Starship Troopers Read Online Free PDF

peaceful and happy and we enjoy good enough relations with other planets. So what is this so called ‘Federal Service’? Parasitism, pure and simple. A functionless organ, utterly obsolete, living on the taxpayers. A decidedly expensive way for inferior people who otherwise would be unemployed to live at public expense for a term of years, then give themselves airs for the rest of their lives. Is that what you want to do?”
    “Carl isn’t inferior!”
    “Sorry. No, he’s a fine boy . . . but misguided.” He frowned, and then smiled. “Son, I had intended to keep something as a surprise for you -- a graduation present. But I’m going to tell you now so that you can put this nonsense out of your mind more easily. Not that I am afraid of what you might do; I have confidence in your basic good sense, even at your tender years. But you are troubled. I know—and this will clear it away. Can you guess what it is?”
    “Uh, no.”
    He grinned. “A vacation trip to Mars.”
    I must have looked stunned. “Golly, Father, I had no idea—“
    “I meant to surprise you and I see I did. I know how you kids feel about travel, though it beats me what anyone sees in it after the first time out. But this is a good time for you to do it -- by yourself; did I mention that? -- and get it out of your system . . . because you’ll be hard-pressed to get in even a week on Luna once you take up your responsibilities.” He picked up his paper. “No, don’t thank me. Just run along and let me finish my paper -- I’ve got some gentlemen coming in this evening, shortly. Business.”
    I ran along. I guess he thought that settled it . . . and I suppose I did, too. Mars! And on my own! But I didn’t tell Carl about it; I had a sneaking suspicion that he would regard it as a bribe. Well, maybe it was. Instead I simply told him that my father and I seemed to have different ideas about it.
    “Yeah,” he answered, “so does mine. But it’s my life.”
    I thought about it during the last session of our class in History and
    Moral Philosophy. H. & M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to take it but nobody had to pass it -- and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a question. Then the argument would start.
    But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”
    “So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”
    They had tangled before -- since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”
    “You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral— doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
    He sighed. “Another year, another class -- and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.” Suddenly he pointed his