Takeoff. Part 3

If you wish to spend your time playing with airy-fairy mathematical abstrusities which have no basis in fact, that is perfectly all right with me. This is a free country, and no one proposes to dictate one's private life. However, I would appreciate it if you would do me the honor of not burdening my already overtaxed mind with such patent nonsense.

Otherwise, your work with the tabulations has been most excellent; I am enclosing a cheque for 20 to cover your work so far.

Sincerely, Edward Ballister-ffoulkes, Bart..

12 February 1667 Cambridge

My dear Newton: You have stretched the bonds of friends.h.i.+p too far. You have presumed upon me as a friend, and have quite evidently forgotten my position as head of the Department of Mathematics at this College.

The harsh language in which you have presumed to address me is too shocking for any self-respecting man to bear, and I, for one, refuse to accept such language from my social inferiors. As a Professor of Mathematics in one of the most ancient of universities. I will not allow myself or my position to be ridiculed by a young jackanapes who has no respect for those in authority or for his elders.

Your childish twaddle about gla.s.s prisms producing rainbows-a fact which any schoolboy knows-is bad enough; but to say that I am such a fool that I would refuse to recognize "one of the most important advances in mathematics" is beyond the pale of social intercourse.

Repeatedly during the last few months, you have attempted to foist off on me and others implausible and unscientific theories which have no basis whatever in fact and which no reputable scientist would be foolish enough to endorse. You are not a mathematician, sir; you are a charlatan and a mountebank!

You have no data; you admit working from "intuition" and hypotheses cut out of whole cloth; you cannot and will not give any reliable authority for ay of your statements, nor will you accept the reliable statements of better men than yourself.

This unseemly behavior forces me to exercise my prerogative and my authority in defence of the college and the university. I shall recommend to the authorities that you be effused readmission.

Isaac Barrow, Ph.D.

Department of Mathematics Trinity College

16 February 1667

FROM: Ballistics Research Department, Army Artillery TO: Mr. Isaac Newton, A.B., Woolsthorpe SUBJECT: Reduction in personnel ENCLOSURE: Cheque for 2/10s/6d

1. In view of the increased personality friction between yourself and certain members of this department, this department feels that it would be to our mutual disadvantage to continue retaining your services as mathematical consultant.

2. As of 16 February 1667 your employment is hereby terminated.

3. Enclosed is a cheque covering your services from 8 February 1667 to date.

By order of the Commanding General Major Rupert Knowles, Adjutant for General Sir Edward Ballister-ffoulkes 12 March 1667 Whitehall

My dear fellow, I am making this communication quite informal because of your equally informal method of-shall we say-getting my ear.

I have been nagged at day and night for the past three weeks by a certain lady of our mutual acquaintance; she wants me to "do something for that nice young Mr. Newton." She seems to think you are a man of some intelligence, so, more in order to stop her nagging tongue than anything else, I have personally investigated the circ.u.mstances of your set-to with the Ballistics Research Department.

I have spoken with General B-f, and looked over all the correspondence. Can't make head or tail of what you're talking about, myself, but that's beside the point. I did notice that your language toward the general became somewhat acid toward the last. Can't actually say I blame you; the military mind can get a bit stiff at times.

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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sure you that they are well aware of what such an unhappy affliction can do to unsettle a man temporarily, and they understand andsympathise.

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 G.o.d, the greater the attraction between that soul and the Spirit of G.o.d, Surely it must be clear to anyone that the more saintly a man becomes, the greater his love for G.o.d, and the greater G.o.d'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 G.o.d by the measure of the mutual love and attraction between the soul and the Blessed Trinity.

Your masterful a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d would hold a higher place in heaven than those whose lives have been sinful, even though G.o.d, in His graciousness, has forgiven them their sins. But no one had shown how this might be so. Your a.n.a.logy, showing how the white light of the sun may be graded into the colours of the rainbow, ranging from red to violet, ill.u.s.trates wonderfully how Our Lord will grade His chosen servants on the Last Day, when the sinful souls of the d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d's blessing on you and your work, and for the fullness of G.o.d's grace during the coming Eastertide, I am, Most faithfully yours, William Sancroft By Divine Permission Lord Archbishop of York

BACKSTAGE LENSMAN.

By Randall Garrett

The Lensman series, comprising, as it does, some six hundred thousand words, is still, to my mind, the greatest s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p 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 ent.i.ties 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-d.a.m.ned Galactic Patrol have, as you know, been subjected to rigid statistical a.n.a.lysis. 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.