August 13, 2025 • 21 mins
Immerse yourself in captivating science fiction short stories, delivered daily! Explore futuristic worlds, time travel, alien encounters, and mind-bending adventures. Perfect for sci-fi lovers looking for a quick and engaging listen each day. 🎧 Go to www.solgoodmedia.com to access ad-free listening, exclusive content, and more!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last resort by Stephen Bartholomew. I inflated a rubber balloon
and set it a drift. The idea was that in
free fall, the balloon would drift slowly in the direction
of the league. This was the first thing I did
after I had discovered the trouble. I mean, it was
the first action I took. I'd been thinking about it
(00:20):
for some time. I'd been thinking about what a great
distance it was from Pacific Grove, California, to Mars, and
how I would never breathe the odor of eucalyptus again.
I watched the white balloon floating in the middle of
the cabin. Light reflected from a spot on its surface,
and it made me think of a moon globe I
used to keep on my desk when I was in college.
(00:42):
I had turned off the fan and tried to hold
my breath to keep from disturbing the air. The balloon
drifted slowly a few feet aft, wobbled there for a
minute or two, and then began to drift forward again.
I decided to indulge in the rare luxury of a cigarette.
I lighted one, reached over and popped the blue The
piece of rubber hung in the air limp and twisted.
(01:04):
I had not expected that trick to work. The rate
of leakage was very low. It had been some thirty
six hours since I first noticed it. This was one
of those things, of course, that were not supposed to
happen in space, and often did. Every precaution had been
taken against it. The outer shell of the ship was
tough enough to stop medium velocity meteoroids, and inside the
(01:27):
shell was a self sealing gou like a tubulus tire.
Evidently the goo hadn't worked. Something had gotten through the
hole and made a pinhole leak. In fact, the hole
was so small that it had taken me nearly thirty
five hours to compute the rate of leakage exactly, but
it was big enough it would do. I had held
the clipboard in my hand for a long time, rechecking
(01:50):
the little black numbers on it again and again. Then
I had warmed up to the transmitter raised lunar base
and reported what had happened. I had not reported before
because I had not even been sure I had a leak.
There's a normal seepage rate. Of course, a certain amount
of air will seep right through the molecular structure of
the hull. That's what the reserve tanks are for. But
(02:11):
I had been out a long time and there wasn't
enough air left in the tanks to compensate for this.
Not quite, so I reported to Base. The operator on
the other end told me to stand by for instructions.
That was for my morale. Then I spent some time
thinking about Pacific growth and the white house there and
the stand of eucalyptus. Then I blew up the balloon
(02:34):
and popped it. As I watched the piece of rubber
hanging motionless in the air, the receiver began clicking. I
waited till it stopped, then pulled the tape out and
read it. It said, have you inspected hull. I switched
on the send key and tapped out. Just going to
stand by, I opened the locker and broke out my spacesuit.
(02:56):
This was the first time I had put it on
since liftoff without help. It took me nearly half an
hour to get it on then check it out. I
always did hate wearing a spacesuit. It's like a straight jacket.
In theory. I could have kept it on plugged directly
into the ship's oxygen supply and ridden all the way
back to Earth that way. The trouble with that idea
(03:17):
was that the suit wasn't designed for it. You couldn't
eat or drink through the helmet, and no one had
ever thought up a satisfactory method of removing body wastes.
That would be the worst way to go, I thought,
poisoned slowly in my own juices. When I finally did
get the thing on, I went out the airlock. If
the leak had been bad enough, I would have been
(03:37):
able to see the air spurting out through the hole
a miniature geyser. But I found no more than what
I expected. I crawled around the entire circumference of the
hull and found only a thin, silvery haze. The airs
that leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull,
held there by the faint gravity of the ship's masts.
Dust motes in the air reflecting sunlight were enough to
(04:00):
hide any microscopic geyserspout. Before I re entered the airlock,
I looked out into space in the direction away from
the sun. Out there, trailing far away, the air had
formed a silver tail. I saw it faintly shimmering in
the night I was going to make a good comment.
I got back inside and stripped off the suit. Then
(04:22):
I raised lunar base again and tapped out have inspected
hull results negative. A few minutes later the reply came back.
