"Because it's too easy for you-so easy that you would fail."
"Huh?"
"Don't say "huh." The spread in I.Q. between leader and follower should not be more than thirty points. You are considerably more than thirty points ahead of those old sergeants-don't get me wrong; they are fine men. But your mind doesn't work like theirs." Wong went on, "Have you ever wondered why the Patrol consists of nothing but officers-and student officers, cadets?"
"Mmm, no, sir."
"Naturally you wouldn't. We never wonder at what we grow up with. Strictly speaking, the Patrol is not a military organization at all."
"Sir?"
"I know, I know-you are trained to use weapons, you are under orders, you wear a uniform. But your purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too dangerous to entrust to military men.
"With the development last century of mass-destruction weapons, warfare became all offense and no defense, speaking broadly. A nation could launch a horrific attack but it could not even protect its own rocket bases. Then space travel came along.
"The spaceship is the perfect answer in a military sense to the atom bomb, and to germ warfare and weather warfare. It can deliver an attack that can't be stopped-and it is utterly impossible to attack that spaceship from the surface of a planet."
Matt nodded. "The gravity gauge."