If at first you don't succeed...

1. Down the hole

Maya opened her eyes and looked up only to see... nothing. A black void. She was confused, dazed, and unable to move, pinned down by something heavy that compressed every centimeter of her body. She couldn't tell what it was; the suit had gone rigid to oppose the pressure of whatever held her there. She didn't know precisely what had happened, either. She bit her lip trying to keep down the panic she felt was coming. She didn't feel pain anywhere. That might have been lucky. She tried to wiggle her toes and fingers in the tight confines of the hard suit and breathed with relief. Then she swiveled her head left and right inside the helmet. Dizziness. Uh-oh.

Well, nothing else to do. She tried to remember. Nothing.

"What fucked up shit have you got yourself into?" she said aloud. The voice reverberated inside her helmet. This was supposed to be a sweet, well-paid gig. No dangers at all–except the thin atmosphere and the cold. No radiation, no meteor showers, no floods, no dust storms, no lightning storms; hell, not even big predators. A boring world for boring work for boring people. Just what she needed after the asteroid belt. Perfect. Well, not anymore. She tried to dig her feet into whatever was restraining her. It was hard, but the resulting scraping was both a happy sound–because it meant she could move a bit after all–and indicative: dirt. A landslide? No, the hole! Jolted by fear, her memory started catching up.

Riccardo was slowly driving the rover, loaded with the bulky ground radar, up the gentle slope of the hill. "Climbing" was too strong of a word for it. "Hiking" was more appropriate for the slight incline, especially in the 0.6g of Border. They were in no hurry. They were enjoying the pale blue sky, the subtle whistle of the frigid wind in the rarefied air, the barren land dotted with glimmering brinebush.

Border was a cold planet for a binary system. The two suns really did nothing to help. The world was in the midst of an ice age and most of its water was locked in the polar ice caps. There at the equator, where snow still melted, life persisted in the form of sparse photosynthetic vegetation, lichens, some furry mammal equivalents–all smaller than bunnies–and several hardy species of tardigrades. SatCom believed that under that flat hill lay an aquifer and sent them out to check. It could have been invaluable for the new base. The ascent had been uneventful; she and Riccardo were chatting about horror movies when–

a jolt.

The ground shook. The tremors made the rover wobble and displaced some pebbles.

Riccardo, taken aback, slowed and stopped as the tremors subsided. They lasted three or four seconds in total.

"What was that?" he asked, looking at her.

She shrugged. "A... borderquake?"

"No way."

"Well, it happened. I have a healthy respect for data."

"You have to interpret the data for them to mean anything, you filthy empiricist," retorted Riccardo.

The radio chimed up.

"SatCom here. Did you feel that?"

"Loud and clear, Giovanna," answered Maya. "It made us dance a little."

"The seismograph shows 3.4 Richter, but it's strange. Minimal aftershocks, already fading. All quiet now," said Giovanna, with a puzzled voice.

"Odd," interjected Riccardo. "Have you notified Markus?"

"Not yet, I wanted to check on you first, and I don't look forward to it. I'll break his little heart when I do. The first quake in the recorded history of the planet and he's on the other side of it, prospecting for minerals."

"The poor kid will shit his pants. A geologist with no plate tectonics isn't a happy geologist. He needed this," said Maya with a sigh.

Then the ground shook again... and opened just under the right front wheel of the rover, near to Maya's seat. The rover lurched and tilted as Riccardo put it in reverse and tried with all his might to make it grip on the dusty slope, instinctively leaning left with his whole body.

Maya fell.

She remembered seeing the furiously spinning wheels of the rover passing centimeters from her helmet's visor. She heard a snapping sound and saw the bulky mass of the radar, outlined against what was now only a rough circle of sky, breaking the straps securing it to the vehicle and sliding down with her while she fell further down into the darkness.

Then nothing more.