"Mommy," asked young Carsa, "why do I have to eat you and Daddy next year?"
"I'm surprised to hear you ask that," said Alara, Carsa's mother. "I thought I had gone over that several times before."
"Please explain it all for me one more time," said Carsa.
"Okay, I'll do that," said Alara. "Let's start with some basic facts of life. Our family is one of only seven families living on a very dry planet with only a tiny, tiny amount of water. So the Supreme Rule of our tiny society has always been: not a single drop of water should ever be wasted."
"Yes, I know that," said Carsa. "That's why if anyone washes his body, it's a crime punishable by death."
"Now consider two parents like me and Daddy," said Alara. "Once we have had a child, and raised that child to be be old enough to take care of herself, then our job in life is pretty much finished, and it's silly to be spending very precious drops of water to keep us living. Rather than consuming more and more of our very precious water drops, it's much better if me and Daddy give up our bodies, to provide more precious water and food material for children. That's why it is a rule of our society that when parents reach the age of 25, they must allow their bodily food and water to be recycled for consumption by their children."
"Oh, I remember," said Carsa.
"So next year, Daddy and me will give up our bodies for recycling," said Alara. "That will happen except in the very unlikely event that Scorus wins the election."
"Who is Scorus?" asked Carsa.
"He's a candidate in next month's election for Big Leader," said Alara. "He has a kind of crazy plan to completely change our way of living. Scorus says that we should gamble everything on a risky plan to abandon our planet, and take everyone to Planet Three."
Carsa and Alara lived on Planet Four in their solar system. It was widely believed that Planet Three in the system was a planet with a great abundance of water.
"Do you think Scorus will win the election?" asked Carsa.
"I think that is as unlikely as water ever falling from the sky," said Alara.
But the next month against many predictions Scorus was elected as Big Leader. That made him the dictator of the tiny society on the dry, dry world.
"We will gamble everything on building a spaceship that can go to Planet Three," commanded Scorus. "The spaceship will be big enough to take all thirty-one people on this planet to Planet Three."
Scorus gave commands on how to implement his risky plan. All the metal irrigation tubes used to move precious water around would be recycled, to use as metal in building the spaceship. Various sticky fluids on the planet's surface would be modified to make the rocket fuel. Oxygen tanks would be built to allow the passengers to have oxygen during the journey from the fourth planet to the third planet.
Carsa was very happy about all this. The thought of going to a new planet excited her tremendously. But her mother Alara was very worried that the rocket might fail, and that everyone would die when the rocket attempted to lift off into the air.
Aboard the rocket ship before it lifted off, Alara told Carsa to say goodbye to every place she had known on her planet, telling her that for sure she would never see such places again.
"Good bye, and good riddance!" said Carsa. "I'm sick of this dry dust bowl of a world."
The rocket lifted off successfully. Eventually everyone found themselves floating around in the spaceship as it reached outer space.
"We must have all died!" said Carsa. "I've heard stories of this, that when you die your soul kind of floats around in the air."
"No, we're not dead," said Alara. "This is just some weird thing they call zero gravity."
"How long will it take to get to Planet Three?" asked Carsa.
"Sixty days," said Alara. "But it will only seem like a single day because we will now begin to hibernate."
The mission plan was followed to the letter. After the ship was set on a course to the third planet, everyone on the spaceship except the pilot began to hibernate. No special drugs or equipment were needed for such hibernation. The race that Alara and Carsa belonged to had long ago mastered the skill of hibernation, which was needed to help them survive during periods when water was very short.
Eventually the pilot guided the spaceship into orbit around the third planet. He woke up all of the thirty other passengers. They looked out the window, and were stunned by the beauty of the planet beneath them.
"Look at the size of those clouds!" said Alara. "They're gigantic!" On the planet she had come from, seeing a cloud was as rare as seeing a rainbow.
"What are all those blue areas?" asked Carsa.
"Those are giant areas of water," said the pilot. "On this planet there's water all over the place."
There then came a crucial part of the mission. All of the thirty-one passengers crammed into the landing capsule at the front of the spaceship. The capsule detached from the spaceship, and plunged into the atmosphere of Planet Three.
"What happens now?" asked Carsa. "Won't we all die when this capsule smashes into the ground?"
"Pray to the gods for luck," said the pilot. "We're now going to try some new invention that may slow down our speed. It's like some big sheet with lots of strings attached."
The parachute was deployed, and the pilot was rather amazed that it worked. The plunging capsule slowed down to a moderate speed. After a while all the passengers felt a jolt, as the capsule landed safely on the ground.
Exiting the craft, the passengers were astonished. As far as their eyes could see was green vegetation. On the planet they had left, plants were as rare as gold.
"We can probably squeeze some of these plants to get water," suggested Alara.
"I have a better idea," said Scorus. "Let's start walking, and maybe we'll find a lot of water -- maybe even a whole big puddle."
"That would be insanely lucky," said Alara.
They all started walking. Scorus walked a little ahead of the group. After a long walk he came to a high spot, and looked at a wonderful sight below.
"I don't believe it!" said Scorus. "It's just too glorious!"
They all ran ahead to see what he was talking about. Now they were all on the bank of something they had never seen before: a river. None of them had previously seen a pond, a river or even the tiniest stream.
"It's impossible!" said Carsa. "I must be dreaming. How can there be so much water?"
"There's only one way to find out if it's real," said Alara. "Follow me!"
They all ran down to the river, and began to jump into it. It was joy like they had never felt before. The planet had never had such ecstatic splashing.
"Water!" cried Carsa. "It's real water! More than we could ever drink in a lifetime!"
"We have no word for this act of hitting water with your hands to make noise," said Alara, splashing the water joyously. "We'll have to invent a word for that."
"Oh no, I just remembered something," said Carsa. "Washing in water is a crime punishable by death!"
"Don't worry about that -- with all this water, we can change our laws and customs," said Scorus. "From now on, parents will be able to live for as long as they can. We can stop recycling parents for food and water when they reach age 25."
"Did you hear that?" said Carsa. "Maybe you and Daddy will even live long enough to see me raising my own child one day."
"That would be so amazing!" said Alara. "I've never heard of any parent ever seeing their own child's child."
Alara went up to Scorus, and thanked him for his brilliant plan.
"What we did was the thing any race would do eventually," said Scorus. "Moving from a very arid world to a water-rich world made perfect sense."
"But imagine if there were some people who had always lived on a water-rich world," said Alara. "Do you think they would ever do the opposite of what we did, and try to send people to a planet with so little water?"
"Not unless they were crazy," said Scorus.
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