Ragnarok Read Online Free PDF Page B

transporting directly in might be difficult—you wouldn’t want to arrive with something stuck inside you.”
    Kim could hardly argue with that.
    “There would seem to be no question that this place was inhabited, Captain,” Tuvok remarked, as he scanned about them with his tricorder.
    That was obvious to all three of them.
    They had materialized in a broad, shallow trench that had looked as if it might once have been a drainage ditch or perhaps a canal of some sort. As far as they had been able to see from the Voyager the trench might have been artificial, or might just have been an unusually regular natural feature.
    From where they stood now, however, there was no longer any possible question. The trench was clearly artificial. Natural features were not edged with square blocks of dressed white stone with intricate and perfectly symmetrical decorative patterns carved into them.
    “The planet was certainly inhabited at one time,” Janeway agreed.
    “The question is, was it still inhabited at the time of its destruction, or were its people already safely gone by then?”
    She swung her own tricorder about, scanning the area, and then pointed.
    “That way,” she said. “There’s an opening that leads down into the cavity I want to investigate.”
    Together, moving very slowly and cautiously in the asteroid’s feeble microgravity, the three moved along the shallow trench.
    At last Janeway paused. “Under there,” she said, pointing at an immense stone slab.
    Kim blinked. “How are we going to move that?” he asked. “It must weigh tons!”
    “On the contrary, Ensign,” Tuvok replied, as he bent down and hooked his gloved fingers under the edge of the stone. “It masses tons; however, it weighs no more than a few hundred grams.”
    The Vulcan lifted, and the stone came up slowly—then spun off into space. Kim stepped back involuntarily, and watched as the slab sailed off toward the stars.
    “I hope that’s not going to hit the Voyager,” he said, as he watched the stone tumble away.
    Tuvok said, “No, it will not. I would judge, from its present trajectory, that I have merely put it into orbit around the asteroid, and that it will curve around, missing the Voyager by several kilometers.”
    “Oh,” Kim said, feeling a trifle foolish.
    “It was a good point to raise. Mr. Kim,” Janeway assured him.
    “Come on.” She pointed at the spot where the stone had lain.
    The opening into the asteroid was rectangular, as clearly artificial as the decorative stonework. Kim stepped up to the edge and looked down.
    “It’s dark,” he said.
    Janeway turned on her wrist light and shone it down into the pit, revealing a stone shaft.
    “And it’s deep,” Kim said. “How will we get down there? Are we going to use the transporter after all?”
    “I don’t think that will be necessary, Mr. Kim,” Janeway said, as she stepped up on the rim of the opening and then stepped off, over the pit.
    Kim watched, astonished, as Janeway gradually sank down into the pit.
    “It seems clear, Mr. Kim,” Tuvok said, “that you did not have enough practice in microgravity conditions at the Academy. If we ever return safely to the Federation, I shall inform Starfleet that this omission in the curriculum should be attended to.”
    Then he stepped up on the edge, turned on his wrist light, and stepped off, as Janeway had. He, too, sank slowly into the shaft.
    They were falling, Kim knew—but falling very slowly in the asteroid’s tiny gravity. As Janeway had warned him, the danger here wasn’t in falling, it was in drifting away from the asteroid entirely.
    Taking a deep breath, Kim stepped up on the rim, as his superior officers had done, and stepped out into the empty space above the shaft.
    As Janeway and Tuvok had, he began to drift slowly downward, into the pit.
    The sensation was very odd; it did not feel like falling.
    Instead, it simply felt as if he had gone from low gravity to zero gravity. However, he could see