The Cybermen – silver, indestructible monsters whose only goal is power – seem to have disappeared from their planet, Telos. When a party of archaeologists, joined by the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria, land on the Cybermen’s barren, deserted planet, they uncover what appears to be their tomb.

But once inside it becomes clear that the Cybermen are not dead, and some in the group of archaeologists desperately want to re-activate these monsters! How can the Doctor defeat these ruthless, power-seeking humans and the Cybermen ?

Cover illustration by Jeff Cummins

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Children/Fiction ISBN 0 426 11076 5

DOCTOR WHO

AND THE

TOMB OF THE

CYBERMEN

Based on the BBC television serial The Tomb of the Cybermen by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation GERRY DAVIS

A TARGET BOOK

published by

the Paperback Division of

W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

A Target Book

Published in 1978

by the Paperback Division of W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd.

A Howard & Wyndham Company

44 Hill Street, London WIX 8LB

Novelisation copyright © 1978 by Gerry Davis Original script copyright © 1967 by Gerry Davis

‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © 1967, 1978 by the British Broadcasting Corporation

Printed in Great Britain by

Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks ISBN 0 426 11076 5

Dedicated to my daughters, Victoria-Jean and Felicity-Jane This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Victoria and Jamie

2 An Expedition in Space

3 The Entrance to the Tombs

4 Cyberman Control Room

5 The Recharging Room

6 The Target Room

7 The Finding of the Cybermat

8 The Secret of the Hatch

9 The Cyberman Controller

10 Release the Cybermats

11 The Controller is Revitalised

12 Toberman Returns

13 Closing the Tombs

The Creation of the Cybermen

Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far-distant planet of Telos sought immortality. They perfected the art of cybernetics—the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb, with plastic and steel.

Finally, even the human circulation and nervous system were recreated, and brains replaced by computers. The first Cybermen were born.

Their metal limbs gave them the strength of ten men, and their in-built respiratory system allowed them to live in the airless vacuum of space. They were immune to cold and heat, and immensely intelligent and resourceful.

Their main impediment was one that only a flesh and blood man would have recognised: they had no heart, no emotions, no feelings. They lived by the inexorable laws of pure logic. Love, hate, anger, even fear, were eliminated from their lives when the last flesh was replaced by plastic.

They achieved their immortality at a terrible price.

They became dehumanised monsters. And, like human monsters down through the ages of Earth, they became aware of the lack of love and feeling in their lives and substituted another goal—power!

Their large, silver bodies became practically indestructible and their ruthless drive was untempered by any consideration other than basic logic.

If the enemy was more powerful than you, you left the field. If he could be defeated, you killed, imprisoned or enslaved. You were unswayed by pity or mercy.

For many years after the explosion of Mondas in 2000

and the defeat of the Cyber-raiding party on the moon in 2070, there was no further sign of the silver giants.

Man pushed further and further into space exploring galaxy after galaxy in perfect safety.

Until one day a party of archaeologists landed on the now barren and deserted planet of Telos. All they were after (they said) was to uncover and record the beginnings of the long dead race of Cybermen. Just as the tombs of ancient Egypt had been unearthed.

But the tombs of the Cybermen were very different from the pyramids of the Pharaohs. They held a terrible secret that was to convulse the universe and, once again, pit the Doctor against his most dreaded adversaries.

1

Victoria and Jamie

The Doctor and Jamie were standing with one eye on the TARDIS screen and the other on the door of the TARDIS

equipment room.

On the large monitor screen a small yellow circle of light was rapidly approaching. As the image enlarged and the detail became clearer, it was resolving into. a small, moon-like planet pitted and scarred by light-centuries of astral bombardment.

Inside the equipment room the latest crew member of the TARDIS was changing clothes. Her name was Victoria and she came from the middle 1800s when her scientist father was killed in a struggle with the Daleks. The Doctor had felt responsible for the orphaned girl and taken her aboard the time-craft.

Victoria was dressed as any proper mid-Victorian miss in a thick overskirt, an underskirt and three layers of petticoats. Her skirts were held out from her body by means of a basketlike cage and took up a great deal of room in the confined space aboard the TARDIS.

After tripping over Victoria’s skirts for the third time, the Doctor had insisted she change her clothes for something less hampering for adventures in space.

The Doctor had not told her what to wear—he believed in letting people make up their own minds. He had simply turned her loose on the vast wardrobe of clothing from wet-suits to evening dress.

Jamie, amused by her prim ways, wondered what she would choose. He was a refugee from the 1746 battle of Culloden. The Doctor had brought him aboard the TARDIS to rescue him from the English redcoat soldiers.

‘Ahem.’ Victoria gave a discreet cough. The Doctor and Jamie had been watching the screen as the TARDIS moved gently towards the unknown planet. They turned. Victoria was clad in a simple dress that ended just above the knee.

It had been left behind by Polly, the girl from the 1970s, now safely returned to England.

‘Och, that’s far better,’ said Jamie. But the Doctor noticed two red spots of colour on Victoria’s cheeks. They weren’t used to showing so much of their legs in Queen Victoria’s reign!

‘Don’t worry, you look very respectable,’ he smiled.

Victoria shook her head angrily and pointed towards the equipment room.

‘All you have there are children’s clothes like this.’ She held out her short skirt. ‘Or...’ she blushed slightly, ‘men’s breeches. I wore such skirts when I was little. You’ve made me look like... Alice in Wonderland. ’

The Doctor smiled. With her wide blue eyes and long fair hair, she did look a little like Alice. Jamie began to laugh at her shocked expression. He was interrupted by the Doctor, pointing at the screen.

‘We’re about to land.’ He looked at a side dial.

‘Atmosphere’s breathable. Gravity’s similar to Earth. We won’t need space-suits.’

‘Aye.’ Jamie, impatient as always, hitched up his kilt slightly and checked that the sharp dirk was in position in his long checkered sock. ‘I’ll no be sorry to stretch ma legs, Doctor.’

‘I can’t go out like this. What if someone saw me?’

Victoria cried, scandalised. But the Doctor, his mind on the new planet, was too busy checking landing space to listen to her.

