But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample. His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed. Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense atmosphere.