 Why does Joseph lie about the water supply?
Medical science is unanimous in proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history of therapeutics." Our condenser broke down, and we've gone without water for five ghastly days." It's bitter as some kinds of sin before it's purified. What's fair is fair, and you have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's thirst." "And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half rations," he answered. "On account of the quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the proper amount. "Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can get used to in ten minutes." In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents, according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more. He uses only one pool, the sweet one! "Joseph, the good-natured artist in me has become a hard and merciless avenger. "You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed. Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been born and raised in low gravity. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed one. Something shrewd was called for.... "Joseph!" "You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction cups—" "Relics of the past," Harvey stated. Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport.
 He wants people to believe they need to pay for it.
 There isn't a lot of water there, and he needs to be able to ration it out.  He wants people to believe they need to pay for it.  He wants to keep the fresh water for himself.  He thinks that people would prefer to buy filtered water.