 How did Ledman get 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." 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. 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. I longed to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and bury myself. Twelve steps later, I decided this was about as far as we could go. 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. 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. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt it tinkle against the oxymask. I was neatly bound in thin, tough, plastic tangle-cord, swathed from chin to boot-bottoms, my arms imprisoned, my feet caught. It had been spun on us only a short time ago, I realized. He wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area opaque. I thought I knew everyone on sparsely-settled Mars. He reached for the tanglegun, flipped the little switch on its side to MELT, and shot a stream of watery fluid over our legs, keeping the blaster trained on us all the while. "Walk," the stranger said, waving the tanglegun to indicate the direction. We trudged along together, with him following behind; I could hear the crunch-crunch of the wheelchair as its wheels chewed into the sand. Earth needed radioactives, and the only way to get them was to get out and look.
 He saved his money to send himself
 He saved his money to send himself  He joined the Corps just as Val and Ron did  He was part of a uranium company who funded his trip  He posed as a tourist and stayed behind on a vacation