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As to the title “His Universal Majesty,” that’s exactly what he was called. It is usually translated as “His Catholic Majesty,” but the word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal.” And, further on in the story, when the term “Universal Assembly” is used, it is a direct translation of the Greek term, Ekklesia Katholikos, and is actually a better translation than “Catholic Church,” since the English word church comes from the Greek kyriakon, meaning “the house of the Lord”–in other words, a church building, not the organization as a whole.

Toward the end of Chapter One, I wrote:

“Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible.”

I think you will admit that the alchemists never found a method of transmuting the elements–certainly none which was commercially feasible.

In Chapter Three, the statement that Pizarro left his home–Spain–with undermanned ships, and had to sneak off illegally before the King’s inspectors checked up on him, is historically accurate. And who can argue with the statement that “there wasn’t a scientist worthy of the name in the whole outfit”?

At the beginning of Chapter Four, you’ll find:

“Due to atmospheric disturbances, the ship’s landing was several hundred miles from the point the commander had originally picked …” and “… the ship simply wasn’t built for atmospheric navigation.”

The adverse winds which drove Pizarro’s ships off course were certainly “atmospheric disturbances,” and I defy anyone to prove that a Sixteenth Century Spanish galleon was built for atmospheric navigation.

And I insist that using the term “carrier” instead of “horse,” while misleading, is not inaccurate. However, I would like to know just what sort of picture the term conjured up in the reader’s mind. In Chapter Ten, in the battle scene, you’ll find the following:

“The combination [of attackers from both sides], plus the fact that the heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him [the commander]. He toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the carrier parted company.

“Without a human hand at its controls, the carrier automatically moved away from the mass of struggling fighters and came to a halt well away from the battle.”

To be perfectly honest, it’s somewhat of a strain on my mind to imagine anyone building a robot-controlled machine as good as all that, and then giving the drive such poor protection that he can fall off of it.

One of the great screams from my critics has been occasioned by the fact that I referred several times to the Spaniards as “Earthmen.” I can’t see why. In order not to confuse the reader, I invariably referred to them as the “invading Earthmen,” so as to make a clear distinction between them and the native Earthmen, or Incas, who were native to Peru. If this be treachery, then make the most of it.

In other words, I contend that I simply did what any other good detective story writer tries to do–mislead the reader without lying to him. Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” for instance, uses the device of telling the story from the murderer’s viewpoint, in the first person, without revealing that he is the murderer. Likewise, John Dickson Carr, in his “Nine Wrong Answers” finds himself forced to deny that he has lied to the reader, although he admits that one of his characters certainly lied. Both Carr and Christie told the absolute truth–within the framework of the story–and left it to the reader to delude himself.

It all depends on the viewpoint. The statement, “We all liked Father Goodheart very much” means one thing when said by a member of his old parish in the United States, which he left to become a missionary. It means something else again when uttered by a member of the tribe of cannibals which the good Father attempted unsuccessfully to convert.

Similarly, such terms as “the gulf between the worlds,” “the new world,” and “the known universe” have one meaning to a science-fictioneer, and another to a historian. Semantics, anyone?