IT TOOK HIM HALF AN hour to devise a completely wacky and unorthodox way of hitting the holes in the enemy advance. He checked the time carefully, because there’s no point in devising a strategy if the battle is too far gone to use it by the time you’ve figured it out.
Then he went ahead and read the rest of the report. Earth had lost the outpost. And, worse, MacMaine’s strategy would have won the battle if it had been used. He fed it through his small office computer to make sure. The odds were good.
And that was the thing that made MacMaine hate Strategy Analysis. Too often, he won; too often, Earth lost. A computer was fine for working out the logical outcome of a battle if it was given the proper strategy, but it couldn’t devise anything new.
Colonel MacMaine had tried to get himsel
