The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Thought For Tomorrow, by Robert E. Gilbert

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Title: A Thought For Tomorrow

Author: Robert E. Gilbert

Illustrator: David Stone

Release Date: May 3, 2010 [EBook #32238]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A Thought for Tomorrow

By ROBERT E. GILBERT

Illustrated by DAVID STONE

[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