He shrugged, intent on the scene playing out on the ship. In a nearby star system, a small statue of Kahless appeared in the asteroid belt, which would puzzle Federation cartographers in centuries to come.

The Q beside him sighed, and glanced over at Voyager. "I hope it *does* blow up," she said. "By all rights they should have died in that well you created three years ago. ‘Black hole’ my eye!"

Q waved a hand at her in annoyance. At the gesture, a star ten thousand light years away disappeared. He glanced at it briefly before deciding that no matter how interesting it might be to watch an entire civilisation die from lack of a sun, it was best put off to a time when he could focus his full attention on it. He put the star back and looked at Voyager again.

"You realise you’re seriously disturbing the balance of power in this quadrant?"

"It’s fun," he retorted.

"It’s childish."

~Captain, I think I’ve got an idea!~

"That’s the half-Klingon," he told Q.

"I know who it is," she retorted.

~What is it, Lieutenant?~

~If we reconfigure the main deflector dish to emit a focused tetrion beam…~

~Get onto it, Lieutenant.~

"A focused tetrion beam?" Q snorted. "What’s that supposed to do?"

He shrugged. "I suppose I do keep encouraging them."

"So stop encouraging them."

"But then they’d die!"

"Oh my," she said, in mock horror. "Why didn’t I think of that?"

"Oh, shut up," Q said.

~It’s not working, Lieutenant.~

~I’m going to try modifying the phase emitters to give us oscillating field harmonics.~

Q snorted. "I can’t watch this drivel any more," she said. But she stayed.

"See?" he said, gleefully. "You know they’re going to be safe, you know that their solutions are going to go from laughable to painful, and still you can’t tear yourself away."

"Shut up," she said crossly.

~Lieutenant, we’ve only got a few more seconds.~

~I’m working on it, Captain.~

Q muttered, "Five, four, three, two, one," and snapped his fingers. Immediately everything on the ship went back to normal.

Beside him, Q snorted and went back to the continuum.

Q stayed for a few minutes, rolling his eyes at the explanations the crew were telling each other. "Now there’s something I was going to do," he said to himself thoughtfully. "Ah, yes…"

* * *

Ten thousand light years away, the inhabitants of a smallish planet looked up in surprise as their sun blinked on and off. A few decided it must have been a cloud, or a satellite, or a stray asteroid. None of them suspected that it might happen again in another eight minutes, this time permanently.