The Thirst Quenchers

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.
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....
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 our integrity stands—even though it was tried more than a hundred years ago.
He dropped out of sight over a small hummock and whipped down the side of a slight depression in the slope, his skis whispering over the dry snow and sending up a churning crest of white from their tips.
Alec chuckled and poled after him into the basin. The two young junior hydrologists worked their way up the opposite slope and then again took the long, slow traverse-and-turn, traverse-and-turn path through the thinning trees and out into the open wind-driven snow field above them.