‘Ye’ll just have to stay here... Alice!’ said Jamie, grinning at the girl’s outraged expression.

2

An Expedition in Space

It was a planet like a million others; stone and dust, arid, with crater mountains cutting a blank sky. But humans from the space orbiter nervously glanced behind them as they huddled together in the crater basin, watching Ted Rogers fiddling with the fuse wire.

‘Get with it, Rogers, will you !’ barked Captain Hopper.

‘O.K., Captain, it’s about there,’ Rogers called, his trained engineer’s fingers holding the wire gently in place while he set the timer. The grey uniform of his space Orbiter Engineer Class uniform was crumpled and dusty with the effort.

Captain Hopper looked at his crew member, wondering why he had ever taken on the job of transporting this crazy archaeological expedition of Parry’s to such an inhospitable planet.

There was a movement behind them. They sensed it rather than saw it, turned—there was something at the cliff edge—a head appeared. It was Toberman, the giant of the expedition, bumbling down the dusty scree of the crater side, small rocks clattering round him in the unearthly silence.

‘Hey! Toberman! Get that big head down!’ shouted Professor Parry, the leader of the expedition. ‘What’s the matter with you, have you gone mad?’

‘No personnel within the explosion field,’ shouted Captain Hopper, but Toberman, as if he hadn’t heard, lumbered towards them through the thin atmosphere, ignoring both Parry and Hopper. He came to a stop near them and stared in silence as Rogers clicked the fuse wire finally in place and covered it with timeless dust.

‘You’re a fool!’ shouted Viner, Parry’s second in command, a thin, fussy little archaeologist, at the great Toberman. ‘Don’t you realise the danger you’re in? None of us knows what’s going to happen when we press that thing...in this rarefied atmosphere!’

Viner pointed a trembling finger at the silent crater edge where the explosive was set.

‘All right, Viner,’ said Parry, clearing his throat. ‘It’s a waste of time using words with that man. He obviously doesn’t understand what we say... or doesn’t want to.’ He turned to the figure next to him, a woman’s figure with a sleek and shining space suit topped by a fine-boned, beautiful Arabian face.

‘Kaftan,’ he said crossly, ‘can’t you keep your servant under control? You insisted on bringing Toberman. You control him.’

Professor Parry was the kind of man who was never at ease talking to a woman. Kaftan waited a moment before answering.

‘If I wish to I can,’ she said. She beckoned to the giant to come-over beside her. Rogers, still crouched over the time control of the bomb plunger, was making a final adjustment.

‘Hurry it, Rogers,’ ordered the Captain again. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to find anyway,’ he added gruffly to Professor Parry.

‘I am convinced, and ready to stake my reputation on it—that this is the entrance to the city of Telos,’ Parry said stiffly, disliking the Captain’s tone.

‘Well, I sure hope you’re right because I want to get us all safely out of here,’ said the Captain loudly.

‘Hopper.’

It was a new voice, a cold hard one from the strongly built man, Eric Klieg, at the back of the group, who up to now had been silent.

‘I must remind you, Captain, that you are being very well paid for your part in this expedition.’

The red-haired American Captain opened his mouth to retort but the engineer, Rogers, stood up.

‘I think that’s it, Captain,’ he said.

‘All right, let’s get on with it,’ said Parry officiously.

‘We’ve wasted enough time. Stand by. Everybody down.

Including you, Toberman.’

‘Everybody under cover?’ came the Captain’s voice.

‘Professor Parry, will you count your party, please, and account for everyone?’

‘Viner, Haydon, Kaftan, Klieg and Toberman. And myself. Yes, all present.’

‘First Officer Callum, Ted Rogers, two crewmen and myself on this side,’ Hopper replied. ‘All take cover and do not raise your head until Engineer Rogers gives the O.K.

signal.’

Silence. They crouched behind the rock, looking at the dust that silted over their feet, listening. All round them in the silence the mountains of the crater edge loomed, unmoving.

Ccccrrmpboooomcrrrrmp.

The explosion seemed to bowl on and on like thunder in a valley, echoing against the alien mountains.

Toberman raised his head.

‘DOWN!’ roared the Captain.

Toberman crouched again as the muffled sounds of the blast died away, and silence took over again. Rogers raised his hand. ‘O.K.,’ he said. Cautiously they stood up, but a pall of fine dust stood in an almost motionless cloud about the blast site, obscuring it from view.

‘Nothing to see,’ said Professor Parry anxiously. ‘Yet I’m sure—’

‘Just hold on for, a minute or two,’ said the Captain.

‘There’s no wind on this planet to disperse the dust; we have to give it time to settle.’

‘This dust hasn’t been disturbed for thirty centuries, remember,’ said Viner. The party rose and started walking towards the blast site, unable to keep away.

Through the dust loomed a shape.

Parry and the others stopped walking and moved closer to each other.

The dust cleared further—the shape resolved into nothing but a jagged spur of rock blown clear of the crater by the explosion.

‘There you go,’ laughed Hopper. ‘You blast one lump of rock and all you get is another lump.’

‘No,’ said Rogers suddenly. ‘Wait a minute—look!’

Through the clearing dust cloud at the side of the rock...

something gleamed.

They all ran forward, as fast as the atmosphere and dust would let them, and stopped amazed.

‘Man alive,’ whispered Hopper, awestruck. ‘You just blew yourself a pair of doors.’

Beside the rock, and becoming clearer every moment as the dust fell, were two gigantic doors of metal, gleaming with a strange blue sheen, massive and flawless, standing vertically in the wall of the crater.

‘Well, come on,’ said Parry, his glasses glinting triumphantly. ‘What are we waiting for?’

They scrambled through the dust and broken rock to where the crater wall began.

‘Couldn’t you have blasted these stones a bit smaller?’

laughed Callum, but the others were too engrossed to join his laughter. They clambered up over the broken rocks, reached the ledge in front of the doors and stood gazing up at them.

From here the blue sheen of the metal was as eerie as moonlight. The doors were flush with the side of the mountain, engineered so closely together that you could hardly see the hairline crack between them. On them, the outlines of huge embossed figures reared up, dwarfing the humans—Cybermen figures, one on each door.

