Anderson laughed. "It does seem rather incongruous, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Verger agreed. "Whatever that word means, it's all right. What I want to know is—why?"
"Being an inveterate bachelor, I suppose you wouldn't understand," Anderson smiled. "However, since you have spent many years on far-flung planets and satellites, perhaps you can realize that the lives of the eighty or ninety men who were exiled to the thermolium mines on Ganymede are not very pleasant."
Verger sniffed. "They must be cream-puffs if they kick about Ganymede. It has the nicest climate in the solar system—when you get used to it."
"It isn't the climate the men object to," Anderson amplified. "Their discontentment is due to being deprived of things they formerly enjoyed. Most of them were married just before they embarked for Ganymede, you know."
"First I heard of that," was Verger's abbreviated comment.
Anderson continued: "The government promised to transport the exiles' wives to Ganymede as soon as it could feasibly be accomplished. This is the first ship-load."
"Do you mean to tell me that all those female horn-tooters are married to Ganymedian exiles?" Verger exclaimed.
Anderson nodded.