Ragnarok Read Online Free PDF

wanted to see?” Paris asked, when the ship was within the area where a planet had once orbited.
    “Yes,” Janeway said. “That one.” She pointed at one of the chunks of rocky crust that seemed to have structures clinging to it. “The sensors say it’s hollow.”
    “Hollow?” Paris looked at the readings, startled. “I don’t show that here.”
    “It’s not completely hollow,” Janeway agreed, “but there are cavities in it, and I want a look at them. Match speeds with it, and take us down within transporter range.”
    “Aye-aye,” Paris replied.
    “Transporter range, Captain?” Chakotay asked, stepping up behind her.
    Janeway nodded. “I want a look at whatever is inside that piece,” she said. “I want to see if this really was an inhabited planet, and see if I can find some evidence about just what happened to it.”
    Chakotay frowned. “You’re planning to beam over to the asteroid?”
    “That’s right.”
    “It may not be safe,” Chakotay said. “Perhaps I should go, instead?”
    Janeway shook her head. “No,” she said. “I want to see for myself.
    Besides, Commander, you don’t have the necessary scientific training.
    It’ll be safe enough; I’ll be in a spacesuit, and you’ll be able to transport me back if there’s any danger.”
    That was true enough about the training, Chakotay thought.
    Janeway had been a science officer before her promotion to captain, and knew more about astrophysics, exochemistry, and xenosociology than anyone else aboard the Voyager—certainly more than Chakotay did; his own background was far less technically oriented. Still, he did not like the idea of the ship’s captain undertaking such a venture.
    “I would remind the captain,” he said, “that we will be unable to maintain a transporter lock on you while our shields are up.”
    “We can turn the ship so that the stern is toward the asteroid,” Janeway said, “and keep the forward and lateral shields up while lowering the aft shields, just as we would while docking a shuttlecraft. That will allow us full use of the transporter, and it’s very unlikely that any chunk of celestial debris would come at us from that direction.”
    Chakotay reluctantly acknowledged that such a proposal ought to work.
    “Good,” Janeway said. “Commander, you have the conn. Mr. Kim, Mr. Tuvok, you’re with me.”
    A few minutes later three spacesuited figures shimmered into existence on the surface of the asteroid. Harry Kim looked about while Tuvok began scanning the area with his tricorder.
    The view was an odd one—the surface seemed as flat as that of a planet, rather than the jagged, uneven shape Harry had expected, but it cut off abruptly no more than a few kilometers away in every direction, as if they were standing atop a narrow plateau.
    And where from a plateau he might have seen more of the world spread out below, here there was nothing at all beyond the edge, nothing but the black of space and the clear light of the stars.
    “Be careful, Mr. Kim,” Janeway cautioned, as the three of them looked about. “Your legs are strong enough to push you right off into space when the gravity is this low.”
    “I know, Captain,” Kim said. “We practiced low-gravity movement at the Academy.”
    Janeway nodded. “But at the Academy you had magnetic boots.”
    “But my spacesuit—aren’t these boots…” Kim began, looking down, startled.
    “They’re magnetic, all right,” Janeway said, “but this asteroid isn’t.
    There’s no ferrous metal in it at all. So just move very, very carefully.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Kim agreed. “Um… Captain? If you wanted to see the inside of the asteroid, why did we beam down to the surface?”
    “Because I want to see the surface, too, Ensign,” Janeway explained, “and because if there’s anything dangerous here, it’s more likely to be in there than out here.”
    Kim nodded.
    “Also,” she added, “there’s enough loose material in the cavity that