No one moved. Even Professor Parry was silenced.

Kaftan stepped in front of the group.

‘Five hundred dollars for the first one to open the doors,’ she said in her liquid, Middle-Eastern voice.

‘I must remind you that I am the leader of this expedition... ‘ began Professor Parry; irritably, at odds once again with this woman. ‘And in that capacity, if anyone is to decide who—’

But as he spoke, one of the Space Orbiter crewmen walked towards the doors, and, before the Professor had stopped speaking, put out his hands, grasped the door handles and pulled. There was an instant flash like lightning. The man’s head jerked back; for a long moment he remained head back as if looking at the sky, then his hands opened, releasing his hold, and his body toppled backwards down the slope.

The others gasped and shrank away. ‘What’s happened?’

asked Klieg pushing forward. No one answered. Captain Hopper, trained for such emergencies, walked towards his crewman, crouched down by him, unzipped the top of his space-suit and felt his heart. He stood up and looked grimly at Kaftan.

‘One thing’s for sure, he’s not gonna collect that five hundred, not from you or anyone else. He’s dead!’

3

The Entrance to the Tombs

While they stood there, stunned, a loud whirring sound like a car starting up shattered the silence of the planet.

The archaeologist party gave a startled look towards the lethal Cyberman doors—but the sound was further away in another direction.

‘Over there,’ said Rogers. They turned to look at the left side of the crater where landslips had formed huge islands of rock. The sound died away.

Quietly, Captain Hopper pulled out his gun and took off the safety catch.

‘O.K.,’ he said. ‘I’ll take this. Get down behind that rock. All of you. You, too, lady,’ he added as he saw Kaftan about to argue. They all scattered, crouched behind the rocks near the doors.

‘Jim,’ said Hopper quietly. Callum, his First Officer, drew his gun and followed. Moving fast, they made their way to the pinnacle of rock that hid the source of the sound. Hopper slipped into a cleft, gun raised. A stone clattered, he froze, but nothing moved out from behind the pinnacle.

‘Cover from the other side,’ he said, and Callum, gun raised, covered the area from the shelter of a clump of rocks on the other side.

Three strange figures emerged.

‘Hold it right there.’ Hopper’s voice rang out. The figure in the black frock-coat and floppy bow tie raised his hands casually, smiling at Hopper’s implied threat.

‘If you put it like that, I certainly will,’ said the Doctor.

Behind him Jamie and Victoria also raised their hands.

‘Did you hear that, Professor?’ called Haydon, as the others came forward. ‘English! What’s the odds against hearing an Earth language on Telos; a million to one?’

‘If you’d just point those things away from us.’ The Doctor nodded at the guns. ‘We’re quite harmless and unarmed.’ After looking the three over carefully, Hopper and Callum lowered their guns.

‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor ironically.

‘Now, who are you and where do you come from?’

Professor Parry sounded officious.

‘You’d better have a good story,’ added Captain Hopper.

‘Och, maybe you’ll not get one.’ Jamie’s quick Highland temper had been roused by the hostile reception. He was in no mood to be questioned by these aggressive strangers.

Captain Hopper had had just about enough: an insubordinate kid on top of all the other troubles of the day. ‘Look, son,’ he said loudly, ‘I’m not playing games with you people.’ He raised the gun again. The Doctor meanwhile had been looking for a reason for the tension of the space party. He saw the dead crew member lying in front of the huge doors with the Cyberman motif.

‘What’s happened here?’ came the Doctor’s voice, and there was a note in it that made the men stop arguing and turn to him.

‘He was killed the minute before you made your appearance,’ said Klieg’s harsh voice. Doctor Who looked at the man, ugly, bald, strong and stocky, full of tense force.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now I understand. You think...?’

He shook his head. ‘We had nothing to do with this man’s death.’

The Doctor crouched down, picked up the dead man’s right hand, examined it and then examined the left hand.

He stripped off the crewman’s space-boots and looked at the soles of his feet. As the others leaned forward, they could see black burn marks on the dead man’s palms and the soles of his feet.

‘He appears to have been electrocuted,’ said Doctor Who, standing up and rubbing his hands on his already dusty frock coat. ‘Those are the marks of a high voltage electricity burn.’ He turned. ‘While trying to open these doors perhaps?’

Jamie and. Victoria noticed the silver doors’ expanse looming above them.

‘JAMIE!’ whispered Victoria urgently. ‘JAMIE! What are they?’ They stood transfixed, looking at the unmistakable engravings on the doors: helmets, horrifying blanks for eyes and mouth, long silver bodies and chest units.

Jamie had seen them before. ‘I’ll tell ye later,’ he muttered, still looking suspiciously at Captain Hopper.

But the Doctor, busy examining the place where the dead man had stood, seemed not to have noticed the glistening silver symbols on the doors.

‘He seems to know all the answers,’ said the engineer, Rogers, glancing at the Captain.

‘Yeah. A wise guy,’ said Hopper, moving closer, gun held at the ready.

‘It’s obvious.’ The little archaeologist with the glasses, Viner, glared at the Doctor. ‘This fellow must be a member of a rival expedition.’

‘Expedition?’ the Doctor retorted quickly. Professor Parry looked annoyed.

‘We have done our very best, made the most strenuous efforts indeed to keep our enterprise a secret, but it seems that all our elaborate security precautions have been as naught. One of you,’ he turned to the others, ‘has talked.’

‘Look at the man,’ said Viner, ‘archaeologist written all over him.’

The Doctor smiled his upsetting smile and brushed off a top layer of the dust on his coat.

‘Does it show?’ he asked.

‘There!’ Viner turned triumphantly to the Professor.

‘You see! It’s impossible to keep a secret in the scientific world.’

Doctor Who denied nothing, just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

‘But Doctor—’ Victoria touched his arm.

‘Tell ’em, Doctor, tell ’em who we are,’ said Jamie.

‘Not until they tell me the purpose of their expedition,’

said the Doctor firmly.

Parry drew himself up. ‘Don’t pretend you are not fully aware... This is an archaeological expedition. We are searching the universe for the last remains of the Cybermen.’

‘Aye... I guessed it.’ Jamie turned to the Doctor.

