The Mars Escort Service

It was inevitable. During the California Gold Rush, for example, cottage industries sprang up around the prospectors and speculators like dandelions: assayers, innkeepers, merchants, farriers…and whorehouses. Where the women came from and why, well, the answer to that is probably as old and mysterious as the profession itself. Whatever their motives, the lure of riches, the dream of meeting Prince Charming, the pioneering spirit, the ladies of the evening are there. No matter how remote or adventurous the enterprise, be it the California Gold Rush, the Alaska Oil Boom, Los Alamos or North Hollywood, the women always seem to come from somewhere.

The year was 2112. I’d been on Mars for 10 years. You know those science fiction stories in which the expeditions are co-ed, with a sustainable breeding cohort being sent to populate a distant planet? Still the stuff of science fiction. Space exploration is still a man’s world. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. Sending a school teacher into earth orbit is one thing, but that’s a parlor trick compared to establishing an outpost on Mars.

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