Those afraid of spoilers should either get over their fears or skip over this post. Not top-drawer, but much more enjoyable. The only safe way to travel between ships is to link up the two ships' transporter systems, which is done. Reg Barclay abandons the mission temporarily out of a sense of extreme terror over using the transporters. The team finds four crewmembers unaccounted for, and the rest all dead.
All signs point to an explosion in the transporter console, yet the transporter works perfectly.
One of the bodies and a shattered sample container are beamed back to the Enterprise for study, and the away team returns. When he arrives on board the Enterprise, he is decidedly shaken. Geordi and O'Brien check out the transporter in question, but find no problems whatsoever. Further, Geordi and O'Brien both reemphasize to Reg how safe transporting really is as a mode of travel. Meanwhile, Beverly's examination of the corpse results in a sudden, short-lived heartbeat, and similar occurrences in the brain and lungs.