Stand by for instructions for my morale. I lighted another
cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked around
the interior of my expensive ten foot coffin. I figured
(04:44):
I would last for about another seventy five hours. Of course,
I could take cyanide and get it over with, but
this wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Within
seventy five hours, the last of my reserve tanks would
be empty. Then I would just wait for the rest
of the air to leak out of the cabin. First,
I would lose consciousness with an oxia. I'd hardly even notice. Then,
(05:05):
as the pressure got lower, my body fluids would begin
to evaporate. Once I had seen a mummy in a museum,
it was some old prospector who had been lying in
the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I
was going to look like him, dried up yellow, my
teeth protruding in a grin perfectly preserved with no pilot,
the ship would go into a commentary orbit around the Sun.
(05:28):
Maybe in a hundred years or so someone would come
back and take me back to a museum on Earth.
I began to think about my wife, Sandy. I got
out a piece of paper and wrote a long letter
to her. I thought, maybe she'll even get to read
it someday. Writing gave me something to do. I wrote
about the time we'd gone up to the Sierras together
and slept in a sleeping bag at the edge of
(05:50):
a four thousand foot cliff, and about the times we
had gone out in our cabin cruiser, the time we
both nearly drowned, and I asked about our daughter, when
who would be four? Now? I remembered part of an
old poem Christ, that my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again. Writing was all right
(06:11):
until I realized that I had begun feeling sorry for myself,
and I was letting it get into the letter. I
put the letter aside and wondered what else I would
do to kill time. I got out some of the
film plates I'd made of the surface of Mars. Of
course I had transmitted them all to Lunar Base, but
it would have been nice if I could have delivered
the original plates. I studied them for a while, but
(06:33):
didn't find anything I hadn't seen before. Well, I'd done
my job. At least I had orbited Mars. I had
the glory of being the first American to do that.
I had dropped the instrument package and transmitted all the
data I could get back to Lunar. My only failure
would be not bringing back the ship. I remember a
conversation i'd had at the last International Space Symposium in Geneva.
(06:57):
A buddy of mine and I had taken out one
of the Oviate cosmonauts and got him drunk. He was
a dignified sort of drunk, a party member who told long,
pointless Russian jokes with an unwavering serious expression. He sat
sideways on the barstool, holding his glass of vodka between
two fingers and staring straight ahead. He said one thing
that I have never forgotten. Do you know why we
(07:21):
are ahead of you in space? He had said, staring
with dignity at a tall blonde at a nearby table.
It is because of your bourgeois sentimentality. Do not like
risking men? You build a skyscraper in New York to
house some insurance company. Two or three construction workers are
maamed or killed on the job. One of your coal
mine collapses in fifty menut are trapped. Yet look, you're
(07:42):
afraid of losing men in space because of what the
people at home might think. So you are too conservative.
You avoid risks. So we are ahead of you. We
send out a ship with three men aboard when you
would risk only one. We are not sentimental, that is all.
That is why we are ahead of you. He ordered
another drink and stared into the mirror for several minutes,
(08:03):
letting us think that over. Then he went on, Yes,
you are less scientific than we, less logical. Yet that
is your advantage too. You are more alert to the unprecedented,
the unpredictable. You are always ready for the wild chance,
the impossible possibility. You expect the unexpected, You hope for
(08:23):
the hopeless. Being sentimental, you have imagination. His words came
back to me, the unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility.
That was all that could save me now. But what
maybe another media would come along and plug the hole
the first had made. No, I had to think my
way out of this one. But what if there was
(08:44):
no way out. I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead,
turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. Picked out
the smallest meter face. I could just read the numbers
on it, I told myself. When I can't read the
numbers anymore, I'll know my vision is boring from the
beginning of anoxia, I thought. When that happened, I'll key
in the transmitter and tap out. Tell Sandy goodbye. It
(09:08):
would be dramatic. Anyhow, a withered mummy and a flying tomb.
The receiver began clicking again. They're still worried about my morale,
I thought. I went over and pulled out the tape.
It said, Bronson, here, suggest you try a last resort.
Doctor Bronson was the project director. It was the moment
(09:28):
before I realized what he meant. When I did, I
hesitated for several minutes, then shrugged and tapped out. Okay,
I knew what had been happening down there. They had
fed all the data I could give them through a computer,
and the computer had said no, dice. There was no
solution to the problem, at least none that a computer
could think of. With the data available, there was still
(09:49):
the last resort, I wondered if cyanide might not be
more pleasant. Well, the execs would have scientific interest anyway.
The last resort was still top secret and highly experimental.
