Starship Troopers

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Superficially, our system is only slightly different; we have democracy unlimited by race, color, creed, birth, wealth, sex, or conviction, and anyone may win sovereign power by a usually short and not too arduous term of service—nothing more than a light workout to our cave-man ancestors. But that slight difference is one between a system that works, since it is constructed to match the facts, and one that is inherently unstable. Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility—we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life—and lose it, if need be—to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert. Yin and yang, perfect and equal.”

  The Major added, “Can anyone define why there has never been revolution against our system? Despite the fact that every government in history has had such? Despite the notorious fact that complaints are loud and unceasing?”

  One of the older cadets took a crack at it. “Sir, revolution is impossible.”

  “Yes. But why?”

  “Because revolution—armed uprising—requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die—or he’s just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble.”

  “Nicely put! Analogy is always suspect, but that one is close to the facts. Bring me a mathematical proof tomorrow. Time for one more question—you ask it and I’ll answer. Anyone?”

  “Uh, sir, why not go—well, go the limit? Require everyone to serve and let everybody vote?”

  “Young man, can you restore my eyesight?”

  “Sir? Why, no, sir!”

  “You would find it much easier than to instill moral virtue—social responsibility—into a person who doesn’t have it, doesn’t want it, and resents having the burden thrust on him. This is why we make it so hard to enroll, so easy to resign. Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination—devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues—which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out. Conscript armies have been tried in the past. Look up in the library the psychiatric report on brainwashed prisoners in the so-called ‘Korean War,’ circa 1950—the Mayor Report. Bring an analysis to class.” He touched his watch. “Dismissed.”

  Major Reid gave us a busy time.

  But it was interesting. I caught one of those master’s-thesis assignments he chucked around so casually; I had suggested that the Crusades were different from most wars. I got sawed off and handed this: Required: to prove that war and moral perfection derive from the same genetic inheritance. Briefly, thus: All wars arise from population pressure. (Yes, even the Crusades, though you have to dig into trade routes and birth rate and several other things to prove it. ) Morals—all correct moral rules—derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level—as in a father who dies to save his children. But since population pressure results from the process of surviving through others, then war, because it results from population pressure, derives from the same inherited instinct which produces all moral rules suitable for human beings.

  Check of proof: Is it possible to abolish war by relieving population pressure (and thus do away with the all-too-evident evils of war) through constructing a moral code under which population is limited to resources?

  Without debating the usefulness or morality of planned parenthood, it may be verified by observation that any breed which stops its own increase gets crowded out by breeds which expand. Some human populations did so, in Terran history, and other breeds moved in and engulfed them.

  Nevertheless, let’s assume that the human race manages to balance birth and death, just right to fit its own planets, and thereby becomes peaceful. What happens?

  Soon (about next Wednesday) the Bugs move in, kill off this breed which “ain’ta gonna study war no more” and the universe forgets us. Which still may happen. Either we spread and wipe out the Bugs, or they spread and wipe us out—because both races are tough and smart and want the same real estate.

  Do you know how fast population pressure could cause us to fill the entire universe shoulder to shoulder? The answer will astound you, just the flicker of an eye in terms of the age of our race.

  Try it—it’s a compound-interest expansion.

  But does Man have any “right” to spread through the universe?

  Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

  The universe will let us know—later—whether or not Man has any “right” to expand through it.

  In the meantime the M.I. will be in there, on the bounce and swinging, on the side of our own race.

  Toward the end each of us was shipped out to serve under an experienced combat commander. This was a semifinal examination, your ’board-ship instructor could decide that you didn’t have what it takes. You could demand a board but I never heard of anybody who did; they either came back with an upcheck—or we never saw them again.

  Some hadn’t failed; it was just that they were killed—because assignments were to ships about to go into action. We were required to keep kit bags packed—once at lunch, all the cadet officers of my company were tapped; they left without eating and I found myself cadet company commander.

  Like boot chevrons, this is an uncomfortable honor, but in less than two days my own call came.

  I bounced down to the Commandant’s office, kit bag over my shoulder and feeling grand. I was sick of late hours and burning eyes and never catching up, of looking stupid in class; a few weeks in the cheerful company of a combat team was just what Johnnie needed!

  I passed some new cadets, trotting to class in close formation, each with the grim look that every O.C.S. candidate gets when he realizes that possibly he made a mistake in bucking for officer, and I found myself singing. I shut up when I was within earshot of the office.

  Two others were there, Cadets Hassan and Byrd. Hassan the Assassin was the oldest man in our class and looked like something a fisherman had let out of a bottle, while Birdie wasn’t much bigger than a sparrow and about as intimidating.

