drobe, sir? That's
been tried...."

"No, that's _not_ what I mean!" Edwin snapped. "What I mean is an
_all-weather suit_!"

Charles swallowed audibly at that and said nothing.

"You can see the advantages, of course," Edwin explained. "We'd need
only to manufacture two types of suit, marlon and marilyn. Since we'd
never have to adjust our factories, we could drop a lot of unnecessary
technicians, and with the further standardization, manufacturing would
be faster and cheaper--a _lot_ cheaper. The consumer would only
purchase one suit a year, but we could make up for that by raising the
prices somewhat."

Charles finally got a word in. "But, _sir_! An all-weather suit? How
can we design a suit that will be equally comfortable in the middle of
a Florida heat-wave or a New England snowstorm?"

"How? _How?_" Edwin's voice raised and his finger pointed. "_You're_
the research chemist, Charles! You're supposed to tell _me_ how!"

"Sir? I...."

"Listen!" Edwin poked the other in the chest. "I assume you know what
will happen to Society if the Textile Industry becomes economically
unstable?"

"Well, yes sir, but...."

"Then I assume you realize that the Board of Directors will stop at
nothing to preserve the status quo! And since you happen to be our
chief industrial chemist, the entire problem lands in your lap! Now,
we want to know how to make an all-weather suit, and we want to know
_fast_. Therefore, Charles, you're going to tell us how to do it!
Understand?"

Charles nodded unhappily. "Yes sir, I understand."

* * * * *

Charles went to work the next day after informing his wife that she
could expect him to begin keeping rather irregular hours at the
laboratory. The idea of any kind of irregularity was enough to worry
any wife, and Ingrid was the naturally suspicious type. She was always
nagging and had, upon occasion, even gone so far as to insinuate that
Charles had individualist tendencies.

So he knew that she would, embarrassingly, call Edwin to check up on
him, but he didn't really care.

The real problem was the all-weather suit.

Charles put his small corps of assistants on the project,
investigating several lines of thought at once. Every day, someone
would drop around for a while to check on his progress, and he had no
delusions about what would happen if he failed. The entire economic
stability of his society depended on his coming up with an all-weather
suit,