It was a new drug with a name a foot long,
called l r XD for short. It had come out
of the old experiments with lysergic acid and mescaline. I
(10:11):
had never heard of its existence until a few hours
before liftoff from Lunar Base. Then, doctor Bronson had given
me a single ampuel of the stuff. He had held
it up to the light looking through it. He said,
this is called LRXD. No one knows exactly what it
will do. The lab boys say the lr stands for
Last Resort. What it was supposed to do was to
(10:33):
increase mental efficiency in human beings. Sometimes it did. They'd
given it to one volunteer and then shown him equation
which had taken a computer ten minutes to solve. He
wrote down the answer at once, apparently having gone through
the entire process in his head instantaneously. Doctor Bronson told
me it isn't just a matter of IQ. It increases
the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily, the human brain screens
(10:57):
out thousands of irrelevant stimuli you're not aware of your
watch ticking, 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 everything simultaneously, nothing is screened out. Furthermore,
the subject is capable of correlating everything. The human brain
becomes as efficient as a Mark sixty computer with the
(11:19):
advantage of imagination and intuition. We don't know how it
works yet or exactly what it does. I hate to
say this, but there's even some evidence that the drug
increases telepathic ability. But then again, three of the volunteers
had gone insane after taking the drug, two had died.
On some of the others there was no apparent effect
at all. We don't even know whether the effects are
(11:41):
permanent or temporary. Bronson added, So now I was supposed
to take this last resort and then try to think
of a way out of my predicament. With my IQ
boosted up to a thousand or so. It made me
think of my college days when I stayed up all
night on Benza dream writing turnpapers. I remembered Bronson's description
of one of the volunteers had gone insane, and shudder, Well,
(12:02):
I had nothing to lose. It is what the name implies.
Bronson had said, to be used only in extreme emergency,
only when you have nothing to lose. I had put
the ampul away in the medicine locker and deliberately forgotten
about it. Now I had got it out again and
held it up to the light as Bronson had done
milky white. I strapped myself to the acceleration couch, filled
(12:25):
a syringe and swabbed my arm. I looked at the
letter I had started and probably would never finish. I
ran the needle in. The hallucinations began within five minutes.
This was normal, Bronson had said. I waited, gripping the
arm rest of the couch, hoping I would not begin
believing in what I saw. First, there was the meter
face directly in front of me. It was blue green.
(12:48):
I had never really seen before what color it was.
It was like a round, bright flame. I stared at it,
becoming hypnotized. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I reached
over and switched off the panelights. Then the meter face
became the blackest darkness I had ever seen. It was
no longer a flat disc, but the entrance to a
long black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter
(13:12):
the tunnel, and I quickly shifted my gaze. A gas
tube rectifier caught my attention. This was like the meter face,
only worse. A cloud of intense blue, flickering, shimmering. They
stared at it. The cloud seemed to be expanding, growing forever,
flickering and shimmering until it became vast. It filled the universe,
pulsating with energy. It was a kind of blue I
(13:35):
had never seen before. I had never seen the color before.
There was a red plastic safety guard over one of
the toggle switches. Suddenly it seemed alive. Rather, the red
was alive. The color was no longer part of the object.
It was an entity in itself, blazing like flame, liberated
from matter. It was a living drop of blood afire.
(13:56):
I closed my eyes, trying to escape from color, but
that was much worse. The colors inside my head blazed
out even brighter, more savage. I turned my head, trying
to find something in the cabin to look at that
was not bright blue or green or red. With horror,
I focused on the spacesuit locker. I'd left the locker open,
the suit hanging on its wire stretcher. I saw immediately
(14:18):
that the spacesuit was alive. It stood there, motionless, returning
my stare. I could not look away from it. I
could not move with fear. Slowly, very slowly, the spacesuit
raised an arm and pointed at me. I stared at
its single oval eye, recalling childhood nightmares. Then the suit
came out of its locker and began to advance towards me,
(14:38):
still pointing its scauntlet at my face. It seemed to
take hours to walk across the cabin toward me. I
held my breath waiting. I thought I would scream if
it did not reach me. It was taking too long.
Then it did reach me, and, bending low above me,
wrapped its metallic arms around my body. I turned my
face from its mechanical fiery breath began to crush me.
(15:01):
I could not breathe. I felt my ris began to
bend slowly splinter. My face was pressed against its metallic 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,
flattening against it. Being crushed slowly between its thin gray
(15:22):
membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back.
I knew that if the membrane did not give, I
would break through at last, I would suffocate and die.
In fact, I was already dead. The idea came to
me 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
(15:45):
into my crash couch, regarding the instrument panel with absolute calm.
Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything. I
took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated their data
in my mind without help of the computer. I was
aware of every the faint hum of the gas tubes
and transformers, the whir of the gyros, the reedy buzz
(16:05):
of hydraulic actuators, the periodic clicking of the oxygen reclaim unit.
