In Hideous Strength Ransom's role is reversed. It is he, acting in effect as God's deputy, who inexorably imposes on the very reluctant Merlin the Divine mission of destroying the Satanic N.I.C.E., whose implementation would entail Merlin's own death. Life The permanent wound on his heel resulted from a physical battle with the demonically possessed Professor Weston in the deep caverns of Perelandra. It causes him continuing pain which he feels it is his duty to endure, refusing to relieve it either through medicine or through Merlin's magic. The wound may refer to Genesis 3:15, where God curses the Snake for his tempting of Eve and causing the Original Sin: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.(NIV)" The Biblical Snake is commonly considered in Christianity to have been a manifestation of Satan; so was the possessed Professor Weston. Thus, Weston could be considered an "offspring" of the Snake, and as such he did bite the heel of Ransom and got his own head crushed. This wound is also a possible reference to the unhealing wound of the Fisher King, the ailing Grail King of Arthurian legend, which was a major theme in some of Charles Williams' works, a significant influence to The Space Trilogy: in the third book Ransom has actually taken the name of "Fisher-King". At some time between the second and third book, Ransom's life was further transformed radically by becoming the secret Pendragon, the latest in an unbroken chain of secret inheritors of King Arthur who, it turns out, had been watching over Britain and helping their country in various crisis points in its history—a role which is crucially important to his relationship with the reawakened wizard Merlin. He establishes a kind of secret community at a big house in St. Anne's, which he heads and which is the polar opposite and center of opposition to the literally Satanic institute of N.I.C.E. which is threatening to take over the world. There, he is in regular contact with the descending planetary "gods" of the Graeco-Roman Pantheon (who are in fact not gods at all, but angels and faithful servants of the true, one and only God). The third book, unlike the earlier two, is not told through Ransom's own eyes. He has become too much of an august