‘Cybermen—you mean they came from here?’

‘But of course,’ said Professor Parry, on his special subject. ‘Of course, young man. Telos was their home.’ He pointed to the great doors. ‘We believe this to be the entrance, the entrance to their city.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Viner bustled forward to show off his knowledge too. ‘Now we know that they died out many centuries ago. What we want to know is why they died out.

You see, there are four distinct theories on this subject...’

‘Callum!’ interrupted Captain Hopper. ‘Callum!

Rogers!’ Viner, fuming, glared at him but the Captain ignored him.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Callum.

Hopper crouched down over the dead man and turned him over. ‘Take him back to the rocket, you two.’

Callum and Rogers bent down and expertly lifted the now stiffening body while the others watched in silence.

The archaeologists had momentarily forgotten the dead man. It interfered with their work.

Hopper turned to Parry. ‘Coming back with me, Professor?’

The Professor, who was deep in the old familiar arguments about the origin of the Cybermen with Viner, looked at him vaguely.

‘Er—what for?’ he asked.

The Captain was exasperated. ‘You’re not going on with this, are you?’ he said. ‘Now I don’t know whether these people have anything to do with it or not—that’s your problem, Professor. It’s your expedition. All I know is that there’s something deadly about this place. One of my crew has just been killed. That means it’s time to pull out.’

The group of archaeologists stared back at the space-crew.

‘You were well paid,’ came Klieg’s voice.

‘I don’t think you heard me, Mr Klieg,’ said Captain Hopper with a more menacing voice than he had yet allowed himself. ‘One of my crew has just been killed. That is what I said.’

‘And I said you were well paid,’ snapped Klieg. ‘People often get killed in your profession.’

‘Think it over,’ said Captain Hopper, giving the archaeologists one more look and turning away. Callum and Rogers walked with him towards the space-craft at the far side of the crater, carrying the body.

‘We’ll wait for you back at the ship,’ called Hopper.

When they had gone, the archaeologists tried to forget about the safety he offered and looked at each other nervously. For a moment they had forgotten the stranger in the old frock-coat, but the Doctor was busy examining the doors.

‘The problem, I take it, is to open these doors—right ?’

he said with a slight smile.

‘Brilliant,’ replied Klieg sarcastically.

‘Yes, er, this is the problem, er... Doctor,’ said the Professor, using ‘Doctor’ in the same questioning way as Jamie and Victoria.

‘And we would prefer it,’ said Klieg suddenly, moving towards the Doctor, ‘if you returned to wherever you came from.’

There was a muttered agreement from the group.

‘Och, they really can make ye welcome here,’ saidn Jamie ironically.

‘Oh yes,’ said Victoria, running over to the Doctor and touching his arm. ‘Let’s go back, Doctor. I don’t like it here.’

‘No.’ The Doctor turned on them quickly, a different look in his catlike, green eyes. ‘We’re not leaving.’ He spoke in a voice of quiet authority. ‘No. That became impossible from the moment that name was mentioned’

‘What name, Doctor?’ asked Victoria.

‘Cybermen,’ said the Doctor.

‘I knew they were on the same quest!’ Viner’s tight envious little voice spluttered. ‘I knew it.’

‘Nobody would come here for any other reason,’ said the Professor quietly.

‘No,’ said the Doctor again, with the same firmness. ‘We must stay here.’

‘Are ye sure, Doctor?’ cried Jamie anxiously, because he didn’t like the sound of this quest any more than Victoria did. He came from a time even further back from the realisation of space monsters than Victoria, though in his day people had accepted the magic of horrible visitations from the sky and knew it was prudent not to meddle with such things.

‘If they’re Cybermen,’ said Victoria, pointing to the cruel lines of the Cybermen on the door, ‘I don’t like the look of them at all.’

There was silence. The archaeologists, Parry, Viner, even Klieg and the inscrutable Kaftan, felt the authority of the Doctor and knew it was no good objecting.

‘We shall help you in your, search,’ said the Doctor simply.

‘And suppose we don’t want your help?’ asked Klieg aggressively.

‘Ah, that’s just it,’ said the Doctor, ‘you so obviously do.

Come now,’ he said invitingly, giving them the full charm of his smile, ‘I’m sure we can agree. I can open these doors for you.’

Klieg stared at him. ‘I repeat, we don’t want your help!’

‘Hey, now!’ Jamie flared. ‘We’ve as much right here as you.’ He raised his clenched fist.

‘Of course, of course you have,’ said Professor Parry, walking between them and touching Jamie’s threatening arm so ineffectively that Jamie let it drop.

He turned to Klieg. ‘Mr Klieg,’ he said sharply, ‘must I remind you that you do not speak for this expedition. I am its leader, you and Miss Kaftan are only here on sufferance.’

‘Thank you!’ Klieg bowed, tense with fury. ‘And whose money is paying for the hire of that space craft?’

‘Mine,’ said Kaftan’s sibilant voice behind them, but so softly that only Klieg and the Doctor heard it.

‘I thought I had made it quite clear,’ pontificated Parry, happier now that he had a chance to re-establish his lost leadership, ‘I made it quite clear that your financial support did not in any way, shape or form entitle you to a say in the running of the expedition.’

Klieg, his body tense, moved a step nearer the elderly professor. But the Professor stood his ground. There was a silky rustle behind them.

‘Of course, Professor,’ came the soft, accented voice of Kaftan, ‘it’s quite clear that you and you alone will run the expedition. Is it not, Eric?’ she added with surprising sharpness.

Klieg looked at her, held still for a moment, then relaxed and nodded, controlling his anger.

‘Of course, Professor,’ he said evenly. ‘No one questions your leadership.’

‘All settled?’ said the Doctor in the bright irritating voice that adults use to settle children’s quarrels. ‘Then let’s open these doors, shall we?’

They watched him as he took out of the baggy pockets of his coat a small pocket instrument with a dial. This he clamped on the door. Whatever was on the dial must have been satisfactory because, with a sly grin, he stretched out his hands towards the large silver handles.

‘Careful, man!’ shouted Parry. ‘Look out!’

‘Whist ye!’

