With the age of nuclear power, the need for hydroelectric sources vanished and with it went the great dams and reservoirs with their vast, wasteful surfaces of open water that evaporated by the thousands of acre-feet before ever being utilized by man. The beds of the great rivers were dry and the cities spread upon them together with the new controlled auto-farms. Only the smaller rivers and streams continued to flow until they reached a predesignated flow force. Then they vanished, spilling down into tunnels and flowing for hundreds of miles along subterranean aqueducts into great storage reservoirs beneath the surface of the land and protected from the drain of the sun and wind. From these, each precious drop of water was rationed upwards to meet the increasing needs of the people. And still there was never enough.

Author Biography

Rick Raphael (1919-1994) was an American author and journalist who began publishing science fiction with "A Filbert is a Nut" for Astounding in November 1959 and established a considerable reputation in the field with a comparatively small output of about ten stories, most of them assembled in The Thirst Quenchers (coll 1965) and Code Three. The first contains four good stories, the best of which is the title story about professionals in a future where Earth's water is carefully rationed, their job being its proper allocation. Code Three describes, in three long episodes, the way of life of the police who patrol the superhighways of the future in enormously complex vehicles made to cope with the huge speeds and corresponding irresponsibility on the roads; it is one of the first science fiction genre tales to treat the burgeoning superhighway system in America as a subject worth focusing on. Raphael was at his best when describing, in positive terms, the life of those who must deal professionally with a technological world. The President Must Die (1981) is a Near Future thriller.