The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Water Eater, by Win Marks

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Water Eater

Author: Win Marks

Illustrator: Balbalis

Release Date: March 31, 2010 [EBook #31841]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATER EATER ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

the water eater

By WIN MARKS

Illustrated by BALBALIS

_Most experiments were dropped because they failed--and some
because they worked too well!_

* * * * *

I just lost a weekend. I ain't too anxious to find it. Instead, I sure
wish I had gone fishing with McCarthy and the boys like I'd planned.

I drive a beer truck for a living, but here it is almost noon Monday
and I haven't turned a wheel. Sure, I get beer wholesale, and I have
been known to take some advantage of my discount. But that wasn't what
happened to this weekend.

Instead of fishing or bowling or poker or taking the kids down to the
amusement park over Saturday and Sunday, I've been losing sleep over
an experiment.

Down at the Elks' Club, the boys say that for a working stiff I have a
very inquiring mind. I guess that's because they always see me reading
_Popular Science_ and _Scientific American_ and such, instead of
heading for the stack of _Esquires_ that are piled a foot deep in the
middle of the big table in the reading room, like the rest of them do.

Well, it was my inquiring mind that lost me my wife, the skin of my
right hand, a lot of fun and sleep--yeah, not a wink of sleep for two
days now! Which is the main reason I'm writing this down now. I've
read somewheres that if you wrote down your troubles, you could get
them out of your system.

I thought I had troubles Friday night when I pulled into the drive