‘No, Doctor!’ jerked from the others.

The Doctor paused.

‘I’m sure it’s quite safe—now,’ said the Doctor. He reached out his hands and touched the door handles.

The others gasped but nothing happened. No flash. No sudden death.

He gripped the door handles and tugged, exerting all his strength, but they did not budge.

‘You’ll be killed, man’, whispered Viner, unable to keep away from the horrible sight of a man deliberately touching the fatal doors. Timidly he put out a hand to drag the Doctor away.

‘No!’ said Haydon. ‘Viner! Don’t touch him!’

Viner pulled back his quivering hand.

‘One more heave,’ said the Doctor jovially while the others stood round apprehensively sweating with fear.

The Doctor yanked again at the giant doors but they remained set fast, as unmoving as they had remained through the centuries.

‘Phew!’ The Doctor breathed hard, leaning against the doors while he got his breath.

‘Beyond my strength, I’m afraid,’ he said. He brought out a handkerchief blotched with chemicals and knots, and wiped his sweating face with it.

‘Here,’ said Jamie, stepping forward and baring his arms. ‘Let me have a go.’

‘Certainly, Jamie,’ said the Doctor. He smiled, stepped aside and sat down on a nearby rock to watch.

Jamie, hearing his own heart thump like a battle drum, stretched out his hands and touched the doors.

No shock. After resting a moment to let the black thump of fear die down, he began to pull in earnest. He pulled, yanked, and heaved with all his strength, but the doors would not budge.

Surely there couldn’t be a weight in the world, in the universe, that strong Jamie couldn’t shift? He pulled again, angrily, his heart thumping and the muscles in his neck standing out like wood. Of course he could do it, he, Jamie of the Highlands, Jamie who’d pulled redcoats off their horses at Culloden and tossed them into the gullies. But even he could not move the terrible doors one fraction of a millimetre.

‘Aye, well,’ said Jamie, turning back from the doors and trying not to show how winded he was. ‘Och, I’ve no had much exercise lately.’

‘Quite. Quite,’ said the Doctor. He looked at the group who stood before him. ‘Now,’ he said slowly. ‘ There is a man who could open these doors for us.’

They turned round to see who he was pointing at.

Toberman! The dark giant towered silently over the other humans with his great bald head gleaming with oil and his massive arms folded.

‘Him? Toberman?’ asked Kaftan. ‘He is my servant. I will not have him risk his life.’

‘Surely it was just for such a contingency as this,’ said Parry sharply, ‘that you insisted we bring him with us.’

Kaftan hesitated.

The Doctor turned to her. ‘Madam, there is no danger now,’ he said urbanely. ‘You have seen. Two of us have touched the doors without harm. Two very ordinary beings... of course, if he is afraid...’

Parting the group of ordinary humans, a menacing frown on his face, Toberman stepped forward and strode up. They watched as he tensed his massive body, every muscle ridged, against the huge doors. He pulled, pulled, and they could see his muscles stand rigid with the strain.

The others could see the sweat burst out of him, shining on his skin as he panted with the effort.

He won’t be able to do it, they thought. To open those doors is beyond human strength. Those doors were meant for Cybermen, creatures with metal limbs ten times stronger than the strongest human being.

There was a long creaking groan from the doors.

Everyone in the group stood transfixed as Toberman leant back and rested for a moment, communing with himself.

Crrrk! Crrrk! This time the doors visibly moved. They moved a few millimetres and dust fell on to the gigantic shoulders of the man. This time he didn’t stop for a rest but heaved steadily and the doors edged open, until they could see the darkness inside.

Toberman stopped for a moment, gaining his strength for a final effort, still not turning, like an athlete in a prize jump in the Olympics. Then once again he lifted up his great arms and pulled. This time, grating heavily as they moved, the doors swung open. Darkness yawned in front of them, and they felt the chill of the tomb air, as for the first time in centuries it seemed to move out towards them from the imprisoning doors.

Everyone took a step back from the evil darkness. Even the Doctor allowed fear to show on his face, but, as always, for a very different reason from everyone else.

‘I would be very careful in there, if I were you,’ he said.

‘Doors that a human can open?’ he added to himself thoughtfully.

‘Why weren’t you killed?’ asked Haydon suddenly.

‘Yes,’ came Klieg’s threatening voice. ‘What do you know about this place?’

The Doctor relaxed again into his usual casual pose.

‘Very little.’

‘What killed the crewman?’ asked Viner.

‘A very high amperage shock,’ said the Doctor.

‘Yes, obviously, but where did it come from?’

‘Perfectly straightforward,’ replied the Doctor. ‘There must be a very large electrical capacitance around here, associated with a large and very good conductor.’

He examined the ground by the doors as he spoke, kicking the sand away.

‘In fact, I think it must be... Yes!’

He looked round as if searching for something, glanced at Toberman’s great leather belt and picked from it a small sharp trowel-shaped instrument.

‘If I may?’. he asked the giant, smiling up at him.

Toberman grunted and nodded.

The Doctor crouched down and with the trowel scratched at the dust by the doors. Gradually he worked his way through the loose dust on top and the trowel scraped against something harder. Something brighter—

underneath the shine of metal. He stopped scraping, raised the handle of the trowel and thumped the ground with it.

A dull clanging rang though the thin air.

‘It’s not earth at all... It’s metal!’ said Victoria in wonder.

Haydon, the junior archaeologist, crouched down to examine it, felt it with his fingers and nodded.

‘Exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘Metal. There is metal sheeting under the top surface of this planet—and metal is the perfect conductor of electricity.’

‘Allow me,’ came from the Professor. He too knelt down, took the trowel and tapped the hard ground. Again it clanged, disturbingly—like a large empty boiler.

‘Of course. Of course,’ muttered the Professor. ‘There must be underground workings under here.’

‘But if there is electricity?’ asked Victoria.

‘That other poor fellow drained it all out through his body,’ replied the Doctor quietly. ‘It is now perfectly safe to enter. As far as the electricity is concerned, that is,’ he added.

‘Come on,’ said Klieg’s voice. ‘We’re wasting time.’ He started for the entrance. Then, he felt a hand on his arm, a gentle hand. Kaftan indicated to the Professor with her head. The Professor was standing trowel in hand, erect, ready to be furious.

