Last Resort

In Short

An American astronaut returning from a solo orbital mission around Mars discovers a microscopic hull puncture draining his ship's air reserve. With no mechanical fix possible and only seventy-five hours of oxygen remaining, he reports his situation to Lunar Base. As a desperate final measure, project directors order him to inject LRXD, an experimental, top-secret psychotropic drug designed to drastically amplify total mental capacity. The narrative explores how human consciousness, pushed beyond its known biological thresholds by chemical intervention and survival instinct, interacts directly with physical reality to reshape the boundaries of space travel.

The Story

Returning from an American orbital mission around Mars, an astronaut discovers a minute hull breach leaking his ship's oxygen supply into the vacuum of space. The vessel's self-sealing compound has failed to close the puncture, and the reserve oxygen tanks lack the volume needed to make up the loss before reaching Earth. After conducting a spacewalk to inspect the exterior, he finds the escaping air forming a faint, shimmering atmosphere held around the hull by the ship's minimal gravity, leaving him with approximately seventy-five hours of breathable air.

With no mechanical recourse, he reports the critical failure to Lunar Base. He spends his remaining time writing a farewell letter to his wife, Sandy, reviewing his Martian photographic plates, and contemplating his mortality. Lunar Base subsequently transmits a message instructing him to administer "Last Resort"—an experimental, highly unpredictable drug designated LRXD. Developed from research into hallucinogens, LRXD drastically elevates human consciousness, enabling the mind to process all sensory data simultaneously and perform complex computations without screening out information. However, previous trial subjects suffered severe trauma, including insanity and death.

Left with no alternative, the astronaut injects the chemical. The drug initially triggers intense visual hallucinations: control panel colors become blindingly vivid, and his spacesuit appears to animate, stepping from its locker to crush him. Once the hallucinatory phase subsides, he enters a state of hyper-awareness. He experiences precise somatic control, perceiving his internal physiological processes, counting the microsecond latency of his nervous system, and viewing the ship's entire mechanical infrastructure as a single unified system.

Utilizing his heightened intellect, he calculates that no logical or physical method exists to patch the hull breach using the equipment on board. Yet, despite the impossibility of the situation, the air leak stops, and he returns safely to Lunar Base.

Two years later, while on leave at his home in Pacific Grove, California, he is visited by General Bergen. Military inspectors examining the returned spacecraft under microscopic magnification discovered that the pinhole leak in the hull remained completely open the entire time. The air had been contained solely through psychokinetic force generated by his mind under the influence of the drug, revealing that human psi capabilities render conventional rocketry obsolete.

How It Unfolds

A leak in the deep An astronaut discovers a microscopic puncture in his spacecraft's hull while returning from Mars, calculating that his remaining air will deplete in seventy-five hours. He contacts Lunar Base to report the emergency and receives orders to stand by.

Inspecting the hull Donning his spacesuit for an exterior inspection, he observes the escaping gas forming a thin, shimmering tail around the ship in the sunlight. Confirming that the hull's self-sealing compound has failed, he returns inside to await further guidance.

The experimental mandate Lunar Base instructs him to use LRXD, an experimental compound designed to vastly increase mental capacity and total consciousness. Recognizing the drug's lethal history but facing certain asphyxiation, he injects the chemical into his arm.

Hallucinatory onset The drug triggers terrifying hallucinations, causing control panel indicator lights to blaze with unbearable intensity and making his spacesuit appear to come alive and crush his ribs. He battles the visual distortions until the psychological break subsides.

Absolute awareness He reaches a state of total cognitive integration, perceiving his own internal organ functions and comprehending the ship's mechanics simultaneously. Analyzing all available variables, his augmented mind determines that no physical repair is possible.

An impossible survival Despite the mathematical impossibility of patching the leak, the air loss mysteriously ceases, allowing the ship to return safely. Scientists at Lunar Base examine him, unable to explain how he survived the journey.

The true discovery General Bergen visits the astronaut's home years later to reveal that microscopic inspection proved the hull hole was open the entire time. The military realizes his mind physically contained the atmosphere through raw psychokinesis, fundamentally shifting the future of human exploration.

The People

• The Astronaut Narrator: A grounded, reflective American pilot who values simple earthbound comforts like his family and the smell of eucalyptus. Faced with slow suffocation in deep space, his desire to survive forces him to volunteer as a subject for an unpredictable chemical experiment, ultimately transforming him into the first human to exercise direct psychokinetic control over matter.
• Dr. Bronson: The project director at Lunar Base who oversees the mission's emergency protocols. He maintains a clinical, analytical perspective on human performance and authorizes the use of the experimental drug LRXD as a final operational attempt to salvage the astronaut's life and data.
• General Bergen: A military commander who visits the narrator long after the mission's conclusion. Driven by national security and strategic advancement, he reveals the physical findings of the spacecraft inspection and recognizes that latent human mental forces represent a far more powerful frontier than conventional space technology.

In Its Own Voice

"The air as it leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull, held there by the faint gravity of the ship's mass."

This observation occurs while the astronaut performs his exterior spacewalk, watching the faint halo of escaping oxygen shimmer against the darkness of space.

"Ordinarily the human brain screens out thousands of irrelevant stimuli."

Dr. Bronson provides this explanation when describing how LRXD alters human perception by removing the subconscious filters that restrict cognitive processing.

"There was nothing to prevent all the air in your ship from leaking out through that pinhole, nothing except--you."

General Bergen delivers this conclusion during his unannounced visit, revealing that psychokinetic force was the sole mechanism preserving the ship's atmosphere.

What It's Really About

The narrative investigates the latent, untapped capacity of the human mind under extreme existential pressure. By contrasting mechanical systems—such as self-sealing hulls, oxygen recyclers, and ground-based computers—with biological consciousness, the text argues that technological hardware is fundamentally limited compared to human adaptability. The core conflict explores how crisis can break down the boundary between subjective perception and objective physical reality, suggesting that psychological evolution, rather than mechanical engineering, represents the ultimate threshold of space exploration.

Why Read It Today

This narrative appeals to readers who appreciate classic, mid-century hard science fiction focused on tight, single-location suspense and conceptual turns. It builds its atmosphere through sparse, precise procedural details—calculating air pressure drop rates, managing spacesuit constraints, and observing instrument panels—before shifting into psychological abstraction. The prose moves smoothly from quiet, claustrophobic isolation to an intense inner trial, offering a clean demonstration of how mid-century speculative fiction used simple scientific premises to examine human potential.

<ElicitationsGroup message="Explore this short story further:"> <Elicitation label="Analyze the representation of Cold War space race dynamics in Last Resort" query="Analyze how Cold War space race dynamics and Soviet vs American philosophies are represented in Stephen Bartholomew's Last Resort."/> <Elicitation label="Compare Last Resort to other 1960s psi-phenomena science fiction" query="Compare the portrayal of psi-phenomena and psychokinesis in Last Resort to other science fiction stories from the 1960s Analog magazine era."/> </ElicitationsGroup>