When they were all seated in the rows of chairs, the man on the rostrum arose and spoke. "Fellow PhD's and fatheads, may I welcome you to your new home for the next," he looked at his wrist watch, "781 days, six hours and 18 minutes." He was short, blond, powerfully built and pleasant of face. A rather pale, symmetrical blotch of skin containing his mouth, nose and part of each cheek, was outlined by his heavily sunburned complexion. That would be the shadow of his oxygen mask, Duncan surmised. "My name is Lee Bowen, your newly elected spokesman," he went on. "My chief qualification is the biggest mouth and the loudest voice on Mars. Before you leave you will have two elections in which to vote, but until the next ship comes you'll have to put up with me. And the girls here." He waved forward one of the slack-suited females. Like the others she looked intelligent, but her closely cropped brown hair and loose-fitting clothes almost concealed her sex. Her face was pretty but seemed pale without make-up. "Discretion is the better part of pallor," Duncan punned to himself.
"Dr. Martha Rice is spokesman for the ladies." Bowen bowed briefly and stepped back.
The girl smiled and looked them over thoughtfully. "We have problems here. I would like to emphasize a couple of them. Please don't cut yourself, shaving or working. The slightest wound in our low atmospheric pressure requires a compress bandage. They are nuisances. A modestly deep gash can cost you your life."
She paused and studied them some more. "And so I hope you are all careful or at least thick-skinned. For another reason, too. Our second problem here is the high price of love." The nine girls behind her laughed as she looked back at them, but her face became serious.
"You were led to believe that a kiss would cost you only $10,000.00. Well, you were misled. The price is $20,000, and the market is wide open. Any one of us will accommodate you, but you'll have to pay our fine as well as your own."
Duncan gasped at her first words, then, as they sank in, he smiled. Morale, good. Morals, even better if this wasn't just an act. Applause was enthusiastic, but there were no whistles.
Bowen came up again as the girl sat down. "Remember that, gentlemen. You came up here to earn a tenth of a million dollars. Believe me, you'll earn it. But don't kiss it away. It's only worth five kisses up here, and these girls will put you on report if you lay a finger on them. If they don't, they go on report."
The first two days were spent unloading supply cargo and stowing it. The out-going passengers took care of loading the stockpile of concentrated minerals, so Duncan had no chance to talk with them. On the third morning the ship was launched. The bustle of activity died, and Duncan moved into the smooth mining routine like the polished cog that he was.
Personnel training was done on earth. All were preassigned to their tasks, so the old crews had only to point. The mining operations went on as if no replacements had been made. The men's work was roughly divided into outside and inside work. Duncan's inside specialty was feeding samples to a spectrograph and assisting the nuclear chemist in charge of the lab. On alternate days he took his turn in the field tending excavating equipment.