I was aware of everything that was happening in the
ship as if it were my own body, my body.
I knew that I would have to explore my new
self before investigating the ship. With an effort of will,
I will shut off my new sense impressions and looked inside.
(16:27):
I sensed the rhythmic muscular action of my heart, the
opening and closing of the valve. I felt the surge
of blood in all my vessels. I moved my hand
to touch the bulkhead and found that I could count
the number of microseconds it took for the nerve impulses
to travel from my fingers to my brain. Time seemed
to have slowed down. It took an hour for the
second hand on the panel clock to make one circuit.
(16:49):
In retrospect, I know that this condition of super awareness
must have lasted only for a few minutes, but it
seemed then that I had all the time in the world.
I found that I no longer needed to think in
works or even symbols. I could pose myself a problem
and save four dimensional vector analysis and see the solution immediately,
like a flash of intuition. Had attained some total somatic consciousness,
(17:12):
I was able to analyze the exact relationship of the
drug to the molecular structure of my own protoplasm. It
was then I knew that although I had recorded no
information about Mars that the Russians didn't already have, I
was going to bring back home a piece of candy
much sweeter. Wait now, I told myself, Wait, if you
have a specific problem to solve, the problem being how
(17:34):
to stop that leak in the hall long enough to
get home alive. It was a problem of basic survival.
I was confident. I knew that if any possible solution
in my predicament existed, I would find it. I was
my own data computer now, but with eyes and ears
and imagination. I opened my senses again and concentrated on
the flood of information coming at me from the instrument panel.
(17:56):
I found that I had total recall. I could remember
simultaneous every wiring diagram and blueprint of the ship, every
screw and transistor and welded scene that I had ever
glanced at. I saw the entire ship as a single entity,
a smoothly functioning organism. In a flash, I saw hundreds
of ways to improving its design, but that would have
(18:16):
to wait for a moment. I gathered all my psychic
energy and concentrated on the single crucial problem of stopping
that leak, and I saw there was no way to
stop the leak, no logical way back at lunar Base.
I tried to explain to Bronze and what had happened,
But I found that it was impossible to explain in words.
(18:37):
In fact, I no longer entirely understood myself what had happened.
It was something that had occurred, not altogether on the
conscious level, something about my being coming aware for a
time of the separate molecules of air within the cabin
as extensions of my own body mind. But I didn't
know how to verbalize it. Doctor Bronson gave me a
(18:58):
thorough physical and preliminary psychological exam. The effects of the
drug had worn off, but I felt somehow changed. I
didn't know just how. In fact, I wouldn't know until
one day two years later, when I dropped a vial
of nitroglycerin and a miraculously did not go off. Still,
Bronson pronounced me ready and fit for a long vacation,
(19:19):
and in a few days I was headed back toward
Pacific Grove. The vacation lasted for a week. Then it
was a Sunday evening, and I was sitting at the
front porch of the White House, nursing a high ball,
while my wife was upstairs telling Wendy a bedtime story
about a princess who kissed the toad, and it turned
into a handsome prince. I was sitting there in the
evening light, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus, and thinking for
(19:42):
the thousandth time about how much better this was than
bottled oxygen. Then a rented car pulled into the driveway
and General Bergen got out, wearing civilian clothes. He came
up to the porch and sat down next to me.
He did not pause for any pleasantry. Where's your wife,
he said, upstairs? Anyone else in the house, just my daughter.
(20:04):
He leaned back and lighted a cigarette. I was about
to offer him a drink, but he didn't give me
a chance. Official orders from now on your top secret.
You're wanted back at the Space Medics Center in Washington.
You have twenty four hours to straighten out your affairs.
What he waved a hand, I wasn't supposed to tell
you this, yet, keep it under your hat. I noticed
that the fingers holding a cigarette were trembling. We spent
(20:27):
four days going over the hull of your ship with microscopes.
Then we found it, the leak. The hole was still there.
It must have been a micro meteor of high density
and tremendous velocity burned a hole right through the ceiling compound.
Once again, I tried to organize words to explain what
I had not been able to explain before. But the
ship's air did stop wiking. I could never have made
(20:49):
it back, but the hole was still there. Then his
voice faltered, don't you see, my God? What have we
yet to learn about side forces? Psychonkinesis. There was nothing
to prevent all the air in your ship from leaking
out through that pinhole, nothing except you. The gourneral leaned forward,
his elbows on his knees, looking out into the gathering darkness.
