Last Resort

by Stephen Bartholomew

can't read the numbersany more I'll know my vision is blurring from the beginning of anoxia.I thought: When that happens I'll key in the transmitter and tap out,TELL SANDY GOOD-BY.

  It would be dramatic anyhow.

  A withered mummy in a flying tomb.

  * * * * *

  The receiver began clicking again. They're still worried about mymorale, I thought. I went over and pulled out the tape. It said:

  BRONSON HERE. SUGGEST YOU TRY LAST RESORT.

  Dr. Bronson was the project director. It was a moment before Irealized what he meant. When I did I hesitated for several minutes.Then I shrugged and tapped out, O.K.

  I knew what had been happening down there. They had fed all the data Icould give them through a computer, and the computer had said no dice.There was no solution to the problem, at least none that a computercould think of with the data available. There was still the LastResort.

  I wondered if cyanide might not be more pleasant. Well, the exectswould have scientific interest anyway. The Last Resort was still TopSecret. And highly experimental. It was a new drug with a name a footlong, called LRXD for short. It had come out of the old experimentswith lysergic acid and mescalin. I had never heard of its existenceuntil a few hours before lift-off from Lunar Base. Then Dr. Bronsonhad given me a single ampule of the stuff. He had held it up to thelight, looking through it. He said, "This is called LRXD. No one knowsexactly what it will do. The lab boys say the 'LR' stands for LastResort."

  What it was _supposed_ to do was increase mental efficiency in humanbeings. Sometimes it did. They had given it to one volunteer and thenshown him an equation which it had taken a computer ten minutes tosolve. He wrote down the answer at once, apparently having gonethrough the entire process in his head instantaneously.

  Dr. Bronson told me, "It isn't just a matter of I.Q. It increases thetotal level of consciousness. Ordinarily the human brain screens outthousands of irrelevant stimuli. You're not aware of your watchticking, or the fly on the wall, or your own body odor. You just don't_notice_ them. But under LRXD, the brain becomes aware of everythingsimultaneously. Nothing is screened out. Furthermore, the subject iscapable of correlating everything. The human brain becomes asefficient as a Mark 60 computer, with the advantage of imagination andintuition. We don't know how it works yet, or exactly what it does. Ihate to say this. But there's even some evidence that the drugincreases telepathic ability."

  But then again, three of the volunteers had gone insane after takingthe drug. Two had died. On some of the others there was no apparenteffect at all.

  "We don't even know whether the effects are permanent or temporary,"Bronson had added.

  So now I was supposed to take this Last Resort and then try to thinkof a way out of my predicament, with my I.Q. boosted up to a thousandor so. It made me think of my college days, when I had stayed up allnight on benzedrine, writing term papers. I remembered Bronson'sdescription of one of the volunteers who had gone insane, andshuddered. Well, I had nothing to lose.

  "It is what its name implies," Bronson had said. "To be used only inextreme emergency. Only when you have nothing to lose."

  I had put the ampule away in the medicine locker and deliberatelyforgotten about it. Now I got it out again and held it up to the lightas Bronson had done. Milky, white. I strapped myself to theacceleration couch, filled a syringe, and swabbed my arm. I looked atthe letter I had started and probably would never finish. I rammed theneedle in.

  * * * * *

  The hallucinations began within five minutes. This was normal, Bronsonhad said. I waited, gripping the armrests of the couch, hoping I wouldnot begin believing in what I saw.

  First there was the meter face directly in front of me. It wasblue-green. I had never really seen before what color it was. It waslike a round, bright flame. I stared at it, becoming hypnotized.Finally I couldn't stand it any more, I reached over and switched offthe panel lights. Then the meter face became the blackest darkness Ihad ever seen, it was no longer a flat disk, but the entrance to along, black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter the tunneland--Quickly I shifted my gaze. A gas tube rectifier caught myattention. This was like the meter face, only worse. A cloud ofintense blue, flickering, shimmering--As I stared at it the cloudseemed to be expanding, growing, forever flickering and shimmeringuntil it became vast, it filled the universe, pulsating with energy,it was a kind of blue I had never seen before.... I had never seencolor before. There was a red plastic safety guard over one of thetoggle switches. Suddenly it seemed alive, rather the _red_ was alive,the color was no longer part of the object, it was an entity initself, blazing like flame, liberated from matter, it was a livingdrop of blood, afire.

