into the coastal waters, and though the sewage was supposed to be treated, the treatment wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. There was also a

fair amount of illegal dumping of garbage and sewage going on. Various wizards, independently and in groups, had worked on the problem over many years;

but the nature of the problem kept changing as the population of the New York metropolitan area increased and the kinds of pollution shifted.

Nita and Kit were more than usually concerned about the problem, as they had friends who had to live in this water. Since shortly before Nita had had to

go away for the summer, they'd been slowly trying to construct a wizardry to take the pollution out of the local waters on an ongoing basis. If it

worked, maybe the scheme could be extended up and down the coast. But the problem was getting it to work in the first place. Their efforts so far hadn't

been incredibly successful.

Kit was looking at the second full page of Nita's work. Now he turned it over and looked at the third page, the last one. "This," he said, tapping a

section near the end, "is pretty slick." "Thanks."

"But the rest of this " Kit shook his head, turned back to the first two pages, and touched four or five other sections, one after another, so that they

grayed out. "I don't see why we need these. This whole centra-replication routine would be great if the chemicals in the pollution knew how to reproduce

themselves. But since they don't, it's a lot of power for hardly any return. And implementing these is going to be a real pain. If you just take this

one " he touched another section and it brightened "and this, and this, and you "

Nita frowned. "But look, Kit, if you leave those out, then there's nothing that's going to deal with the sewer outfall between Zachs Bay and Tobay