[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
November 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _Any intolerable problem has a way out--the more impossible,
the likelier it is sometimes!_]
Lord Potts frowned at the rusty guard of his saber, and the metal
immediately became gold-plated. Potts reined his capricious black
stallion closer to the first sergeant.
"Report!" the first sergeant bellowed.
"Fourth Hussars, all present!"
"Eighth Hussars, all present!"
"Eleventh Hussars, all present!"
"Thirteenth Hussars, all present!"
"Seventeenth Lancers, all present!"
The first sergeant's arm flashed in a vibrating salute. "Sir," he said,
"the brigade is formed."
Potts concentrated on the sergeant; but, aside from blue eyes, a black
mustache, and luminous chevrons, the man's appearance remained vague.
His uniform had no definite color, except for moments when it blushed a
brilliant red, and his headgear expanded and contracted so rapidly that
Potts could not be certain whether he wore a shako or a tam.
"Take your post," Potts said. "Men!" he shouted. "We're going to charge
at those guns!"
"Oh, Oi say!" wailed a small private with scarcely any features but a
mouth. "Them Russians'll murder us!"
"Yours not to reason why," Potts said. "Draw sabers! Charge!"
The ground quaked under the beat of twenty-four hundred hoofs. As the
first puffs of smoke billowed from the entrenchments half a league away,
Potts remembered that he had forgotten to give orders to the lancers.
Should he tell them to couch lances, or lower lances, or aim lances,
or--
* * * * *
"P. T. boys, let's go. Out to the door," a bored voice called.
Potts opened his eyes. He sighed. Again he had failed. The dayroom had
hardly changed. The chairs were all pushed together in the center of the
floor, and two patients with brooms swept little ridges of dirt and
cigarette butts toward the door. Potts sat slouched in one of the chairs
and raised his feet as the sweepers passed.
"Orville Potts, out to the door," the bored voice said.
Potts gave Wilhart a killing look when the big attendant, immaculate in
white duck trousers and short-sleeved linen shirt, passed through to the
porch. Potts wondered why so many of the attendants resembled
clean-shaven gorillas.
He arose leisurely from the chair, shuffled around the sweepers, and
entered the hall. A pair of huge, gray, faded cotton pants draped his
spindling legs in wrinkled folds, and an equally faded khaki shirt hung
from his stooped shoulders. Potts had not combed his hair in three days.
He pushed the tangled brown mass out of his eyes and threaded between
the groups of men that jammed the hall, smoking and waiting to go to the
shoe shop, or the paint detail, or psychodrama, or merely waiting.
At the locked door to the stairs, Potts stopped and glared at the six
patients already assembled.
"Hello, Orville Potts," said another long-armed, barrel-chested
attendant. This one wore a black necktie, and, so far as Potts knew, had
no name but Joe. Potts ignored Joe.
The attendant pulled a ring of keys attached to a long heavy chain from
his pocket and unlocked the door, when Wilhart brought the rest of the
P. T. boys.
"Downstairs, when I call your name," Joe said, and read from the charts
attached to his clip-board.
When his name was called, Potts stepped through to the landing and
descended the top stairs. Joe locked the door.
Potts looked up at Danny Harris, who stood motionless on the landing.
While Joe weaved down the crowded steps, Wilhart took Harris by the arm
and pushed him.
"Let's go," he said. "Here, Orville Potts, take Danny Harris downstairs
with you."