Takeoff! (5 page)

And I’m afraid it’s for that very reason that my hands are tied. You can’t expect a man to run a kingdom if he doesn’t back up his general officers, now, can you? Political history and the history of my own family show that the monarch is much better off if the Army and Navy are behind him.

So I’m afraid that, our little lady notwithstanding, I must refuse to interfere in this matter.

CAROLUS II REX

19 March 1667

Whitehall

Newton:

No! That is my final word!

C II R

21 May 1667

Cambridge

My dear Isaac,

Please accept the humble apologies of an old friend; I have erred, and I beg you, in your Christian charity, to forgive me. I did not realise at the time I wrote my last letter that you were ill and overwrought, and I have not written since then because of your condition.

As a matter of fact, when your dear mother wrote and told me of your unbalanced state of mind, I wanted desperately to say something to you, but the blessed woman assured me that you were in no condition for communication.

Believe me, my dear boy, had I had any inkling at all of how ill you really were, I would have shown greater forbearance than to address you in such an uncharitable manner. Forgive me for an ungoverned tongue and a hasty pen.

I see now that the error was mine, and it has preyed on my mind for these many weeks. I should have recognised instantly that your letters to me were the work of a feverish mind and a disordered imagination. I shall never forgive myself for not understanding it at the time.

As to your returning to the College for further study, please rest assured that you are most certainly welcome to return. I have spoken to the proper authorities, and, after an explanation of the nature of your illness, all barriers to your re-entrance have been dropped. Let me assure you that they are well aware of what such an unhappy affliction can do to unsettle a man temporarily, and they understand and sympathise.

I can well understand your decision not to continue your studies in mathematics; I feel that overwork in attempting something that was a bit beyond one of your tender years was as much responsible for your condition as that blow on the head from that apple. 11 is probably that which accounts for the fact that serious symptoms did not appear until late in March.

I feel that you will do well in whatever new field you may choose, but please do not work so hard at it.

Again, my apologies.

Isaac Barrow

3 April 1687

York

To His Grace,
The Most Reverend Dr. Isaac Newton,
By Divine Providence the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

My Lord Archbishop,

May I take this opportunity to give you my earnest and heartfelt thanks for the copy of your great work which you so graciously sent; I shall treasure it always.

May I say, your Grace, that, once I had begun the book, I found it almost impossible to lay it down again. In truth, I could not rest until I had completed it, and now I feel that I shall have to read it again and again.

In my humble opinion, your Grace is the greatest theological logician since the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. And as for beauty and lucidity of writing, it ranks easily with “
De Civitate Deo”
of St. Augustine of Hippo, and
“De Imitatione Christi”
of St. Thomas a Kempis.

I was most especially impressed by your reasoning on the mystical levitation of the soul, in which you show clearly that the closer a human soul approaches the perfection of God, the greater the attraction between that soul and the Spirit of God,

Surely it must be clear to anyone that the more saintly a man becomes, the greater his love for God, and the greater God’s love for His servant; and yet, you have put it so clearly and concisely, with such beautifully worded theological reasoning, that it becomes infinitely more clear. It is almost as though one could, in some mystical way, measure the distance between an individual soul and the Holy Presence of God by the measure of the mutual love and attraction between the soul and the Blessed Trinity.

Your masterful analysis of the relative worthiness of those who have come to the Kingdom of Heaven on the Day of Judgement is almost awe-inspiring in its beauty. Even those souls which have been cleansed as white as snow by the forgiving Grace of God differ, one from another, and your comparison between those souls and a ray of pure white light striking a prism of clearest crystal is magnificent.

The Church has always held that those whose entire lives have been lived in holy purity and in the Grace of God would hold a higher place in heaven than those whose lives have been sinful, even though God, in His graciousness, has forgiven them their sins. But no one had shown how this might be so. Your analogy, showing how the white light of the sun may be graded into the colours of the rainbow, ranging from red to violet, illustrates wonderfully how Our Lord will grade His chosen servants on the Last Day, when the sinful souls of the damned are cast into Darkness.

There are other instances, almost too numerous to mention, which show your immense theological understanding and deep thought. So thought-provoking are they that I would not dare to comment on them until I have re-read and studied them carefully, for fear I should show my own shallowness of mind.

It is my belief that your”Prinicpia
Theologica”
will be read, honoured, and loved by Christians for many centuries to come.

I shall, of course, write to you further and at greater length on this monumental work.

Praying for God’s blessing on you and your work, and for the fullness of God’s grace during the coming Eastertide,

I am,

Most faithfully yours,

William Sancroft

By Divine Permission

Lord Archbishop of York

@#$ page 30 $#@

BACKSTAGE LENSMAN

By Randall Garrett

The
Lensman series, comprising, as it does, some six
hundred thousand words,
is
still, to
my mind,
the
greatest
space opera yet
written.
It has, to use
one
of Doc Smith’s favorite words,
“scope.”

E. E.
Smith, Ph.D., had
more scope, more
breadth and depth of
cognizance
of the
Cosmic
All, than
anyone
before—or
since.

He
had his flaws;
we
all do. But the grandeur of his
writing
overpowered those flaws, made them
insignificant.