‘But, of course,’ said Klieg with ill grace. ‘After you, Professor.’

Before them was the dark space between the great doors.

Parry took out a large pocket torch and stepped across the threshold, half-expecting to be electrocuted, not sure whether to believe the Doctor.

Viner, nervously polishing his glasses as though every step was to be his last, followed him inside and then Haydon, Kaftan, Toberman and Klieg.

‘But we’d still better be careful,’ said the Doctor as he watched their figures being swallowed up by the dimness,

‘very careful.’

Victoria and Jamie stood beside him, watching.

‘Come on. Let’s join them,’ said the Doctor, and he and Jamie stepped forward. But Victoria, frightened—more by instinct than by knowledge, because she alone knew little about the Cybermen—hung back.

‘Come on, Victoria,’ said the Doctor. But she didn’t move.

He walked up to her and smiled gently. ‘You know, really you look very nice in that dress,’ he said as if it had just popped into his head.

‘Oh!’ said Victoria, startled out of her fear. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’ She looked down at her skirt. ‘It still seems a bit, er—’

‘Short?’ joked the Doctor to make her less embarrassed.

‘Well, don’t worry about that—look at that great Jamie there!’

‘What’s that?’ Jamie, waiting to go in the fearful entrance, couldn’t understand what the Doctor meant.

Then he looked down at the kilt that left his thick knobbly knees in full view. ‘If you’re saying anything against the kilt...’ he began indignantly, then saw the twinkle in the Doctor’s eye.

‘Oh. Aye, well, it’s a wee bit short for young Alice there,’

said Jamie.

‘Not at all.’ Victoria forgot her fears and turned on him.

‘Just because you come from the wilds...’

‘When you’ve both finished,’ said the Doctor casually.

‘Let’s go and see what they’re up to in there.’

4

Cyberman Control Room

The light of the Doctor’s torch showed a dark passage leading directly into the crater wall. Once inside the cold dark of the tomb seemed to cling to them as if the place could never be warm or know sunlight.

Cautiously they walked along the entrance passage, their footsteps muffled in fine ancient dust that had sifted through the minute crack of the entrance doors.

‘Look! It’s opening out,’ whispered Jamie, and Victoria was glad he had taken her arm. Their eyes were becoming used to the gloom now, and in the light from their space-torches they could see the roof lift and the walls widen until they were in a vast chamber, gleaming as if the rock it was cut from was a kind of metal.

Along the walls on the far side were control desks with levers, dials, blank TV monitor screens and arrays of hieroglyphic figures, coils of fine wires, and everywhere, on the floor, festooning from metal wall to metal wall, long linking cables. In the middle control console, a thin arrow, like the hand of a clock, stood in a circle of blocks of letters and numerals.

‘Just look at this,’ breathed Victoria.

Around the room above the computer controls, marched a gigantic procession of Cyberman bas-reliefs. As large as the Cybermen themselves, glistening in the slightly phosphorescent metal, they loomed in frightening order. A march of exactly similar beings.

As Victoria’s space-torch shone on to first one then another, they seemed to move, to bulge slightly towards her and then sink back as her torch found the next one.

Cybermen marched across space between planets, they marched over a rubble of tiny crushed people, they climbed out of their long cigar-shaped spaceships, and, in one bas-relief, two whirling worlds spun so close to each other they seemed to clash.

‘That was the last time we had the pleasure of their company,’ said the Doctor. ‘They lived on the “Tenth Planet”, Mondas, then.’

‘Pleasure!’ began Jamie. ‘What’s the pleasure in those...’

Victoria stopped him, placing her finger on his lips—

she was quicker than Jamie in understanding when the Doctor was speaking ironically.

In the gloom of the other side of the control room, they could hear Professor Parry’s voice, scholarly, assured, in his element: ‘These controls are of their earlier dynasties,’

he was saying. Haydon and Viner were leaning with him, close over the dust-covered metal and stone.

Where they were standing the console certainly looked clumsier, with attempts at decorated columns like early television sets and cables thick as boa-constrictors. Over one of them stood the bas-relief of an early Cyberman, something remarkably like a normal human being.

‘Yes, in those dynasties they still had many human traits...’ continued the Professor, staring at the ancient carved figure as if it could tell him the truth about what happened when a man changed to a Cyberman. Although it was human, already the figure had a pose as stiff as the Cybermen and already it was encased in metal and plastic.

But you could see the shape of human muscles in the thighs and calves, and there was still a face behind the helmet, although a blank face. What had that man thought? Had he realised what was already happening to him—the transition from man to machine?

‘Primitive, Cyberman Level Nine,’ murmured Viner.

‘You can tell by his artefacts.’

‘Not so very early by the look of it!’ exclaimed Haydon in excitement. ‘Look, it’s already got the ancillary breathing apparatus!’

‘I’m quite capable of making my own deductions, thank you,’ snapped Viner, never off his guard against someone beating him in the scholarly race.

‘Suit yourself,’ shrugged Haydon, unperturbed. He moved on to the next bas-relief and its console and computer, and was immediately absorbed in the marvellous problems and solutions it offered him.

‘This must be the central control,’ he heard Parry say, and the group moved across to the main console. ‘Yes. The latest. This is the one that activates the whole of Telos.’

The Doctor and his companions followed him over. The console was the magnificent centre-piece of the high metallic hall, like the high altar of a cathedral. Haydon had rigged up an emergency lamp that gave an eerie yellow light to the whole apparatus.

On the other side of the control console, Klieg, Kaftan and Toberman were standing. They looked along the massed arrays of levers, buttons and colour-coded panels trying to relate it to their own Earth computers.

‘There may be danger here,’ said Klieg.

‘Don’t worry, I do not fear,’ came Kaftan’s beautiful.

voice, ‘with Toberman to guard me—why should I?’

She looked round and lowered her voice. ‘What is more important,’ she whispered, ‘is to keep an eye on these strangers.’

‘I tried to get rid of them,’ answered Klieg loudly, ‘told them they were not wanted here.’

