Love Story
Astounding Science Fiction – August 1958
(1958)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by van Dongen

The hardboiled old military commander had no respect for this sloppy, sentimental stuff, love...he kept saying!

-

	General Romaine growled irefully, "The trouble with the fighting forces today is that they're no longer wholly in the hands of military leaders. They're bewitched, bothered and bewildered by vote-catching politicians, sentimental mammas, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiotherapists and a horde of other pulse-takers, muscle-pinchers and bump-feelers."

	"You may be right," agreed Harding, recognizing the other's need to blow off surplus steam.

	"I am right. A soldier isn't a soldier any more. Not like he was when I was young. He's something else now, a mess of repressions, inhibitions, complexes and all sorts of juvenile tantrums that once we cured quite effectively with a hearty kick in the pants."

	"You may be right," repeated Harding, automatically.

	"I am right," asserted Romaine. "Terra is rapidly going to the dogs. Some day we'll be taken over by a life form with more virility and plain horse sense. It will serve us as we deserve."

	"Oh, I don't know," Harding ventured. "The Pharaohs thought the world was tumbling headlong from bad to worse. They inscribed dire prophecies upon their temple walls. After me, the deluge. Gaze on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

	"Hell with the Pharaohs," snapped Romaine. "They've been dead ten thousand years. I'm talking about today, the here and now."

	"What's gone wrong?" invited Harding. "Anything I can do to help?"

	"No." Brushing aside the high stack of papers on his desk, Romaine scowled at the resulting space. "We've opened up a complete system in the region of Sirius. So we've got to establish ourselves there with minimum of delay. That means we must plant a permanent garrison upon the six worlds we've claimed. You'd think that would be easy, wouldn't you?"

	"I don't see why it should be difficult."

	"Twenty-five or thirty years ago it'd have been no trouble at all. Today things are different. We have progressed, see?" He let go a short, harsh laugh. "Progress, they call it."

	Harding offered no comment.

	"So I order the transfer of three regiments of the Centaurian Guard, eighteen thousand men in all. In days gone by they'd have jumped to action complete with ships, stores and all equipment. In jig time they'd have settled down to being the new Sirian Holding Force. But what happens now?"

	"You tell me."

-

	"There's a lot of bureaucratic delay while three thousand eight hundred forty-two men claim protection from the move on the grounds that they're married, have wives, families and homes rooted on Centauri. About eleven hundred more plead for elimination from the drafting-list because they're engaged and soon to be married. Politicians, psychiatrists, religious leaders, psychologists and other nonmilitary types uphold all these claims. Love, they say, is a biological necessity and the family is the foundation-stone of society."

	"Love is natural enough, isn't it?"

	"Natural for the landbound lugs," asserted Romaine, raising his voice. "Spacemen are different. Their only devotion is to the cosmos. They're a dedicated profession."

	"That's a mighty hard way of looking at it," Harding offered.

	"It's the proper way. The men of the Centaurian Guard signed on to serve Terra faithfully and well no matter where they may be sent. They signed with their eyes wide open, knowing what they were doing, knowing it meant personal sacrifice. I've no time for the whining lout who makes a legal contract and then tries to evade his responsibilities."

	"But surely we can dig up enough single, unattached men to serve as replacements?"

	"We can—after wasting valuable time. But that's not the point. The point is that the Centaurian Guard should obey orders promptly, without question. Once upon a time it would have done so. Today we get all this stuff about love and family obligations and biological necessities." He paused, spat out, "Love —it makes me sick."

	"The Terran Government encouraged marriage in the Centaurian sector," Harding pointed out. "You can't maintain permanent grip on a world by populating it solely with fighting men. You've also got to have women and children."

	"The problem could have been solved by boosting civilian emigration from Terra," Romaine retorted. "That would have left space-troopers free to do their proper job, untied, unhampered. From the military viewpoint a trooper burdened with a family is a gone goose. He's just no use as a fighting unit." He jerked an indicative thumb at the big stack of papers. "And there's the proof: letters giving the names of men who mustn't be shipped Siriusward. They're all unfit for drafting, being contaminated by love."

	"Well, I see what you mean," said Harding, "but I can't say I agree with you."

	"Why not?"

	"I suspect you might talk differently if you had been married yourself."

	"You do, do you? I've got news for you: I've had both the opportunity and the desire."

	"But did nothing about it?"

	"No, certainly not. Duty comes first. Love and space-service don't go together. They're completely incompatible. When a spaceman gives way to the pangs of love the rot has set in. Show me a trooper riddled with sloppy sentiment and I'll show you a guy who is no use on the star-trails."

	"That's a sweeping statement."

	"Love," declared Romaine, warming to his theme, "is not a word in the true spaceman's vocabulary. It belongs to a life he has repudiated, as if he were a monk. The fellow who thinks of it is endangering his own vow to serve. Maybe it's an old-fashioned viewpoint, but it's a good one."

	"So all your life you've kept love at a safe distance, eh?"

	"I have."

	"Every form of it?"

	"Every form no matter what."

	'Then," said Harding, "I'd like to see your reaction to this love letter." He flipped hurriedly through the pile at the side of the desk, extracted a missive, passed it to the other. Then he lay back and watched interestedly as Romaine frowned over it.

-
Sirian Force Assembly Center
Centauri
My General:

I don't suppose you remember me. Thirty-two years ago we enlisted together, you as an officer, I as a private, but there were a lot of us that day.

Since then I have seen the Centaurian Guard grow and develop from a small cluster of frontiersmen to a great military body of much pride and many battle honors.

It has been a wonderful privilege to serve in the Centaurian Guard. All my adult years have been given to it gladly, without stint. It has been my life and my only true love.

Now see the trap into which 1 have fallen. I am willing to go anywhere and because of that I have been transferred into something called the Sirian Holding Force.

General, they have taken away my helmet-badge, the silver horse of Centauri. 1 have never asked much of life ... only that I should be allowed to wear it to the end of my useful days ...

( Signed )
Rafael Amadeo. T/Sgt.
-

	"I think it's rubbish," declared Romaine, very loudly. "Utter balderdash!" He dumped the letter on the desk.

	The other shrugged, strolled toward the door.

	"Harding!"

	He halted. "Yes?"

	"Are you concealing the belief that I am a stinking liar?"

	Harding hesitated, said, "I know you are."

	"Dead right," said Romaine. He grabbed his desk-phone, dialed, said to someone, "1914778 T/Sgt. Rafael Amadeo will be retained in the Centaurian Guard as a permanent instructor. Request his commanding officer to report on his suitability for a commission." He planted the phone, glanced up, rasped, "Well, why are you looking at me like that?"

	"Love," informed Harding, "is a remarkable thing."

	Romaine bawled, "Get out of my sight!"

The End