well, it was too much to expect it to work the first time around. I’ll pull the module and we’ll run a new diagnostic, maybe get lucky.”

Conlon and Hammett both found themselves lunging off balance as the da Vinci surged suddenly forward, as though yanked by a pull on an invisible rope. The chief engineer grabbed on to an overhead hand-hold and looked sharply over at the ensign, who had caught himself on the operations console. “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “Did the engines just kick in?”

Hammett looked over his readouts. “Negative. Engines are offline and locked down. That wasn’t—” He gasped, his words breaking off in midsentence.

“What?” Conlon followed his astonished gaze to the console. “Who engaged the tractor beam?”

“Wasn’t me,” the ensign said, his voice tight as his fingers worked quickly over the controls. The tractor beam had targeted and locked on to one of the derelict ships at the edge of the Sargasso Sector, but without the da Vinci’s engines to provide a counter-force to hold the Starfleet vessel stationary, it acted instead to drag the ship toward the targeted vessel, like a fish reeling in the fisherman.

“Cut it off,” Conlon instructed. “It’s dragging us on a collision course with that wreck.”

“Trying, Lieutenant. Damned thing’s not responding.”

Nancy Conlon swore under her breath and knew what she had to do. The souped-up tractor beam was functioning exactly as designed—except that no one had activated the thing and it was no longer responding to commands. But touching the module while it hummed with energy with a mind to disconnecting it was a short walk to suicide. She hefted a spanner and growled to Hammett, “Cover your eyes!”

And threw the tool at the module.

There was a brief flash of energy as the spanner knocked loose a series of interface adapters, severing the connection between the impulse engines and the tractor-beam generator. This was followed by a jolt and the stumbling backward of a couple of steps as the tractor beam released its hold on the distant wreck. The unit powered down.

“Engineering to bridge,” Conlon said, still breathing hard.

“Something you want to tell us, Conlon?” Captain Gold’s voice responded tightly.

“Eventually, sir. Soon as we figure out what just happened. Something went seriously wrong with the tractor-beam modification.”

“Do we still have impulse power to correct the da Vinci’s drift after our little unauthorized journey?”

Conlon looked over at Hammett for an answer. “According to the diagnostics, everything’s operating normally, sir.”

Sonya Gomez’s voice asked the next question. “Nancy, was your glitch human or computer error?”

Conlon shrugged. “I can’t say for sure till I run a few tests,” she said, “but I rigged that patch myself and I don’t screw up that big.”

“Not usually, no,” came back Gomez’s dry voice. “Keep us posted.”