The title kind of gives it away, but it’s not like I’m charging anybody for it.

 

“Everyone knows Beh Yeh has more water than Vhlonn, but it’s 70 million tsigura away. We can’t get there.”

Strif sighed. “Gevir’k, we would only need to send one spacecraft, fill it with water, and bring it back, and the Water Laws would be irrelevant.”

“Long before you got back, everyone who worked with you on such a scheme would have been put to death for destroying water and for removing it from Vhlonn. There is none to spare for launch fuel.”

“Besides,” interrupted Halrar, “how would the spacecraft get off the ground after filling its tanks on Beh Yeh? You would have to destroy more water than you carried. Beh Yeh’s gravity is much stronger than Vhlonn’s.”

Strif nodded impatiently. “I’ve taken all that into account. And the best part is, even with what we carried off, and had to destroy and reconstitute for launch thrust from there — which would of course return to Beh Yeh’s surface anyway — we would only be removing less than one ten-thousandth of Beh Yeh’s total supply.”

“Your launch thrust from here makes it impossible,” insisted Gevir’k. “If you build a big enough spacecraft to achieve your objectives you will only have to expend even more destroyed water just to get into space.”

“So you are content to live under the Water Council’s rule?” asked Halrar.

The eldest of the three snorted. “Don’t insult me. What is called for is a more advanced approach. One that builds on your work, Halrar.”

Halrar, the youngest, stood blinking in confusion.

 

It took years of work, but at last the experiment was ready. In a secure, reinforced room the three of them gathered around a vault to which were attached thick cables leading from bulky, unvhlonny devices placed nearer the room’s walls. Peering through a window of thick plexiglass, they watched as Gevir’k monitored the powering up of the various devices. When he was satisfied he turned to Halrar. “You shall activate the test sequence.”

Beaming with pleasure, Halrar said, “Thank you, Gevir’k.” He entered a complex code into a keypad, authorizing the computers to carry out the pre-programmed instructions.

The time readout ran down, and at its end the three scientists were huddled at the window.

In the center of the vault, suspended by wires directly above a small heap of fine dust, was what looked like nothing more complex than a diode. A high-pitched tone came from the master computer, and a column of dust rose toward the diode, then past it. Before the first grains could reach the vault’s ceiling, another tone was heard, and the dust fell back to the floor, the grains bouncing in the airless environment.

As the three scientists congratulated each other, a few unknowing passersby outside the building watched a curious plume of dust begin to drift away on the breeze, after having risen like a miniature tornado from the roof. None looked high enough to see the strange cloud formation that had appeared dozens of tsigura above the city.

 

Years later, after still more work — but even more interference from the Water Council, whose officers foresaw the loss of their power but also knew the people would kill them all if it was discovered the mission had been thwarted by politics — the water tanker was ready to be launched. It was a towering, bulbous construction, large enough to increase Vhlonn’s water supply by nearly one tenth, in one mission. Crowds gathered on the sprawling desert plain to watch the departure.

Strif had volunteered to pilot the craft, and as he busied himself onboard with the pre-launch checks, Gevir’k and Halrar addressed the crowd, explaining what the onlookers were about to see.

“When the launch countdown ends,” Gevir’k said, “the gravity exempter will activate, freeing the Quencher from Vhlonn’s gravity and allowing it to rise into space using only the thrust from the solar-powered ducted fanjets you see mounted around its sides.”

“Once Quencher has risen high enough to be completely free of Vhlonn’s gravity, pilot Strif will reorient the exempter to put the spacecraft on a trajectory toward Beh Yeh, where he will use the exempter on partial power to land softly in one of that planet’s deepest water basins.”

Gevir’k took over again, “When, after many dozendays, the tanks have filled with water, Strif will use the exempter to rise into space again and bring his cargo back here.”

There was much cheering, but eventually all that was heard was the crowd’s unconscious reading of the clock as it counted down.

The countdown ended. The gravity exempter powered up.

 

To an onlooker in orbit around Vhlonn the sight would have been spectacular — an enormous vortex of dust, stone, magma, water, vegetation and humanoid bodies sucked into outer space as Quencher, locked into an automatic sequence that its pilot couldn’t change, canceled gravity in a column of space from Vhlonn’s core upward. More than half of Vhlonn’s population perished instantly, the rest died for lack of air within moments afterward. Quencher itself was propelled by the vortex into the frigid distant void, far from the warmth of the sun. Ironically, acceleration — unaffected by the exempter — had instantly squashed Strif like a bug.

Millions of years later the planet finally settled, its crust betraying only the slightest hints of something cataclysmic in its past, along with tantalizing evidence of once having liquid water flowing across its surface. Beh Yeh had its own native civilization, which gave the dry, dead neighbor a name that meant the opposite of Vhlonn, the Nurturer.