There was water in the highlands, in watersheds and spilling unused down to the sea in many areas. Soon the cities and industries sent out great plastisteel arteries to bring the lifeblood of the land to the vast sponges of the factories and showers in home and food-processing plants and landrounits. Water for the machine-precise rows of soy bean plants and for babies' formulas and water for great nuclear power plants and water for a tiny, sixty-fifth floor apartment flower box. But there was never enough and a nation finally could no longer evade the situation that had been forewarned and foredoomed a century earlier by the pioneers of conservation. Only by total conservation of every possible drop of moisture could the nation survive, and to conserve, it is first necessary to have an accurate and constantly-current inventory of the substance that is to be conserved. To the executive branch of the government had come the Secretary of Water Resources, and with the creation of the new cabinet office, the former cabinet posts of Agriculture and Interior were relegated to subordinate and divisional status. To the thousands upon thousands of trained hydrologists, meteorologists and agronomists of the federal agencies of agriculture, interior and commerce fell the task of manipulating and guiding the delicate balance of the world's water cycle. The snows and rains fell upon the earth, to soak into the land, flow down the streams and rivers to the sea or to the great lakes, and then be returned to the atmosphere to fall again in the ageless cycle of life. But the happenstance habits of nature were steadily being integrated into the control program of man. The rains and snow still fell where nature intended but man was now there to gauge and guide the moisture in a carefully controlled path through its cycle back to the atmosphere. An inch or an acre-foot of water falling as snow upon the high mountains was used over and over many times and by many persons before returning to its starting place in the atmosphere. 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. * * * * *