(21:12):
We've got to find out what this drug does, he said,
A space program. I began space program. He pulled on
his cigarette. Hell, what are rockets compared to this? End
of Last Resort by Stephen Bartholomew
Last resort by Stephen Bartholomew. I inflated a rubber balloon
and set it a drift. The idea was that in
free fall, the balloon would drift slowly in the direction
of the league. This was the first thing I did
after I had discovered the trouble. I mean, it was
the first action I took. I'd been thinking about it
(00:20):
for some time. I'd been thinking about what a great
distance it was from Pacific Grove, California, to Mars, and
how I would never breathe the odor of eucalyptus again.
I watched the white balloon floating in the middle of
the cabin. Light reflected from a spot on its surface,
and it made me think of a moon globe I
used to keep on my desk when I was in college.
(00:42):
I had turned off the fan and tried to hold
my breath to keep from disturbing the air. The balloon
drifted slowly a few feet aft, wobbled there for a
minute or two, and then began to drift forward again.
I decided to indulge in the rare luxury of a cigarette.
I lighted one, reached over and popped the blue The
piece of rubber hung in the air limp and twisted.
(01:04):
I had not expected that trick to work. The rate
of leakage was very low. It had been some thirty
six hours since I first noticed it. This was one
of those things, of course, that were not supposed to
happen in space, and often did. Every precaution had been
taken against it. The outer shell of the ship was
tough enough to stop medium velocity meteoroids, and inside the
(01:27):
shell was a self sealing gou like a tubulus tire.
Evidently the goo hadn't worked. Something had gotten through the
hole and made a pinhole leak. In fact, the hole
was so small that it had taken me nearly thirty
five hours to compute the rate of leakage exactly, but
it was big enough it would do. I had held
the clipboard in my hand for a long time, rechecking
(01:50):
the little black numbers on it again and again. Then
I had warmed up to the transmitter raised lunar base
and reported what had happened. I had not reported before
because I had not even been sure I had a leak.
There's a normal seepage rate. Of course, a certain amount
of air will seep right through the molecular structure of
the hull. That's what the reserve tanks are for. But
(02:11):
I had been out a long time and there wasn't
enough air left in the tanks to compensate for this.
Not quite, so I reported to Base. The operator on
the other end told me to stand by for instructions.
That was for my morale. Then I spent some time
thinking about Pacific growth and the white house there and
the stand of eucalyptus. Then I blew up the balloon
(02:34):
and popped it. As I watched the piece of rubber
hanging motionless in the air, the receiver began clicking. I
waited till it stopped, then pulled the tape out and
read it. It said, have you inspected hull. I switched
on the send key and tapped out. Just going to
stand by, I opened the locker and broke out my spacesuit.
(02:56):
This was the first time I had put it on
since liftoff without help. It took me nearly half an
hour to get it on then check it out. I
always did hate wearing a spacesuit. It's like a straight jacket.
In theory. I could have kept it on plugged directly
into the ship's oxygen supply and ridden all the way
back to Earth that way. The trouble with that idea
(03:17):
was that the suit wasn't designed for it. You couldn't
eat or drink through the helmet, and no one had
ever thought up a satisfactory method of removing body wastes.
That would be the worst way to go, I thought,
poisoned slowly in my own juices. When I finally did
get the thing on, I went out the airlock. If
the leak had been bad enough, I would have been
(03:37):
able to see the air spurting out through the hole
a miniature geyser. But I found no more than what
I expected. I crawled around the entire circumference of the
hull and found only a thin, silvery haze. The airs
that leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull,
held there by the faint gravity of the ship's masts.
Dust motes in the air reflecting sunlight were enough to
(04:00):
hide any microscopic geyserspout. Before I re entered the airlock,
I looked out into space in the direction away from
the sun. Out there, trailing far away, the air had
formed a silver tail. I saw it faintly shimmering in
the night I was going to make a good comment.
I got back inside and stripped off the suit. Then
(04:22):
I raised lunar base again and tapped out have inspected
hull results negative. A few minutes later the reply came back.
Stand by for instructions for my morale. I lighted another
cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked around
the interior of my expensive ten foot coffin. I figured
(04:44):
I would last for about another seventy five hours. Of course,
I could take cyanide and get it over with, but
this wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Within
seventy five hours, the last of my reserve tanks would
be empty. Then I would just wait for the rest
of the air to leak out of the cabin. First,
I would lose consciousness with an oxia. I'd hardly even notice. Then,
(05:05):
as the pressure got lower, my body fluids would begin
to evaporate. Once I had seen a mummy in a museum,
it was some old prospector who had been lying in
the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I
was going to look like him, dried up yellow, my
teeth protruding in a grin perfectly preserved with no pilot,
the ship would go into a commentary orbit around the Sun.
