Was there still hope? At two o'clock Nadine would pick up his lab report sheets and turn them over to Glassman. Then the identity of the ideal nerve fluid would be known. It would be out of his hands even if he were in full control of his faculties.
He and Nadine rose. They were going back to the lab building. He raged against the hidden mental barriers that contained him. He fought frenziedly to influence some slight movement of his body.
He might as well have been a passenger on an ocean liner trying to change the course of the thousands of tons of steel by thought alone while standing at the rail.
His sphere of awareness grew clouded. He was raging against a mental wall that became almost tangible. He stopped fighting from sheer impotence—and the barrier retreated.
The more I fight the more helpless I am. That thought at once created its corollary. The less I struggle the closer I am to control!
That was it! He had so identified his desires with the actions of his body that for one instant he meshed with it!
That, then, was the secret. The principle. But it contained within itself its own difficulty. By "wanting" to activate the Brain he could perhaps actually control some of his actions. But the instant he did something counter to the Cyberene, that control would be taken away from him, and replaced by throbbing pain.
He had touched Nadine's hand though. It had been a gesture so unconscious that the Cyberene had been unaware of it until it happened.
It was the right direction.