In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents, according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads to the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it leads from."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.