 Why did Val and Ron really decide to go to Mars?
The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. "The surest way to die out here on Mars is to give up." 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. 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. 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 longed to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and bury myself. I felt almost guilty for having dragged her out to Mars, until I recalled that I hadn't. I stopped, slipped out of the geiger harness, and lowered myself ponderously to the ground. 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. 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. 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.
 They were curious and wanted to help their planet
 They were curious and wanted to help their planet  They did not want to spend anymore time on earth  They wanted a more creative way to make money  Out of obligation to find a job to sustain themselves