"Shut up! Here comes the boss," Brown hissed.
They hunched down, looked towards the door expectantly.
Bryan Kimberly entered and closed the door softly. He looked the same as far as they could tell. They wondered just what had happened to him.
"Gentlemen," said Kimberly. They sank still lower. This was going to be worse than they had thought.
"Gentlemen," he repeated. "I don't know much about what they teach in college these days, but when I was a kid they required all engineers to have G.S. 1, fundamentals of general semantics. In that course I remember learning one great lesson: The whole is not the sum of its parts. Ever hear of that, gentlemen?"
The circle of glum engineers nodded, and they wondered where the devil he was heading for.
"I have discovered that in spite of the fact that this company is supposed to have a test department and has a number of test engineers on the payroll we, nevertheless, turn over untested spacesuits for sale to our customers."
Lane bristled, terrierlike, and squirmed out of the chair to a standing position. "If there have been complaints against my department, I'll back up every suit that's got my inspectors' stamps on — and none go out without them."
"No — none go out without them," said Kimberly with slow, even precision, gently dangling the hook he had them on. "But there is one other great lesson of general semantics that you seem to have forgotten, Mr. Lane. The word is not the object. Remember?"
"But what -"