 What likely happens to Val and Ron after the story ends?
The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. Val's usually about the best wife a guy could ask for, but when she wants to be she can be a real flying bother. Nothing but what had stopped us could stop a sandcat: sand in the delicate mechanism of the atomic engine. But no; she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out walking on the spongy sand of the Martian desert. "Maybe there isn't any uranium in this sector at all. When Val's tired and overwrought there's no sense in arguing with her. Behind us somewhere was the comfort of the Dome, ahead nothing but the mazes and gullies of this dead world. We had wandered fruitlessly over the red sands all day, both of us listening for the clicks of the counter. She had been just as much inflamed by the idea of coming to Mars to help in the search for uranium as I was. We knew the pay was poor, but we had felt it a sort of obligation, something we could do as individuals to keep the industries of radioactives-starved Earth going. No, we had decided together to come to Mars—the way we decided together on everything. The geiger kept up a fairly steady click-pattern, but never broke into that sudden explosive tumult that meant we had found pay-dirt. I wished there was some way of turning the weary, bedraggled girl at my side back into the Val who had so enthusiastically suggested we join the Geigs. I stopped, slipped out of the geiger harness, and lowered myself ponderously to the ground. "What'samatter, Ron?" She slid down beside me, curled up, and in a moment she was fast asleep, sprawled out on the sands. Maybe we shouldn't have come to Mars after all. I looked down at Valerie's sleeping form, and thought of our warm, comfortable little home on Earth. It wasn't much, but people in love don't need very fancy surroundings. I watched her, sleeping peacefully, a wayward lock of her soft blonde hair trailing down over one eyebrow, and it seemed hard to believe that we'd exchanged Earth and all it held for us for the raw, untamed struggle that was Mars. It's because we wanted to keep what we had. We just liked our comforts, and wanted to keep them. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt it tinkle against the oxymask.
 They stay on Mars for their contract and then move on to a different project
 They stay on Mars for their contract and then move on to a different project  They go back to earth to make sure Ledman gets the care he needs  They decide to stay on Mars forever  They stay on Mars for a few more weeks before heading back to Earth