  We were ushered into the Holy of Holies. The Commandant was in his wheel chair—we never saw him out of it except Saturday inspection and parade, I guess walking hurt. But that didn’t mean you didn’t see him—you could be working a prob at the board, turn around and find that wheel chair behind you, and Colonel Nielssen reading your mistakes.

  He never interrupted—there was a standing order not to shout “Attention!” But it’s disconcerting. There seemed to be about six of him.

  The Commandant had a permanent rank of fleet general (yes, that Nielssen); his rank as colonel was temporary, pending second retirement, to permit him to be Commandant. I once questioned a paymaster about this and confirmed what the regulations seemed to say: The Commandant got only the pay of a colonel—but would revert to the pay of a fleet general on the day he decided to retire again.

  Well, as Ace says, it takes all sorts—I can’t imagine choosing half pay for the privilege of riding herd on cadets.

  Colonel Nielssen looked up and said, “Morning, gentlemen. Make yourselves comfortable.” I sat down but wasn’t comfortable. He glided over to a coffee machine, drew four cups, and Hassan helped him deal them out. I didn’t want coffee but a cadet doesn’t refuse the Commandant’s hospitality.

  He took a sip. “I have your orders, gentlemen,” he announced, “and your temporary commissions.” He went on, “But I want to be sure you understand your status.”

  We had already been lectured about
this. We were going to be officers just enough for instruction and testing—“supernumerary, probationary, and temporary.” Very junior, quite superfluous, on good behavior, and extremely temporary; we would revert to cadet when we got back and could be busted at any time by the officers examining us.

  We would be “temporary third lieutenants”—a rank as necessary as feet on a fish, wedged into the hairline between fleet sergeants and real officers. It is as low as you can get and still be called an “officer.” If anybody ever saluted a third lieutenant, the light must have been bad.

  “Your commission reads ‘third lieutenant,’” he went on, “but your pay stays the same, you continue to be addressed as ‘Mister,’ the only change in uniform is a shoulder pip even smaller than cadet insignia. You continue under instruction since it has not yet been settled that you are fit to be officers.” The Colonel smiled. “So why call you a ‘third lieutenant’?”

  I had wondered about that. Why this whoopty-do of “commissions” that weren’t real commissions?

  Of course I knew the textbook answer.

  “Mr. Byrd?” the Commandant said.

  “Uh…to place us in the line of command, sir.”

  “Exactly!” Colonel glided to a T.O. on one wall. It was the usual pyramid, with chain of command defined all the way down. “Look at this—” He pointed to a box connected to his own by a horizontal line; it read: ASSISTANT TO COMMANDANT (Miss Kendrick).

  “Gentlemen,” he went on, “I would have trouble running this place without Miss Kendrick. Her head is a rapid-access file to everything that happens around here.” He touched a control on his chair and spoke to the air. “Miss Kendrick, what mark did Cadet Byrd receive in military law last term?”

  Her answer came back at once: “Ninety-three per cent, Commandant.”

  “Thank you.” He continued, “You see? I sign anything if Miss Kendrick has initialed it. I would hate to have an investigating committee find out how often she signs my name and I don’t even see it. Tell me, Mr. Byrd…if I drop dead, does Miss Kendrick carry on to keep things moving?”

  “Why, uh—” Birdie looked puzzled. “I suppose, with routine matters, she would do what was necess—”

  “She wouldn’t do a blessed thing!” the Colonel thundered. “Until Colonel Chauncey told her what to do—his way. She is a very smart woman and understands what you apparently do not, namely, that she is not in the line of command and has no authority.”

  He went on, “‘Line of command’ isn’t just a phrase; it’s as real as a slap in the face. If I ordered you to combat as a cadet the most you could do would be to pass along somebody else’s orders. If your platoon leader bought out and you then gave an order to a private—a good order, sensible and wise—you would be wrong and he would be just as wrong if he obeyed it. Because a cadet cannot be in the line of command. A cadet has no military existence, no rank, and is not a soldier. He is a student who will become a soldier—either an officer, or at his former rank. While he is under Army discipline, he is not in the Army. That is why—”

  A zero. A nought with no rim. If a cadet wasn’t even in the Army—“Colonel!”

  “Eh? Speak up, young man. Mr. Rico.”

  I had startled myself but I had to say it. “But…if we aren’t in the Army…then we aren’t M.I. Sir?”

  He blinked at me. “This worries you?”

  “I, uh, don’t believe I like it much, sir.” I didn’t like it at all. I felt naked.

  “I see.” He didn’t seem displeased. “You let me worry about the space-lawyer aspects of it, son.”

  “But—”

  “That’s an order. You are technically not an M.I. But the M.I. hasn’t forgotten you; the M.I. never forgets its own no matter where they are. If you are struck dead this instant, you will be cremated as Second Lieutenant Juan Rico, Mobile Infantry, of—” Colonel Nielssen stopped. “Miss Kendrick, what was Mr. Rico’s ship?”

