Of course he’d need help: somebody to figure out the main control board with him, somebody with a scientific mind and some technical know-how, like Jeanette. But he’d pick his help damn carefully.
The thought of Jeanette made him feel ugly, a sensation he rather enjoyed. She’d been damn snippy. There might be other women in the cages too; and the aborted scene of last night in the control room had left him feeling more frustrated that usual. All right; some new scores, and then he’d get around to the old ones.
V
It was high morning when he got back to the control room, but still it was earlier than he’d expected it to be. There hadn’t been many women in the cages, but either they got less and less attractive as he went along, or the recent excitement and stress had taken more out of him physically than he’d realized. Otherwise he was sure he could have completed such a programme handily, maybe even twice around. Oh well, there was plenty of time. Now he needed help.
The first thing to do was to disconnect the clock in some way. That proved to be easy: a red bar under it simply stopped it. Since nobody, obviously, had visited the control room since his last tampering, he now had the whole ship in permanent coma.
Next, he counted down to Jeanette’s button and pushed it. That ought to awaken her. The only remaining problem was to work out how that three-hole lock on her cage worked.
That didn’t turn out to be easy at all. It took an hour of fumbling before it suddenly sank inward under his hand and the door slid back.