Her first footstep cracks the thin black crust of the planet. With one hand on the airlock ladder, she freezes herself mid-motion and watch as the crack snakes along the ground before her. A plate of flaking black rock tilts up from the crack, displaced by the force, and a brilliant light blazes from below. Gold. It's luminance catches in the light of a distant star and floods the black plains around the astronaut and her little shuttle. The cracks spread like a spider's web around her and she watches with breathless wonder. Then it strikes her that she and the shuttle are sinking.
Paddy Dobson
12th September 2021