  “The Rodger Young.”

  “Thank you.” He added, “—in and of TFCT Rodger Young, assigned to mobile combat team Second Platoon of George Company, Third Regiment, First Division, M.I.—the ‘Roughnecks,’” he recited with relish, not consulting anything once he had been reminded of my ship. “A good outfit, Mr. Rico—proud and nasty. Your Final Orders go back to them for Taps and that’s the way your name would read in Memorial Hall. That’s why we always commission a dead cadet, son—so we can send him home to his mates.”

  I felt a surge of relief and homesickness and missed a few words. “…lip buttoned while I talk, we’ll have you back in the M.I. where you belong. You must be temporary officers for your ’prentice cruise because there is no room for deadheads in a combat drop. You’ll fight—and take orders—and give orders. Legal orders, because you will hold rank and be ordered to serve in that team; that makes any order you give in carrying out your assigned duties as binding as one signed by the C-in-C.

  “Even more,” the Commandant went on, “once you are in line of command, you must be ready instantly to assume higher command. If you are in a one-platoon team—quite likely in the present state of the war—and you are assistant platoon leader when your platoon leader buys it…then…you…are…It!”

  He shook his head. “Not ‘acting platoon leader.’ Not a cadet leading a drill. Not a ‘junior officer under instruction.’ Suddenly you are the Old Man, the Boss, Commanding Officer Present—and you discover with a sickening shock that fellow human beings are depending on you alone to tell them what to do, how to fight, how to complete the mission and get out alive. They wait for the sure voice of command—while seconds trickle away—and it’s up to you to be that voice, make decisions, give the right orders…and not only the right ones but in a calm, unworried tone. Because it’s a cinch, gentlemen, that your team is in trouble—bad trouble!—and a strange voice with panic in it can turn the best combat team in the Galaxy into a leaderless, lawless, fear-crazed mob.

  “The whole merciless load will land without warning. You must act at once and you’ll have only God over you. Don’t expect Him to fill in tactical details; that’s your job. He’ll be doing all that a soldier has a right to expect if He helps you keep the panic you are sure to feel out of your voice.”

  The Colonel paused. I was sobered and Birdie was looking terribly serious and awfully young and Hassan was scowling. I wished that I were back in the drop room of the Rog, with not too many chevrons and an after-chow bull session in full swing. There was a lot to be said for the job of assistant section leader—when you come right to it, it’s a lot easier to die than it is to use your head.

  The Commandant continued: “That’s the Moment of Truth, gentlemen. Regrettably there is no method known to military science to tell a real officer from a glib imitation with pips on his shoulders, other than through ordeal by fire. Real ones come through—or die gallantly; imitations crack up.

  “Sometimes, in cracking up, the misfits die. But the tragedy lies in the loss of others…good men, sergeants and corporals and privates, whose only lack is fatal bad fortune in finding themselves under the command of an incompetent.

  “We try to avoid this. First is our unbreakable rule that every candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops. No other army in history has stuck to this rule, although some came close. Most great military schools of the past—Saint Cyr, West Point, Sandhurst, Colorado Springs—didn’t even pretend to follow it; they accepted civilian boys, trained them, commissioned them, sent them out with no battle experience to command men…and sometimes discovered too late that this smart young ‘officer’ was a fool, a poltroon, or a hysteric.

  “At least we have no misfits of those sorts. We know you are good soldiers—brave and skilled, proved in battle—else you would not be here. We know that your intelligence and education meet acceptable minimums. With this to start on, we eliminate as many as possible of the not-quite-competent—get them quickly back in ranks before we spoil good cap troopers by forcing them beyond th
eir abilities. The course is very hard—because what will be expected of you later is still harder.

  “In time we have a small group whose chances look fairly good. The major criterion left untested is one we cannot test here; that undefinable something which is the difference between a leader in battle…and one who merely has the earmarks but not the vocation. So we field-test for it.

  “Gentlemen!—you have reached that point. Are you ready to take the oath?”

  There was an instant of silence, then Hassan the Assassin answered firmly, “Yes, Colonel,” and Birdie and I echoed.

  The Colonel frowned. “I have been telling you how wonderful you are—physically perfect, mentally alert, trained, disciplined, blooded. The very model of the smart young officer—” He snorted. “Nonsense! You may become officers someday. I hope so…we not only hate to waste money and time and effort, but also, and much more important, I shiver in my boots every time I send one of you half-baked not-quite-officers up to the Fleet, knowing what a Frankensteinian monster I may be turning loose on a good combat team. If you understood what you are up against, you wouldn’t be so all-fired ready to take the oath the second the question is put to you. You may turn it down and force me to let you go back to your permanent ranks. But you don’t know.