‘Shsh,’ whispered Kaftan, touching him gently on the arm. ‘Eric! Keep your voice down, you will achieve nothing by shouting.’

He looked back at her attentively.

‘You look after the Doctor,’ she whispered. ‘You know what I mean?’

He nodded. ‘I will watch the girl,’ she continued.

‘And the Scots boy?’ whispered Klieg harshly. He had taken a dislike to Jamie’s belligerence.

‘Leave him to Toberman,’ Kaftan smiled at the dark giant. ‘Eh, Toberman?’

Toberman smiled and lifted his great hands as if clutching them round Jamie’s neck.

‘But you will be careful and discreet,’ added Kaftan to Toberman, looking at him intently with her beautiful eyes.

‘Understand?’

‘I understand,’ nodded Toberman.

They moved over to join the others by the console.

Kaftan smiled to herself to see the open wonder with which Victoria and Jamie stared up at it.

‘What is it?’ Jamie was saying. ‘Is it an altar to some heathen god?’

‘Something like that,’ said the Doctor.

‘But what does it do?’ asked Victoria. ‘I can’t see any cogwheels or turbines—how can it work?’

Doctor Who glanced at her, pleased with her intelligent engineer’s question. ‘It does have “cogwheels and turbines”

of a sort, Victoria,’ he said. ‘But very advanced ones. Too advanced even for our archaeological friends here. And yet, I don’t know, that’s strange...’ he added to himself. He was looking at the central control panel, with its clock-like dial and oddly arranged collection of numbers and symbols.

They were all symbols the Doctor knew from his twentieth-century experience on Earth.

‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’ asked Jamie, belligerent because he was feeling nervous among all these machines hundreds of years ahead of his time.

‘I don’t know, Jamie. But it’s very strange,’ mused the Doctor. Then he drifted away from the central console and started examining the wall, first with his space-torch and then with his fingers, leaning against the wall and tapping, crouching down and examining every inch of the surface with a magnifying glass.

‘Ahem,’ came from the centre of the vast room. It was a scholarly clearing of the throat and could have come only from the Professor. ‘Ahem. Now that we are all here, perhaps we had better take stock of the situation. This appears to be a dead end,’ he said. ‘The only way down appears to be through that hatch.’ He pointed to a central hatchway beside the console. It resembled the conning tower of a submarine with a massive circular hatch—closed as securely as a bank vault.

‘Are there no doors into the interior of the mountain?’

asked Kaftan.

‘Apparently not—apart from the entrance door,’ said the Professor.

‘And, of course, the other two, you were going to say!’

added the Doctor quietly, as if to himself.

‘I beg your pardon?’ The Professor swung round rapidly. The others stared at the Doctor, their suspicions aroused again. Who was this strange man and how much did he know?

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ murmured the Doctor. He turned back to resume his examination of the walls.

‘Two other doors?’ asked Viner angrily. ‘Impossible!’

‘One in this section,’ said the Doctor, pointing, ‘and one in that.’ He pointed to walls which to the others seemed unbroken. ‘Activated, I should imagine, from this logical system here,’ said the Doctor.

He strolled towards the central console, studied it for a moment and pressed a few buttons experimentally.

Nothing happened.

‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try another way!’

He tentatively pulled one lever halfway down, studying the complex dials which had begun to flicker. ‘Yes, yes, a simple logical gate—splendid! Splendid!’ Excitedly he pulled two more of the sliding levers up to full.

On the right side of the control console there was a stir in the Cybermen figures on the apparently unbroken wall, and as a large panel slid aside, a black gap appeared.

There were exclamations from the assembled party as the Doctor quickly moved to the other side of the console and reproduced the same sequence with the levers.

Another panel with its embossed Cybermen figure slid aside revealing a corridor on the far side of the central room.

‘You seem very familiar with the place, Doctor,’ said Klieg with an edge in his voice.

‘I hardly needed to be,’ said the Doctor. ‘There must be doors here—the problem was merely to find them. You see, this system is based on a symbolic logic. The same as you use on computers. The opening mechanism for these doors—you call it an OR gate, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, I can see that,’ said Klieg, impatient with this suggestion that he didn’t know his maths. ‘But how did you know in the first place?’

He went over close to the Doctor and looked insultingly into his face as if daring him to a fight.

‘I used my special technique,’ said the Doctor calmly.

‘Really, Doctor?’ asked Klieg sarcastically, his black jowl set close up to the Doctor’s face. ‘And may we know what that means?’

The Doctor stood opposite Klieg, casual, his hands in his baggy frock-coat pockets. The other men were silent, scenting trouble, looking from the heavy-built scientist to the slight figure of the Doctor.

‘Keeping my eyes open and my mouth closed,’ the Doctor answered.

The tension broke, the men relaxed. Haydon laughed, and even Kaftan caught herself smiling at Klieg’s furious expression.

Parry stepped between them before Klieg could answer.

‘Ahem,’ came the scholarly throat clearing again, until he had their attention. ‘Now. We are far too many to explore together. I think we had better divide up. If you, Mr Viner, will explore with—er—’ He looked at the red-haired Scot, not knowing what to call him.

‘Ma name is Jamie.’

‘Thank you. And Mr Haydon will take the other passage.’

‘What about us?’ asked Victoria, immediately suspecting the worst.

‘You ladies had better remain here,’ said the Professor.

‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Victoria, no longer the shy Victorian miss she seemed to be. ‘We can make a party, can’t we?’ she said eagerly to Kaftan.

‘Certainly,’ replied the woman, smiling at the girl’s eagerness. ‘With Toberman with us, we need have no fear.’

Victoria didn’t say that they need have no fear even without Toberman. She came from a lively Victorian family, brought up by an unconventional, scientist father, and it didn’t really surprise her to find there were fuddy-duddies in future centuries as well, who thought women always needed men to protect them. What they needed were brains, and, if necessary, weapons, she thought to herself. But she was pleased that Kaftan was coming with her. She had been very struck by Kaftan’s great beauty and self-assurance, and the way even the truculent Klieg seemed to defer to her.

‘Very well,’ said the Professor, a little upset that even the youngest member of the group challenged his orders.

