A Very Small Water Supply

Pip hurried across the Observatory floor with both hands wrapped around a little metal cup. The afternoon supply pod had just bumped in through the side hatch, and now everyone was waiting to see how much water it had brought. Not much, by the look of the thin slosh inside it.

The Pebble Ring Observatory felt extra dry today. The plant room needed water for its curling green leaves. The snack chamber needed water for the oats and fruit wash. The cleaning tanks needed water for the brushes and cloths. Pip wanted to help sort it all so no one would go thirsty or dusty.

But Cori was already standing by the pod, small and straight as a pencil, with silver dust on her sleeves and a stack of labeled pebbles beside her. She held up her round apron pocket like a guardrail and said, “No one touches a drop until it is counted. This reserve must be divided exactly.”

Mira leaned near the doorway, her wool coat brushed with dust, peering toward the dome slit as if the sky might tell her what to do. “There really isn’t much,” she whispered.

Cori set out three tiny measured cups on a tray. When she tipped the pod, the water barely reached the first mark on the second cup. Pip stared at the little line of silver in the bottom of the tray. There would not be enough for every room to have all it wanted.

Pip tightened her red scarf and looked from the plant room door to the snack chamber, then to the cleaning tanks. Cori’s neat cups waited in a row. Pip could follow Cori’s strict counting, run to help Mira or the plant room first, or try to think of another fair way to share the small reserve.