e had as good a chance
as everyone else.

Promotion tables for individual jobs were worked out on the basis of
longevity tables, so that by the time a man reached the automatic
retirement age he was automatically at the highest position he could
hold. No fuss, no bother, no trouble. Just keep your nose clean and
live as long as possible.

It eliminated struggle. It eliminated the petty jockeying for position
that undermined efficiency in an organization. Everybody deserves an
equal chance in life, so make sure everybody gets it.

Colonel Sebastian MacMaine had been born and reared in that society. He
could see many of its faults, but he didn't have the orientation to see
all of them. As he'd grown older, he'd seen that, regardless of the
position a man held according to seniority, a smart man could exercise
more power than those above him if he did it carefully.

A man is a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted
to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the
bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Only
rarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to rise above his
assigned position.

But a man who is forced to remain on the bottom step of a stationary
stairway is no more a slave than a man who is forced to remain on a
given step of an escalator, and no less so.

Slavery, however, has two advantages--one for the individual, and one
which, in the long run, can be good for the race. For the individual,
it offers security, and that is the goal which by far the greater
majority of mankind seeks.

The second advantage is more difficult to see. It operates only in
favor of the exceptional individual. There are always individuals who
aspire to greater heights than the one they occupy at any given moment,
but in a slave society, they are slapped back into place if they act
hastily. Just as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind can be
king if he taps the ground with a cane, so the gifted individual can
gain his ends in a slave society--provided he thinks out the
consequences of any act in advance.

The Law of Gravity is a universal edict which enslaves, in a sense,
every particle of matter in the cosmos. The man who attempts to defy
the "injustice" of that law by ignoring the consequences of its
enforcement will find himself punished rather severely. It may be
unjust that a bird can fly under its own muscle power, but a man who
tries to corre