(05:28):
Maybe in a hundred years or so someone would come
back and take me back to a museum on Earth.
I began to think about my wife, Sandy. I got
out a piece of paper and wrote a long letter
to her. I thought, maybe she'll even get to read
it someday. Writing gave me something to do. I wrote
about the time we'd gone up to the Sierras together
and slept in a sleeping bag at the edge of
(05:50):
a four thousand foot cliff, and about the times we
had gone out in our cabin cruiser, the time we
both nearly drowned, and I asked about our daughter, when
who would be four? Now? I remembered part of an
old poem Christ, that my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again. Writing was all right
(06:11):
until I realized that I had begun feeling sorry for myself,
and I was letting it get into the letter. I
put the letter aside and wondered what else I would
do to kill time. I got out some of the
film plates I'd made of the surface of Mars. Of
course I had transmitted them all to Lunar Base, but
it would have been nice if I could have delivered
the original plates. I studied them for a while, but
(06:33):
didn't find anything I hadn't seen before. Well, I'd done
my job. At least I had orbited Mars. I had
the glory of being the first American to do that.
I had dropped the instrument package and transmitted all the
data I could get back to Lunar. My only failure
would be not bringing back the ship. I remember a
conversation i'd had at the last International Space Symposium in Geneva.
(06:57):
A buddy of mine and I had taken out one
of the Oviate cosmonauts and got him drunk. He was
a dignified sort of drunk, a party member who told long,
pointless Russian jokes with an unwavering serious expression. He sat
sideways on the barstool, holding his glass of vodka between
two fingers and staring straight ahead. He said one thing
that I have never forgotten. Do you know why we
(07:21):
are ahead of you in space? He had said, staring
with dignity at a tall blonde at a nearby table.
It is because of your bourgeois sentimentality. Do not like
risking men? You build a skyscraper in New York to
house some insurance company. Two or three construction workers are
maamed or killed on the job. One of your coal
mine collapses in fifty menut are trapped. Yet look, you're
(07:42):
afraid of losing men in space because of what the
people at home might think. So you are too conservative.
You avoid risks. So we are ahead of you. We
send out a ship with three men aboard when you
would risk only one. We are not sentimental, that is all.
That is why we are ahead of you. He ordered
another drink and stared into the mirror for several minutes,
(08:03):
letting us think that over. Then he went on, Yes,
you are less scientific than we, less logical. Yet that
is your advantage too. You are more alert to the unprecedented,
the unpredictable. You are always ready for the wild chance,
the impossible possibility. You expect the unexpected, You hope for
(08:23):
the hopeless. Being sentimental, you have imagination. His words came
back to me, the unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility.
That was all that could save me now. But what
maybe another media would come along and plug the hole
the first had made. No, I had to think my
way out of this one. But what if there was
(08:44):
no way out. I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead,
turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. Picked out
the smallest meter face. I could just read the numbers
on it, I told myself. When I can't read the
numbers anymore, I'll know my vision is boring from the
beginning of anoxia, I thought. When that happened, I'll key
in the transmitter and tap out. Tell Sandy goodbye. It
(09:08):
would be dramatic. Anyhow, a withered mummy and a flying tomb.
The receiver began clicking again. They're still worried about my morale,
I thought. I went over and pulled out the tape.
It said, Bronson, here, suggest you try a last resort.
Doctor Bronson was the project director. It was the moment
(09:28):
before I realized what he meant. When I did, I
hesitated for several minutes, then shrugged and tapped out. Okay,
I knew what had been happening down there. They had
fed all the data I could give them through a computer,
and the computer had said no, dice. There was no
solution to the problem, at least none that a computer
could think of. With the data available, there was still
(09:49):
the last resort, I wondered if cyanide might not be
more pleasant. Well, the execs would have scientific interest anyway.
The last resort was still top secret and highly experimental.
