"We demand that you produce your proof," Ramsen howled. "You have called us fools and said you could prove it. We demand that you do prove it."
"I—" Fradin began. He wet his lips. His face had whitened. It wasn't a gentle, kindly face any more. It was the face of a badly scared man.
Fradin was scared. But he wasn't scared of those engineers who were shouting at him. He was scared of something else.
"Speak up," Ramsen roared. "Produce your proof!"
"I can show you mathematical proof," Fradin offered.
How they howled at that, all except the tall, thin, hawk-nosed individual sitting two seats down from me. He took no part in the demonstration. Instead he got up and very quietly went out of the room.
As he walked out, I again got the impression that I ought to know him. But I still couldn't place him. A reporter sees too many people to remember all of them.
"Mathematical proof, unless supported by incontrovertible experimental evidence, is not sufficient," Ramsen thundered. "We demand that you produce experimental proof."
By experimental proof, he meant an actual instrument of some kind to demonstrate Fradin's claims—some gadget that they could see and feel and examine, something they could take apart and put back together again, something that they could watch in operation. Ramsen was quite right in making such a demand, for without experimental evidence to back it up, mathematical theory is more often than not just so much hot air.