  I closed my eyes, trying to escape from color, but that was muchworse. The colors inside my head blazed out even brighter, moresavage.

  I turned my head, trying to find something in the cabin to look atthat was not bright blue or green or red. With horror I focused on thespacesuit locker. I had left the locker open, the suit hanging on itswire stretcher. I saw immediately that the spacesuit was alive. Itstood there motionless, returning my stare, I could not look away fromit. I could not move, with fear. Slowly, very slowly, the spacesuitraised an arm and pointed at me. I stared at its single, oval eye,recalling childhood nightmares. Then the suit came out of its lockerand began to advance toward me, still pointing its gauntlet at myface. It seemed to take hours to walk across the cabin toward me. Iheld my breath, waiting. I thought I would scream if it did not reachme, it was taking too long.

  Then it did reach me and, bending low above me, wrapped its metallicarms around my body. I turned my face from its mechanical, fierybreath. It began to crush me, I could not breathe, I felt my ribsbegin to bend, slowly splinter. My face was pressed against itsmetallic chest, it was a thin gray wall....

  Then there was nothing but the wall itself, dark, thin as a membrane,but impenetrably strong. I was pressing toward it, forcing my way,flattened against it, being crushed slowly between this thin, graymembrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back. I knew thatif the membrane did not give, if I did not break through at last, Iwould suffocate and die. In fact I was already dead, the idea came tome with a weight of horror, I twisted, lashing out in total panic.Then the thin gray wall split and gave way, and I was free.

  I was still strapped to my crash couch, regarding the instrument panelwith absolute calm. Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything.I took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated theirdata in my mind, without the help of the computer. I was aware ofevery sound, the faint hum of the gas tubes and transformers, the whirof the gyros, the reedy buzz of hydraulic actuators, the periodicclicking of the oxygen reclaim unit. I was aware of everything thatwas happening in the ship, as if it were my own body.

  My body. I knew that I would have to explore my new self beforeinvestigating the ship. With an effort of will I shut off my new senseimpressions, and--looked inside. I sensed the rhythmic muscular actionof my heart, the opening and closing of the valves. I felt the surgeof blood in all my vessels. I moved my hand to touch the bulkhead, andfound that I could count the number of microseconds it took for thenerve impulses to travel from my fingers to my brain. Time seemed tohave slowed down, it took an hour for the second hand on the panelclock to make one circuit.

  In retrospect I know that this condition of super-awareness must havelasted only for a few minutes. But it seemed then that I had all thetime in the world.

  I found that I no longer needed to think in words, or even symbols. Icould pose myself a problem in, say, four-dimensional vector analysisand see the solution immediately, like a flash of intuition. I hadattained total somatic consciousness; I was able to analyze the exactrelationship of the drug to the molecular structure of my ownprotoplasm.

  It was then I knew that, although I had recorded no information aboutMars that the Russians didn't already have, I was going to bring backhome a piece of candy much sweet
er.

  Wait, now, I told myself. Wait. You have a specific problem to solve.The problem being how to stop that leak in the hull long enough to gethome alive. It was a problem of basic survival. I was confident. Iknew that if any possible solution to my predicament existed I wouldfind it. I was my own data computer now, but with eyes and ears andimagination. I opened my senses again and concentrated on the flood ofinformation coming at me from the instrument panel. I found that I hadtotal recall, I could remember--simultaneously--every wiring diagramand blueprint of the ship, every screw and transistor and welded seam,that I had ever glanced at. I saw the entire ship as a single entity,a smoothly functioning organism. In a flash I saw a hundred ways ofimproving its design. But that would have to wait. For a moment Igathered all my psychic energy and concentrated on the single crucialproblem of stopping that leak.

  And I saw that there was no way to stop the leak. No logical way.

  *