Then one day Edith handed the phone to Roy with the remark: "Another sponsor."
"Who?" asked Roy in surprise.
"The League of Decency," said Edith. "Something about if they can't lick them, to join them." There was a peculiar look in her eyes as Roy took the phone and leaned back in his swivel chair to talk. When he had finished he turned back to Edith and said: "Baby, I've got a hunch that it won't be long before the only use the people on this Earth will have for clothing will be for protection from the elements—which after all, are not as temperate on Earth as they are on Mars, with its scientifically controlled weather."
"You may be right," she said. She busied herself with her filing cabinet.
That night as Roy lay back on the roof-chair watching the Martian version of a musical show, which several weeks ago would have seemed tremendously daring, it stirred scarcely a flicker in his nervous system. It was in the middle of the ballet, wherein lovely Martian girls soared about on twinkling toes gloriously nude, bathed only in incredibly exotic color symphonies played on them by a master color organist, that Roy heard the soft pad of footsteps beside him. He heard Edith seat herself in her chair, but paid no attention, so engrossed was he in the spectacle before him. But as he lay there, something nagged at the back of his mind disturbingly, and all at once it hit him.
Edith's footsteps had had the unmistakable slap of bare feet....
For an instant he lay there frozen, then he turned his head with a jerk. Edith was lying in her contour chair, composedly looking at the Big Show. And she was as naked as the day she was born!
He sat up angrily. "This is going too far!" he exploded.
Edith turned to him in wonderment, her eyes wide. "What?" she gasped. "That's certainly a strange reaction, coming from you!"