"Sorry?" she repeated with disbelief.
"Sure," he said. "Barden Laboratories and Solar Labs could really go places if we weren't fighting. Only one more thing, Miss Ward."
"What?" she replied impatiently.
"Divide and conquer is not uniquely Terran!"
After she left, Barden wondered whether his final shot had hit anything. He returned to work and forgot about it, sensibly admitting that if it did he would not be bothered and if it did not he wouldn't stop anyway, and so he might as well get to work. He rather hoped to avoid the possible delay that would follow official action.
Dr. Edith Ward answered him within twenty-four hours. Her word was accepted as valid in many places; had been the final authority on such matters for some time. Up to now there had never been any defense. Plus the fact that his side of the argument had never been voiced.
Barden didn't scourge the court for their decision. With only one accredited side of the evidence in, they could but take action. So Barden shrugged, grinned to himself, and spent several days in intense study, laying out the program that was to continue in his absence. Then he took the flier for the Terran Capital.
It was not a court hearing. It was more of a high-powered debate before a group of qualified judges and investigators. Barden looked into the background of his judges and was glad that the old system of appointment to investigating committees had been stopped. Though these men were not qualified physicists, they were not the old-line politician, who took an arbitrary stand because he thought that waving a banner with a certain device would sound good to his constituents. There would be little personal opinion or personal ambition in this hearing, and not one of the judges would sacrifice either contestant on the altar of publicity.
By unspoken agreement, neither he nor Edith Ward mentioned the source of their information. This Barden admitted was hard on the female physicist's argument for she could claim only mathematical analysis and he could claim experimental evidence.