Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein Page A

stepped forward with the whip. The Sergeant of the Guard made the count.
    It’s a slow count, five seconds between each one and it seems much longer. Ted didn’t let out a peep until the third, then he sobbed.
    The next thing I knew I was staring up at Corporal Bronski. He was slapping me and looking intently at me. He stopped and asked, “Okay now? All right, back in ranks. On the bounce; we’re about to pass in review.” We did so and marched back to our company areas. I didn’t eat much dinner but neither did a lot of them.
    Nobody said a word to me about fainting. I found out later that I wasn’t the only one—a couple of dozen of us had passed out.

CHAPTER 6
    What we obtain too cheap, we
    esteem too lightly . . . it would be
    strange indeed if so celestial an
    article as FREEDOM should not be
    highly rated.
    Thomas Paine

    It was the night after Hendrick was kicked out that I reached my lowest slump at Camp Currie. I couldn’t sleep—and you have to have been through boot camp to understand just how far down a recruit has to sink before that can happen. But I hadn’t had any real exercise all day so I wasn’t physically tired, and my shoulder still hurt even though I had been marked “duty,” and I had that letter from my mother preying on my mind, and every time I closed my eyes I would hear that crack! and see Ted slump against the whipping post.
    I wasn’t fretted about losing my boot chevrons. That no longer mattered at all because I was ready to resign, determined to. If it hadn’t been the middle of the night and no pen and paper handy, I would have done so right then.
    Ted had made a bad mistake, one that lasted all of half a second. And it really had been just a mistake, too, because, while he hated the outfit (who liked it?), he had been trying to sweat it out and win his franchise; he meant to go into politics—he talked a lot about how, when he got his citizenship, “There will be some changes made—you wait and see.”
    Well, he would never be in public office now; he had taken his finger off his number for a single instant and he was through.
    If it could happen to him, it could happen to me. Suppose I slipped? Next day or next week? Not even allowed to resign . . . but drummed out with my back striped.
    Time to admit that I was wrong and Father was right, time to put in that little piece of paper and slink home and tell Father that I was ready to go to Harvard and then go to work in the business -- if he would still let me. Time to see Sergeant Zim, first thing in the morning, and tell him that I had had it. But not until morning, because you don’t wake Sergeant Zim except for something you’re certain that he will class as an emergency -- believe me, you don’t! Not Sergeant Zim.
    Sergeant Zim—
    He worried me as much as Ted’s case did. After the court-martial was over and Ted had been taken away, he stayed behind and said to Captain Frankel, “May I speak with the Battalion Commander, sir?”
    “Certainly. I was intending to ask you to stay behind for a word. Sit down.”
    Zim flicked his eyes my way and the Captain looked at me and I didn’t have to be told to get out; I faded. There was nobody in the outer office, just a couple of civilian clerks. I didn’t dare go outside because the Captain might want me; I found a chair back of a row of files and sat down.
    I could hear them talking, through the partition I had my head against.
    BHQ was a building rather than a tent, since it housed permanent communication and recording equipment, but it was a “minimum field building,” a shack; the inner partitions weren’t much. I doubt if the civilians could hear as they each were wearing transcriber phones and were bent over typers—besides, they didn’t matter. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Uh, well, maybe I did.
    Zim said: “Sir, I request transfer to a combat team.”
    Frankel answered: “I can’t hear you, Charlie. My tin ear is bothering me again.”
    Zim: “I’m