"No. They were conducting the whole affair on a highly moral plane. The
police let them go, and dismissed the case when their parents showed
up and suggested that it was all rather natural, and that they felt no
harm had been done."
"The parents said that?" asked Roy incredulously.
* * * * *
Weeks passed, and the Big Show went on. The audience, which had always
been huge, now became almost universal. And no longer were there any
remarks about nudity, but instead "sunbathing" groups began springing
up everywhere. For a time this development, which began to edge its
way into public places with an accelerated pace, rather than private
camps, stirred up another storm, and there were demands that Sunbathing
Magazine be banned from the newsstands. This fell through when the
authorities pointed out the magazine was tame compared to the show in
the heavens.
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!"
"You're as buff as a billiard ball!" he said indignantly, his face
growing red.
"I don't think I look like a billiard ball," she said. "I've always
been under the impression I was rather nice looking. Neither square,
nor perfectly round. Just nicely curved...."
"Your sadism has gone too far this time!" he snapped. "I don't
appreciate it at all. You can sit here and moon-bath if you want to,
I'm going downstairs and work...."
He began to stride toward the roof entrance.
"What's the matter, can't you take it?" she called after him.
He whirled. "If it'll satisfy your sadistic little mind," he said, "I
can't! Now, are you pleased with yourself?"
She looked hurt. "Who's being a sadist?" she said. She stood up and
came toward him.
He grew giddy and for a moment the roof whirled around him. Then all at
once he found himself lying on the roof, and his head cradled on her
lap. He looked up at her.
"You aren't being a sadist?" he persisted.
"Of course not," she said. "After all, the Martians are thirty
thousand years ahead of us, and if it's all right with them ... who am
I to be backward?"
"Baby," he said, drawing her lips down to his, "you've been ahead of
them all the time!"
And all over the Earth mankind took a gigantic step forward, into a new
Eden that promised many good things....