It didn't take much to persuade her. She slid down beside me, curled up, and in a moment she was fast asleep, sprawled out on the sands.
Poor kid, I thought. Maybe we shouldn't have come to Mars after all. But, I reminded myself, someone had to do the job.
A second thought appeared, but I squelched it:
Why the hell me?
I looked down at Valerie's sleeping form, and thought of our warm, comfortable little home on Earth. 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. But I knew I'd do it again, if I had the chance. It's because we wanted to keep what we had. Heroes? Hell, no. We just liked our comforts, and wanted to keep them. Which took a little work.
Time to get moving. But then Val stirred and rolled over in her sleep, and I didn't have the heart to wake her. I sat there, holding her, staring out over the desert, watching the wind whip the sand up into weird shapes.
The Geig Corps preferred married couples, working in teams. That's what had finally decided it for us—we were a good team. We had no ties on Earth that couldn't be broken without much difficulty. So we volunteered.
And here we are. Heroes. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt it tinkle against the oxymask.