there's no point in devising a strategy if the
battle is too far gone to use it by the time you've figured it out.

Then he went ahead and read the rest of the report. Earth had lost the
outpost. And, worse, MacMaine's strategy would have won the battle if
it had been used. He fed it through his small office computer to make
sure. The odds were good.

And that was the thing that made MacMaine hate Strategy Analysis. Too
often, he won; too often, Earth lost. A computer was fine for working
out the logical outcome of a battle if it was given the proper
strategy, but it couldn't devise anything new.

Colonel MacMaine had tried to get himself transferred to space duty,
but without success. The Commanding Staff didn't want him out there.

The trouble was that they didn't believe MacMaine actually devised his
strategy before he read the complete report. How could anyone out-think
a computer?

He'd offered to prove it. "Give me a problem," he'd told his immediate
superior, General Matsukuo. "Give me the Initial Contact information of
a battle I haven't seen before, and I'll show you."

And Matsukuo had said, testily: "Colonel, I will not permit a member of
my staff to make a fool of himself in front of the Commanding Staff.
Setting yourself up as someone superior to the Strategy Board is the
most antisocial type of egocentrism imaginable. You were given the same
education at the Academy as every other officer; what makes you think
you are better than they? As time goes on, your automatic promotions
will put you in a position to vote on such matters--provided you don't
prejudice the Promotion Board against you by antisocial behavior. I
hold you in the highest regard, colonel, and I will say nothing to the
Promotion Board about this, but if you persist I will have to do my
duty. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it. Is that clear?"

It was.

All MacMaine had to do was wait, and he'd automatically be promoted to
the Commanding Staff, where he would have an equal vote with the others
of his rank. One unit vote to begin with and an additional unit for
every year thereafter.

_It's a great system for running a peacetime social club, maybe_,
MacMaine thought, _but it's no way to run a fighting force_.

Maybe the Kerothi general was right. Maybe _homo sapiens_ just wasn't
a race of fighters.

They had been once. Mankind had fought its way to domination of Earth
by battling every other form of life on the planet, fr