Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction September 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE THIRST QUENCHERS
Earth has more water surface than land surface—but thatdoes not mean we have all the water we want to drink. Andright now, America is already pressing the limits of freshwater supply....
BY RICK RAPHAEL
ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING
"You know the one thing I really like about working for DivAg?" TroyBraden muttered into his face-mask pickup.
Ten yards behind Troy, and following in his ski tracks, his partnerAlec Patterson paused to duck under a snow-laden spruce bough beforeanswering. It was snowing heavily, a cold, dry crystal snow, piling upinch upon inch on the already deep snow pack of the Sawtooth Mountainrange. In another ten minutes they would be above the timberline andthe full force of the storm would hit them.
"Tell me, Mr. Bones," he asked as he poled easily in Troy's tracks,"what is the one thing you really like about working for the Divisionof Agriculture?"
Troy tracked around a trough of bitterbrush that bent and foughtagainst the deep snow. "It's so dependable," he said, "so reliable, sounchanging. In nearly two centuries, the world has left behind thesteel age; has advanced to nucleonics, tissue regeneration,autoservice bars and electronically driven yo-yos. Everyone in theworld except the United States Division of Agriculture. The tried andtrue method is the rock up on which our integrity stands—even thoughit was tried more than a hundred years ago."
He dropped out of sight over a small hummock and whipped down the sideof a slight depression in the slope, his skis whispering over the drysnow and sending up a churning crest of white from their tips.
Alec chuckled and poled after him into the basin. The two young juniorhydrologists worked their way up the opposite slope and then againtook the long, slow traverse-and-turn, traverse-and-turn path throughthe thinning trees and out into the open wind-driven snow field abovethem.
Just below the ridgeline, a shelf of packed snow jutted out for adozen yards, flat and shielded from the wind by a brief rock face.Troy halted in the small island in the storm and waited for Alec toreach him.
He fumbled with mittened fist at the cover of the directionalradiation compass strapped to his left wrist. The outer dial rotatedas soon as the cover lock was released and came to a stop pointing tomagnetic north. The detector needle quartered across the northeastquadrant of the dial like a hunting dog and then came to rest atnineteen degrees, just slightly to the left of the direction of theirtracks. An inner dial needle quivered between the yellow and red faceof the intensity meter.
"We should be within a couple of hundred yards of the marker now,"Troy announced as his short, chunky partner checked alongside. Alecnodded and peered through the curtain of sky-darkened snow just beyondthe rock face. He could see powder spume whipping off the ridge cresttwenty feet above them but the contour of the sloping ridge wasquickly lost in the falling snow.
The hydrologists leaned on their ski poles and rested for a fewminutes before tackling the final cold leg of their climb. Eachcarried a light, cold-resistance plastic ruckpac slung over theirchemically-heated light-weight ski suits.<