 According to Ron, what motivated him and Val to join the Geigs?
THE HUNTED HEROES By ROBERT SILVERBERG The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. I reached over and turned up the pressure on her oxymask to make things a little easier for her. 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. We had wandered fruitlessly over the red sands all day, both of us listening for the clicks of the counter. Even though the Martian gravity was only a fraction of Earth's, I was starting to tire, and I knew it must have been really rough on Val with her lovely but unrugged legs. 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. And we'd always had a roving foot, both of us. 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. 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 Geig Corps preferred married couples, working in teams. We had no ties on Earth that couldn't be broken without much difficulty. So we volunteered. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt it tinkle against the oxymask.
 desire to maintain their present way of life
 desire to maintain their present way of life  monetary compensation  opportunity for a new life on Mars  heroic reputational status upon returning to Earth