It was a new drug with a name a foot long,
called l r XD for short. It had come out
of the old experiments with lysergic acid and mescaline. I
(10:11):
had never heard of its existence until a few hours
before liftoff from Lunar Base. Then, doctor Bronson had given
me a single ampuel of the stuff. He had held
it up to the light looking through it. He said,
this is called LRXD. No one knows exactly what it
will do. The lab boys say the lr stands for
Last Resort. What it was supposed to do was to
(10:33):
increase mental efficiency in human beings. Sometimes it did. They'd
given it to one volunteer and then shown him equation
which had taken a computer ten minutes to solve. He
wrote down the answer at once, apparently having gone through
the entire process in his head instantaneously. Doctor Bronson told
me it isn't just a matter of IQ. It increases
the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily, the human brain screens
(10:57):
out thousands of irrelevant stimuli you're not aware of your
watch ticking, 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 everything simultaneously, nothing is screened out. Furthermore,
the subject is capable of correlating everything. The human brain
becomes as efficient as a Mark sixty computer with the
(11:19):
advantage of imagination and intuition. We don't know how it
works yet or exactly what it does. I hate to
say this, but there's even some evidence that the drug
increases telepathic ability. But then again, three of the volunteers
had gone insane after taking the drug, two had died.
On some of the others there was no apparent effect
at all. We don't even know whether the effects are
(11:41):
permanent or temporary. Bronson added, So now I was supposed
to take this last resort and then try to think
of a way out of my predicament. With my IQ
boosted up to a thousand or so. It made me
think of my college days when I stayed up all
night on Benza dream writing turnpapers. I remembered Bronson's description
of one of the volunteers had gone insane, and shudder, Well,
(12:02):
I had nothing to lose. It is what the name implies.
Bronson had said, to be used only in extreme emergency,
only when you have nothing to lose. I had put
the ampul away in the medicine locker and deliberately forgotten
about it. Now I had got it out again and
held it up to the light as Bronson had done
milky white. I strapped myself to the acceleration couch, filled
(12:25):
a syringe and swabbed my arm. I looked at the
letter I had started and probably would never finish. I
ran the needle in. The hallucinations began within five minutes.
This was normal, Bronson had said. I waited, gripping the
arm rest of the couch, hoping I would not begin
believing in what I saw. First, there was the meter
face directly in front of me. It was blue green.
(12:48):
I had never really seen before what color it was.
It was like a round, bright flame. I stared at it,
becoming hypnotized. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I reached
over and switched off the panelights. Then the meter face
became the blackest darkness I had ever seen. It was
no longer a flat disc, but the entrance to a
long black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter
(13:12):
the tunnel, and I quickly shifted my gaze. A gas
tube rectifier caught my attention. This was like the meter face,
only worse. A cloud of intense blue, flickering, shimmering. They
stared at it. The cloud seemed to be expanding, growing forever,
flickering and shimmering until it became vast. It filled the universe,
pulsating with energy. It was a kind of blue I
(13:35):
had never seen before. I had never seen the color before.
There was a red plastic safety guard over one of
the toggle switches. Suddenly it seemed alive. Rather, the red
was alive. The color was no longer part of the object.
It was an entity in itself, blazing like flame, liberated
from matter. It was a living drop of blood afire.
(13:56):
I closed my eyes, trying to escape from color, but
that was much worse. The colors inside my head blazed
out even brighter, more savage. I turned my head, trying
to find something in the cabin to look at that
was not bright blue or green or red. With horror,
I focused on the spacesuit locker. I'd left the locker open,
the suit hanging on its wire stretcher. I saw immediately
(14:18):
that the spacesuit was alive. It stood there, motionless, returning
my stare. I could not look away from it. I
could not move with fear. Slowly, very slowly, the spacesuit
raised an arm and pointed at me. I stared at
its single oval eye, recalling childhood nightmares. Then the suit
came out of its locker and began to advance towards me,
(14:38):
still pointing its scauntlet at my face. It seemed to
take hours to walk across the cabin toward me. I
held my breath waiting. I thought I would scream if
it did not reach me. It was taking too long.
Then it did reach me, and, bending low above me,
wrapped its metallic arms around my body. I turned my
face from its mechanical fiery breath began to crush me.
(15:01):
I could not breathe. I felt my ris began to
bend slowly splinter. My face was pressed against its metallic 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,
flattening against it. Being crushed slowly between its thin gray
(15:22):
membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back.
I knew that if the membrane did not give, I
would break through at last, I would suffocate and die.
In fact, I was already dead. The idea came to
me 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
(15:45):
into my crash couch, regarding the instrument panel with absolute calm.
Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything. I
took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated their data
in my mind without help of the computer. I was
aware of every the faint hum of the gas tubes
and transformers, the whir of the gyros, the reedy buzz
(16:05):
of hydraulic actuators, the periodic clicking of the oxygen reclaim unit.
I was aware of everything that was happening in the
ship as if it were my own body, my body.