I first wrote
Backstage Lensman
nearly thirty years
ago.
The original
is
long lost. There was
no
market for
it in
those days, and
my moving
about...well,
it
got lost. This
is
a re-creation from memory. It was a test of memory
in
another way, too: not once,
during
the
writing, did
I look into the
Lensman
for descriptions or phraseology or situations to parody. I’ve read those books so often over the years that there was no
necessity
for
it.
The style
came
naturally.

Only once did
my
memory fail
me.
I was too accurate. I had to rewrite one paragraph because, when I checked with the original,
it
was word-for-word. And that’s plagiarism.

Doc saw the first version of
Backstage Lensman in 1949,
and laughed all through the
convention.
It was his suggestion that I call the spaceship
Dentless.

On a planet distant indeed from Tellus, on a frigid, lightless globe situated within an almost completely enclosing hollow sphere of black interstellar dust, in a cavern far beneath the surface of that abysmally cold planet, a group of entities indescribable by, or to, man stood, sat, or slumped around a circular conference table.

Though they had no spines, they were something like porcupines; though they had no tentacles, they reminded one of octopuses; though they had no wings or beaks, they seemed similar to vultures; and though they had neither scales nor fins, there was definitely something fishy about them.

These, then, composed the Council of the Meich, frigid-blooded poison-breathers whose existence at temperatures only a few degrees above zero absolute required them to have extensions into the fourth and fifth dimensions, rendering them horribly indescribable and indescribably horrible to human sight.

Their leader, Meichfrite, or, more formally, Frite of the Meich, radiated harshly to others of the Council: “The time has now come to consider the problem of our recent losses in the other galaxy. Meichrobe, as Second of the Meich, you will report first.”

That worthy pondered judiciously for long moments, then: “I presume you wish to hear nothing about the missing strawberries?

“Nothing,” agreed the other.

“Then,” came Meichrobe’s rasping thought, “we must consider the pernicious activities of the Tellurian Lensman whose workings are not, and have not been, ascribed to Star A Star.

“The activities and behavior of all members of the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Galactic Patrol have, as you know, been subjected to rigid statistical analysis. Our computers have come to the conclusion that, with a probability of point oh oh one, the Lensman known as Gimble Ginnison either is or is not the agent whom we seek.”

“A cogent report indeed,” Meichfrite complimented. “Next, the report of Meichron, Third of this Council.”

“As a psychologist,” Meichron replied, “I feel that there is an equal probability that the agent whom we seek is one whose physical makeup is akin to ours, rather than to that of the fire-blooded, oxygen-breathing Tellurians. Perhaps one of the immoral Palanians, who emmfoze in public.”

“That, too, must be considered,” Meichfrite noted. “Now to Meichrotch, Fourth of the Meich...”

And so it went, through member after member of that dark Council. How they arrived at any decision whatever is starkly unknowable to the human mind.

On green, warm Tellus, many mega parsecs from the black cloud which enveloped the eternally and infernally frigid planet of the Meich, Lensman Gimble Ginnison, having been released from the hospital at Prime Base, was talking to Surgeon-Major Macy, who had just given him his final checkup.

“How am I, Doc?” he asked respectfully, “QX for duty?”

Well, you were in pretty bad shape when you came in,” the Lensman surgeon said thoughtfully. “We almost had to clone you to keep you around, son. Those Axlemen really shot you up.”

“Check. But how am I
now?”

The older Lensman looked at the sheaf of charts, films, tapes, and reports on his desk. “Mmm. Your skeleton seems in good shape, but I wonder about the rest of you. The most beautiful nurses in the Service attended you during your convalescence, and you never made a pass-never even patted a fanny.”

“Gosh,” Ginnison flushed hotly, “was I expected to?”

“Not by me,” the older man said cryptically.

“Well, am I QX for duty? I have to do a flit.”

Surgeon-Major Macy handed Ginnison an envelope..”Take this to the Starboard Admiral’s office. He’ll let you know. Where are you flitting for?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Ginnison said evasively, taking the envelope.

“Right. Clear ether, Gimble.”

“Clear ether, Macy .”

True to an old tradition, these two friends never told each other anything.

The Starboard Admiral slit open the envelope and took in its contents at a glance. “According to Macy, you’re fit for duty, son. Congratulations. And, in spite of everything, that was a right smart piece of work you did on Mulligans II.”

Ginnison looked at the tips of his polished boots. “Gee whiz,” he said, blushing. Then, looking up: “If I’m fit for duty, sir, I’d like to make a request. That mess on Cadilax needs to be cleaned up. I’m ready to try it, sir, and I await your orders.”

The Starboard Admiral looked up into the gray eyes of the young, handsome, broad-shouldered, lean, lithe, tough, hard, finely-trained, well-muscled, stubborn, powerful man who stood before him.

“Gim,” he said firmly, “You have disobeyed every order I have ever given you. It always came out all right, so I can’t gripe, but, as of now, I’m getting out from under. I’ve talked to the Galactic Council, and they agree. We are giving you your Release.”

The Release!
The goal toward which every Lensman worked

and so few attained! He was now an Unattached Lensman, responsible to no one and nothing save his own conscience. He was no longer merely a small cog in the mighty machine of the Galactic Patrol

He was a Big Wheel!

“Jeepers!” he said feelingly. “Goshtimighty!”

“It’s all of that,” the Starboard Admiral agreed. “Now go put on your Grays, take the
Dentless.
and get the hell out of here!”