Age, living in an igloo. If that stove usedblubber or seal oil instead of chemical fuel, the picture would becomplete."
Alec grinned. "Just because something is old doesn't mean it's nogood, Dr. Braden," he said. "The Eskimos proved the efficiency of theigloo. We've just adopted the principle and modernized it. It stillworks better than any other known snow-weather shelter. But I didn'tsee you cutting any snow blocks with your skinning knife to build thissnug haven, nor crawling for hours on your belly across the snow tosneak up on a seal for your supper."
"Technicalities," Troy scoffed lazily. "The point is, that here wereare living almost under the same conditions that the primitive savagesof the frozen north lived under for centuries." He belched gently andstretched his long legs luxuriously away from the webbing of thebucket camp chair.
"I must say that you seem to be enjoying it," Alec commented."Primitive or not, I still like this better than those rat warrensthey call cities today."
* * * * *
Nearly two miles above them, the replacement snow gauge, C11902-87,already buried in a half-foot of new snow, sent out a strong andsteady signal. At midnight, when both snow hydrologists were sleepingsoundly in their bags, hundreds of miles away in regional surveyheadquarters at Spokane, the huge electronic sequencer began its rapidsignal check of each of the thousands of snow gauges in the five-statearea of Region Six.
A dozen red lights flicked on among the thousands of green pinpointsof illumination on the huge mural map of the area indicating gaugesnot reporting due to malfunctions. The technician on duty compared thered lights with the trouble sheet in his hand. He noted two newnumbers on the list. When he came to C11902-87, he glanced again atthe map. A minute, steady green ray came from the tiny dot in thecenter of a contour circle that indicated a nameless peak in theSawtooth Range.
The technician lined out C11902-87 on the trouble chart. "They got tothat one in a hurry," he murmured to himself. Another figure had beenreturned to the accuracy percentage forecasting figures of the hugecomputers that dictated the lives and luxuries of more than a half abillion Americans.
Water, not gold, now set the standard of living for an overpopulated,overindustrialized continent, where the great automated farms andranches fought desperately to produce the food for a half billionstomachs while competing with that same half billion for every drop oflife-giving moisture that went into the soil.
In the winter, the snows and early fall rains fell in the watershedmountains of the continent, then melted and either seeped into thesoil or first trickled, then gushed and finally leaped in freshetsdown from the highlands to the streams and rivers. As the great citiesspread and streamflow waters were dammed and stored and then meteredout, there was no longer enough to meet agricultural, industrial andmunicipal needs.
The cities sent down shaft after shaft into the underground aquifers,greedily sucking the moisture out of the land until each day, eachmonth and each year, the water tables fell deeper and deeper untilthey, too, were gone, and the land was sucked dry.
There was water in the highlands, in watersheds and spilling unuseddown to the sea in many areas. Soon the cities and industries sent outgreat plastisteel arteries to bring the lifeblood of the land to thevast sponges of the factories and showers in home and food-processingplants and landrounits. Water for the machine-precise rows of soy beanplants and for babies' formulas and water for great nuclear powerplants and water for a tiny, sixty-fifth floor apartment flower box.
But there was never enough and a nation finally could no longer evadethe situation that had been forewarned and foredoomed a centuryearlier by the pioneers of conservation.
Only by total conservation of every possible drop of moisture couldthe nation survive, and to conserve, it is first necessary to have anaccurate and constantly-current inventory of the substance that is tobe conserved.
To the executive branch of the government had come the Secretary ofWater Resources, and with the creation of the new cabinet office, theformer cabinet posts of Agriculture and Interior were relegated tosubordinate and divisional status.
To the thousands upon thousands of trained hydrologists,meteorologists and agronomists of the federal agencies ofagriculture, interior and commerce fell the task of manipulating andguiding the delicate balance of the world's water cycle. The snows andrains fell upon the earth, to soak into the land, flow down thestreams and rivers to the sea or to the great lakes, and then bereturned to the atmosphere to fall again in the ageless cycle of life.