I knew that I would have to explore my new
self before investigating the ship. With an effort of will,
I will shut off my new sense impressions and looked inside.
(16:27):
I sensed the rhythmic muscular action of my heart, the
opening and closing of the valve. I felt the surge
of blood in all my vessels. I moved my hand
to touch the bulkhead and found that I could count
the number of microseconds it took for the nerve impulses
to travel from my fingers to my brain. Time seemed
to have slowed down. It took an hour for the
second hand on the panel clock to make one circuit.
(16:49):
In retrospect, I know that this condition of super awareness
must have lasted only for a few minutes, but it
seemed then that I had all the time in the world.
I found that I no longer needed to think in
works or even symbols. I could pose myself a problem
and save four dimensional vector analysis and see the solution immediately,
like a flash of intuition. Had attained some total somatic consciousness,
(17:12):
I was able to analyze the exact relationship of the
drug to the molecular structure of my own protoplasm. It
was then I knew that although I had recorded no
information about Mars that the Russians didn't already have, I
was going to bring back home a piece of candy
much sweeter. Wait now, I told myself, Wait, if you
have a specific problem to solve, the problem being how
(17:34):
to stop that leak in the hall long enough to
get home alive. It was a problem of basic survival.
I was confident. I knew that if any possible solution
in my predicament existed, I would find it. I was
my own data computer now, but with eyes and ears
and imagination. I opened my senses again and concentrated on
the flood of information coming at me from the instrument panel.
(17:56):
I found that I had total recall. I could remember
simultaneous every wiring diagram and blueprint of the ship, every
screw and transistor and welded scene that I had ever
glanced at. I saw the entire ship as a single entity,
a smoothly functioning organism. In a flash, I saw hundreds
of ways to improving its design, but that would have
(18:16):
to wait for a moment. I gathered all my psychic
energy and concentrated on the single crucial problem of stopping
that leak, and I saw there was no way to
stop the leak, no logical way back at lunar Base.
I tried to explain to Bronze and what had happened,
But I found that it was impossible to explain in words.
(18:37):
In fact, I no longer entirely understood myself what had happened.
It was something that had occurred, not altogether on the
conscious level, something about my being coming aware for a
time of the separate molecules of air within the cabin
as extensions of my own body mind. But I didn't
know how to verbalize it. Doctor Bronson gave me a
(18:58):
thorough physical and preliminary psychological exam. The effects of the
drug had worn off, but I felt somehow changed. I
didn't know just how. In fact, I wouldn't know until
one day two years later, when I dropped a vial
of nitroglycerin and a miraculously did not go off. Still,
Bronson pronounced me ready and fit for a long vacation,
(19:19):
and in a few days I was headed back toward
Pacific Grove. The vacation lasted for a week. Then it
was a Sunday evening, and I was sitting at the
front porch of the White House, nursing a high ball,
while my wife was upstairs telling Wendy a bedtime story
about a princess who kissed the toad, and it turned
into a handsome prince. I was sitting there in the
evening light, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus, and thinking for
(19:42):
the thousandth time about how much better this was than
bottled oxygen. Then a rented car pulled into the driveway
and General Bergen got out, wearing civilian clothes. He came
up to the porch and sat down next to me.
He did not pause for any pleasantry. Where's your wife,
he said, upstairs? Anyone else in the house, just my daughter.
(20:04):
He leaned back and lighted a cigarette. I was about
to offer him a drink, but he didn't give me
a chance. Official orders from now on your top secret.
You're wanted back at the Space Medics Center in Washington.
You have twenty four hours to straighten out your affairs.
What he waved a hand, I wasn't supposed to tell
you this, yet, keep it under your hat. I noticed
that the fingers holding a cigarette were trembling. We spent
(20:27):
four days going over the hull of your ship with microscopes.
Then we found it, the leak. The hole was still there.
It must have been a micro meteor of high density
and tremendous velocity burned a hole right through the ceiling compound.
Once again, I tried to organize words to explain what
I had not been able to explain before. But the
ship's air did stop wiking. I could never have made
(20:49):
it back, but the hole was still there. Then his
voice faltered, don't you see, my God? What have we
yet to learn about side forces? Psychonkinesis. There was nothing
to prevent all the air in your ship from leaking
out through that pinhole, nothing except you. The gourneral leaned forward,
his elbows on his knees, looking out into the gathering darkness.
(21:12):
We've got to find out what this drug does, he said,
A space program. I began space program. He pulled on
his cigarette. Hell, what are rockets compared to this? End
of Last Resort by Stephen Bartholomew
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.