He punched the "fast" button and ran it through to the last few minutes of the recording. He glanced at the monitor screen. The model was still on the assembly table in the tunnel deep underground.
He cut off the current to the secondaries and switched on the manual controls. Then he put his hands into one set of gloves and wiggled his fingers. The secondaries in the room below remained motionless.
Number Nineteen Experimental ought to be empty. He withdrew his hand and turned the selector knob on the monitor screen to Nineteen. No one there. He switched on the power, letting the last few minutes of the taped recording feed into the secondaries in Nineteen.
The waldoes in the screen went through the motions of finishing the assembly—meaningless gestures in the empty air—then fell into the "ready" position. Crayley hit the stop button, then switched back to the tunnel where the model lay.
He took a deep breath. Now came the touchy part. He hadn't handled a pair of primary waldoes for years, and this thing had to be done just right.
He had already decided which of the positions he would have to use and what he would have to do. Now, if only his timing was good. It didn't have to be perfect; that was the beauty of the plan. But it did have to be pretty close.
He turned on the waldoes without turning on the recorder and slipped his hands into the gloves. Then, using the foot switch, he kicked on the close-up screen for the position he was occupying. The screen showed the secondaries of the hands he was using. He wiggled his fingers. The secondaries wiggled theirs.
Then he reached out and gingerly touched the model. The secondaries touched the steel plate, and the feedbacks sent back a signal. Crayley's gloves felt the resistance just as though the model were right there in the room.
Several times, he reached out his right hand to one particular spot on the model, practicing to make sure he could hit it every time. Fine, fine.
Then he took his left hand out of the glove, eyed the wall clock, and turned on the recorder. The tape began to move through the recording heads. For five minutes he waited.