tor among the
combat patrols, and we therefore have mutinies, disobedience of orders,
defections of every variety. That is a real situation, and it will
persist until we can induce the men to accept tactical leadership that
can cope with the enemy.

"Actually, it is not very remarkable that this situation developed.
Strategy is still a rational computable quantity, but the actual tactics
of fighting is something else entirely. The aliens have an intellectual
response that is in full truth alien to us. It simply cannot be
comprehended rationally by a human being, although they manage to guess
pretty well the responses of our own fighters. Naturally, the result has
been that in the past our losses were almost ninety per cent whenever a
patrol actually engaged in a firefight with the enemy.

"Fortunately, the aliens are much too far from their home to possess
anything like the number of personnel and other resources that we have.
Otherwise, they would have beaten us long ago. Completely wiped us out.
And all because an ordinary, intelligent human being cannot learn any
patterns by which the aliens operate, and by which he can fight them
successfully."

"I know that," the commander muttered. "I spent plenty of time out there
before I got tapped for this new branch of service." He rubbed the moist
palms of his hands together nervously.

"Certainly you did," the captain acknowledged absently. Then he
continued his explanation. "Fortunately, there was a small body of
information on extra-rational mental faculties that had been developed
over the past century, and as soon as we expanded it sufficiently, we
were able to form this new branch of service you now belong to. But
unfortunately, some idiot in the Information Service released a
popularization of the data on the new branch. That was ill-advised. The
veterans who had survived so far had their own way of accounting for
their survival, and that did not include what that silly description
alluded to as 'blind guessing' by commanders of 'exceptional psychic
gifts.'

"Like most popularizations, the description was grossly inaccurate, and
was promptly withdrawn; but the damage had already been done. The damage
was completed by another idiot who named the new branch the Psi Corps,
merely because the basic capacity for extra-rational mental faculties is
technically signified by the Greek letter 'psi.' The name was slightly
mispronounced by the men, and that automatically pr