"Miss Ward, I regret that you are not a man—or that I am not a woman. Then we would have an even chance before a committee of our contemporaries."
"Mr. Barden," she said in an icy voice, "I've been accused of flaunting my sex every time a question is raised. I've also been told by many that my position was gained in the same way. Just because I prefer to be a physicist instead of some man's housekeeper, I am viewed with suspicion, hatred, jealousy, and dislike. Well, Mr. Barden, you accuse me of using my sex. It is as much a hindrance as an aid, because I find that a woman has to be three times as good as the man in the same job in order to get the same recognition. If she isn't, nobody trusts her at all! Now," she said facing the committee, "I'll make my final plea. I've had mathematical physicists at work for almost a year. They agree with me. Thomas Barden has earned his position, I admit. But I still claim that he is moving forward along an unknown road because he is unable to make the necessary predictions. I've explained where this road leads to, and the consequences of following it blindly. He must be stopped!"
"Mathematics," said Barden, "and I quote Dr. Murdoch of the Board of Review of the Terran Physical Society: 'And may I add that when mathematics and experiment do not agree, it is the math that is changed. As witness Galileo's experiments with the falling bodies.' No one can make a certain prediction postulated on mathematics unless he has cognizance of every term. Miss Ward, are you aware of every factor?"
"No but—"
"Then your mathematics is faulty. And your opinion is, therefore, reduced to a personal opinion and not a scientific statement of fact. I've heard that a physicist is a learned one who leaps from an unfounded opinion to a foregone conclusion."
"You sound like an orator," snapped Edith Ward, "and orators seldom follow full fact unless it enhances their point."
"I'm sorry that you have that opinion," said Barden. "However, Miss Ward and gentlemen, regardless of what you do, of how you attempt to restrain me, I shall pursue this matter to the bitter end. If you deny me the right to work on Terra or any other solid body of the system, I shall take my laboratory into space and then we shall have two space laboratories—one of which will function in the medium for which it was named!"
Barden nodded affably, turned, and left the room.
One of the committeemen smiled sardonically and said: "I think he has just said, 'To Hell with us'!"
Another one nodded glumly and said: "Me, I think he's right. No one can stand in the way of progress."