But the happenstance habits of nature were steadily being integratedinto the control program of man. The rains and snow still fell wherenature intended but man was now there to gauge and guide the moisturein a carefully controlled path through its cycle back to theatmosphere.
An inch or an acre-foot of water falling as snow upon the highmountains was used over and over many times and by many persons beforereturning to its starting place in the atmosphere.
With the age of nuclear power, the need for hydroelectric sourcesvanished and with it went the great dams and reservoirs with theirvast, wasteful surfaces of open water that evaporated by the thousandsof acre-feet before ever being utilized by man. The beds of the greatrivers were dry and the cities spread upon them together with the newcontrolled auto-farms. Only the smaller rivers and streams continuedto flow until they reached a predesignated flow force. Then theyvanished, spilling down into tunnels and flowing for hundreds of milesalong subterranean aqueducts into great storage reservoirs beneath thesurface of the land and protected from the drain of the sun and wind.From these, each precious drop of water was rationed upwards to meetthe increasing needs of the people. And still there was never enough.
* * * * *
It was still snowing when Troy and Alec awoke in the morning. Thesnows had drifted over both the domes on the windward side. Theycooked a quick breakfast and then Alec began stowing the camp gearinto its compact containers. Troy took a small hand shovel and crawledout through the double opening of the front dome and tunneled his wayup out of the snow. Twin plumes of vapor rose through the snow thatcurved in gentle hummocks over the buried domes. The tall engineershoveled a short path to the downed spruce and cleared the way intothe shelter where the Sno cars waited. He removed the protectingboughs and shoveled a short ramp out of the trough to the surface ofthe snow.
The temperature had risen during the night and the snow had changedfrom the crystal dry powder of the night before to fluffy, gentleflakes, falling in a steady curtain through the trees. Troy opened theside hatch of the bubble canopy of his Sno car and climbed in. He slidinto the single bucket seat and with a flick of his finger set thetiny reaction motor into operation. Moments later heat filled thebubble and a cloud of steam moisture flared from the thrust pipes.
The ten-foot-long tapered Snow car sat on twin broad-planted skis infront with a single retractable wheel raised between them for snowtravel. At the wider rear, another pair of short, broad ski bladesrested on the surface of the snow on either side of a wide, continuoustrack assembly. A pair of handle bars, much like an early-daymotorcycle, extended into the bubble from the front fork. The gripswere studded with additional control buttons. Troy pressed one and thetwo rear skis rose on outrigger arms like a small catamaran to allowthe Sno car to sink a couple of inches back onto the gripper track.
As the weight of the vehicle shifted to the track assembly itautomatically diverted the tiny nuclear engine output from jet thrustto gear box drive. Troy settled himself in the seat and increased thepower. The track started to turn and the Sno car glided slowly outfrom under the protecting branches and churned up the slight ramp tothe top of the snow pack. He turned the front skis and plowed to ahalt beside the tunnel into the domes.
Alec emerged with one of the camp kits and handed it up to hispartner, then went to the shelter for his own Sno car. Troy stowed thekit in the carrier and dismounted and began digging snow away from thedomes. Alec's Sno car pulled up alongside and th
e chunky engineervanished once more into the domes to emerge with his own kit. Then hejoined Troy in the digging operation. Fifteen minutes later, bothdomes were collapsed and stowed in the carriers. The men boarded theirvehicles.
Inside the warm bubble canopies, air circulators kept the plastic freeof condensation. Outside, the snow glanced off the treated surface,keeping it clear.
"Lead off, Dr. Patterson," Troy called out over the car radio.
Alec increased power and the track of his Sno car dug into the softsurface, then caught and the vehicle moved forward and into the trees.Troy fell into line behind the other vehicle as they drove down thegentle slope towards the snow-covered access trail another mile belowthem on the side of the mountain.
Out of the trees and onto the trail, both drivers shifted gears,dropping rear skis to the more solid pack of the trail and sendingjets of steam shooting out from the thrust tubes of the Sno cars.