Marie Curie and Calamity Jane Beat the Odds
Klaxons blared. Lights flickered unpredictably. Sparks flew abnormally high in the feeble, six-point-seven-percent-Earth-gravity of the dwarf planet. And somehow, through it all, Marie Curie and Calamity Jane managed to make it through without injury.
“Huh,” Jane voiced. “We’re sitting out in the open on the surface of Pluto, and yet we’re not dead.”
Marie groaned. “We’re not dead?”
“I wonder if it has something to do with that,” Jane exclaimed, pointing at a large cloud of gas billowing from near the crash site. Marie looked on in horror as she noticed that it was a store of oxygen for what was apparently the subsurface colony; the sheer density of oxygen plus the relatively high temperature of the gas were all that stood between them and popsicle status.
“We’ve got to get to safety!” Marie exclaimed. Seizing Jane by her suit collar, she tried to run, only to launch the two of them much farther than she anticipated, running smack into an advertisement for potato chips.
The two passed out.