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, 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 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 meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no way out?

I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead, turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. I picked out the smallest meter face. I could just read the numbers on it. I told myself: When I can't read the numbers any 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 my morale, 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 I realized 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 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 the Last Resort.

I wondered if cyanide might not be more pleasant. Well, the exects 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 LRXD for short. It had come out of the old experiments with lysergic acid and mescalin. I had never heard of its existence until a few hours before lift-off from Lunar Base. Then Dr. Bronson had given me a single ampule 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 increase mental efficiency in human beings. Sometimes it did. They had given it to one volunteer and then shown him an equation which it 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.

Dr. Bronson told me, "It isn't just a matter of I.Q. It increases the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily the human brain screens 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 60 computer, with the 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 permanent or temporary," Bronson had added.

So now I was supposed to take this Last Resort and then