 What kind of person is Ron?
THE HUNTED HEROES By ROBERT SILVERBERG The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. Nothing but what had stopped us could stop a sandcat: sand in the delicate mechanism of the atomic engine. 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 stopped, slipped out of the geiger harness, and lowered myself ponderously to the ground. "What'samatter, Ron?" "Ron—" "Don't try to move, baby. He wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area opaque. Through the fishbowl I could see hard little eyes, a yellowed, parchment-like face, a grim-set jaw. I thought I knew everyone on sparsely-settled Mars. Earth needed radioactives, and the only way to get them was to get out and look. The great atomic wars of the late 20th Century had used up much of the supply, but the amount used to blow up half the great cities of the world hardly compared with the amount we needed to put them back together again. And that started the chain of events that led Val and me to end up as a madman's prisoners, on Mars. Project Sea-Dredge was trying to get uranium from the oceans. Millions of starving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing in it in the useless shell of a great atomic civilization. So, Mars. It's a stopgap effort, just to keep things moving until Project Sea-Dredge starts functioning. Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers out on the face of Mars, combing for its uranium deposits. It slid up over the crest of a hill, set back between two hummocks on the desert. For a puzzled moment I thought it was our Dome, the settlement where all of UranCo's Geig Corps were located, but another look told me that this was actually quite near us and fairly small. A one-man Dome, of all things! When we were inside he reached up, clumsily holding the blaster, and unscrewed the ancient spacesuit fishbowl.
 A curious and determined man who does his best
 A curious and determined man who does his best  An impulsive man who does not pay attention to others' needs  A doting husband who follows his wife to Mars  An adventuresome soul but still a timid one