The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thirst Quenchers, by Rick Raphael

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Thirst Quenchers

Author: Rick Raphael

Illustrator: George Schelling

Release Date: December 29, 2009 [EBook #30797]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRST QUENCHERS ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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 that
does not mean we have all the water we want to drink. And
right now, America is already pressing the limits of fresh
water supply....

BY RICK RAPHAEL

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING

* * * * *

"You know the one thing I really like about working for DivAg?" Troy
Braden muttered into his face-mask pickup.

Ten yards behind Troy, and following in his ski tracks, his partner
Alec Patterson paused to duck under a snow-laden spruce bough before
answering. It was snowing heavily, a cold, dry crystal snow, piling up
inch upon inch on the already deep snow pack of the Sawtooth Mountain
range. In another ten minutes they would be above the timberline and
the 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 Division
of Agriculture?"

Troy tracked around a trough of bitterbrush that bent and fought
against the deep snow. "It's so dependable," he said, "so reliable, so
unchanging. In nearly two centuries, the world has left behind the
steel age; has advanced to nucleonics, tissue regeneration,
autoservice bars and electronically driven yo-yos. Everyone in the
world except the United States Division of Agriculture. The tried and
true method is the rock up on which o