If I wanted to steal water from kat planet, and had a kickin
spacecraft, I'd get some rocks headed for the planet at a high fraction of
c, sit back,  and let them do their work. Oh, it might boil off the top few
meters of ocean, but you don't have to deal with any objections from
the indigs!

  Admittedly, Mutilor did seem to suffer from a severe case of Supervillian
Overconfidence, I'm not sure he was capable of _admitting_ that a 
non-spacefaring race could even pose a threat to him.  If he was at all
worried, he could've eliminated most of the risk by, say, hovering over 
the middle of the largest ocean instead of a couple hundred yards off
MKC Beach.  It would have taken hours to days for anybody to even
_find_ him once water levels started dropping, and more hours for jets
to reach him.  And it certainly seemed that he only needed about half a day
to complete the entire job.  Given the personality as shown, he likely
decided to _deliberately_ hover near a major population center because his 
Marauder pilots felt like target practice, and deliberately avoided
a preemptive strike (say, taking out the Enforcer runways with his
mega-beam).  He _wanted_ an aerial duel.  
  While we're picking nits with that episode, I suppose we can also 
wonder why the deepest part of the ocean is just off MKC, and the 
oceans all have a nice drainage path to that spot (he did say he was
getting *ALL* the water).  Then there's the question of what became of    
the planet's sea life duing the couple hours that were spent waterless,
did the Aquian Tech bottle up the kelp, fish, and whales, too?  :-) :-)

                                            Daniel Pawtowski
dpawtows@vt.edu