I don't do memes...except this one

Not long ago, I was tagged by Ruth Lauren Steven (who, by the way, is running a very, very interesting contest on her blog for writers - one that involves agents and queries and pages - go here for all the details) in the Lucky 7 meme. But I was busy and didn't post, and a short time later, was tagged again by Myra McEntire. I'm not usually one for memes. In fact, I never post them because they invariably take me back to grade school and the excruciating pain of hand-written chain letters. However, I've enjoyed seeing this one on the blogs of friends and fellow writers, so I'm dipping into the meme world for just a second to play along.

If you’re tagged, you have to do the following:

1. Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript 
2. Go to line 7 
3. Copy down the next seven lines/sentences as they are – no cheating 
4. Tag 7 other authors (I've reserved the right to edit. If you want to post, consider yourselves tagged by virtue of stopping by to read my blog.) 

I have two works in progress at the moment, so I asked Twitter to help me decide between options 1 (click) and 2 (click) and they picked the first. The following drafty excerpt is from page 7 of the wip I'm calling WATER for now:

Half a mile below, miles of dusty karst-invested hills swept past. Perfect territory for finding hidden pockets of water in one of the many cave systems, but every last one I passed was as dry as the sky above. I didn’t need the constant reporting of the ship’s radars to know it. The only water I sensed was pumping through the veins of the ship. With the sun already past its zenith, I was looking at yet another night in some cracking valley with who knows what for dinner and a dwindling ration of water. 


I’d already been away from camp for five days. I carried enough drinking water for ten, twelve if I pushed it and was careful. 

/end Lucky 7 meme

Thank you for reading. To show my appreciation, I'm going to save your life. BOOM. You're welcome