‘Very well. Then Mr Klieg, would you take the ladies along with you?’

Klieg looked over at the Doctor suspiciously. ‘If he is going to stay here—then I shall stay also,’ he said.

‘Oh, as you wish,’ said the Professor, angrily. ‘Then, the women will go with Mr Viner. Now we must all be back at the space craft by,’ he glanced at his space-time watch,

‘16.30.’

He looked around. ‘Now you all know about the temperature drop at night. So we’ll meet back here at 15.30. If anyone is missing that will give us an hour to look for them before we have to leave.’

‘Right,’ said Viner, who had been fidgeting impatiently.

‘Come along then,’ he said, ‘we’ll take the left-hand opening.’

He walked quickly over to the left-hand gap in the wall, eager to explore. Kaftan turned to Victoria and smiled.

‘We’d better keep close together,’ she said, and put out her hand to take Victoria’s.

‘I’m all right, thank you,’. said Victoria, not taking her hand.

‘Goodbye, Doctor.’ She walked beside the sinuous Kaftan into the darkness of the doorway followed by Toberman. The Doctor watched her go a little thoughtfully.

‘Come on then, young Jamie,’ said Haydon. ‘We’ll take the right side.’

The two of them walked into the gloom of the right-hand doorway.

‘Good,’ said the Professor. ‘Now we can concentrate on getting into this hatchway—or whatever it is.’

He moved over to the well and observed it carefully.

‘This hatch must lead somewhere and there must be an opening mechanism.’

They stood beside the metal conning-tower hatch and looked at the central control panel.

‘What about this, Doctor?’ Professor Parry said.

But the Doctor was standing in his most casual pose with his hands in his baggy pockets; leaning against the hatch.

He shook his head. ‘No. No ideas this time, I’m afraid.

Besides,’ he said, giving a colleague’s polite bow, ‘I think it’s time Mr Klieg had his chance to show his skills.’

Klieg glared at the Doctor. He went over to the control panel and stared at the symbols.

‘I always love to watch an expert at work,’ said the Doctor, smiling innocently.

5

The Recharging Room

The dark doorway that had swallowed up Victoria and Kaftan led to a short black corridor. Viner’s brisk march slowed to a cautious walk.

‘Look—’ Viner pointed to where the passageway ended: no door, just the arched entrance to—what? He went through, cautiously, followed by Victoria and Kaftan. It led to a large square room, lofty but not so vast as the great control room they had just left. Viner shone his torch around the room. A shape loomed ahead of them. What was it? An open coffin? A torture machine like an iron maiden? In the light from their space-torches they could make out an upright form like a great chrysalis or mummy case, hollow, with two human-shaped doors, gaping open.

‘That is big enough to hold a Cyberman!’ came in awe from Kaftan. Victoria realised that it was a case that would fit round one of those giant Cyberman figures like a violin case. It was big enough to hold a creature three metres tall.

At the top were powerful cables leading into a smaller version of the console in the main control room, set on the opposite wall to the entrance.

‘What kind of room is this?’ asked Victoria, and her voice seemed too loud in the listening silence.

‘I don’t know,’ said Viner with scholarly exactitude.

‘Possibly this is where the Cybermen were made.’

‘Made!’ exclaimed Victoria in horror, staring at the great hollow shape looming over them.

‘Well, they changed their arms and legs into bionic limbs. This is probably where they put a Cyberman together and charged him with these bio-projectors.’ He touched one of the hose-like projectors—arms on the inside of the cabinet. ‘Especially the brain: note the thickness and number of cables to the brain area.’

Victoria put her hand to her head as if it were in danger of being invaded by metal cables. When she had joined the Doctor electricity was only something that her father argued fiercely about over the after-dinner port whenever Dr Faraday came to dinner. Faraday didn’t like carrots, she remembered.

‘Where is Toberman?’ said Viner suddenly.

‘I sent him to join the others. We do not need his protection now that you are with us, eh?’ said Kaftan. Viner looked up suspiciously, scenting sarcasm, but the woman smiled warmly at him.

‘Now,’ said Viner, clearing his throat in imitation of Professor Parry. ‘Everything must be carefully measured and recorded.’ He took out a notebook and a blunt pencil.

Victoria gave a slight scream. Viner dropped his pencil.

‘What on earth is the matter now?’ he snapped irritably.

‘Can’t you see?’ she said. ‘We don’t need the torches. It’s getting lighter.’

The walls of the room had taken on a faint glow, light enough to make out the details of the room without torches.

‘What is it?’ asked Kaftan.

‘It must be...’ Viner struggled to understand. ‘Some kind of phosphorescent quality in the walls,’ he said. ‘It must be reacting to the light from these torches.’

‘Now, please.’ He turned abruptly and pushed Victoria out of the way of the console. ‘You’re getting in, my way! If you’d just go over there somewhere. Not where I’m working.’ He pointed vaguely over to the Cyberman form.

‘Oh, fiddle,’ snapped the quick-tempered Victoria. She went over to the Cyberman case and as she got close to its smooth hollow, could not resist putting her hand inside and touching its finely ribbed interior.

‘Could this not be the purpose of the room?’ asked Kaftan.

‘A Cyberman would stand in that form and be—well—

revitalised. No? That must be it.’

Viner looked at her with respect. ‘Yes, of course!’ he replied eagerly. ‘That is most reasonable. These bioprojectors—’ He pointed to the hose-like projections around the Cyberman form. ‘They were probably meant to fire in some sort of neuro-electric potential. Yes, that’s it.

Not making Cybermen so much as revitalising them. Recharging their batteries, you might say.’ He paused, but they didn’t laugh at his little joke. ‘Yes, that’s it, Madam. I think you’re right.’

Victoria was now standing right inside the Cyberman sarcophagus, measuring her size against the nozzles of the bio-projectors.

‘The Cybermen must have been giants!’

She ran her hands over the gleaming cool surfaces.

‘Will you please be careful and come out of there,’

remonstrated Viner like a schoolmaster. ‘The first rule of archaeological work is that nothing must be touched until it has been described and recorded.’

Victoria reluctantly stepped out. He turned back to his notebook.

‘Now, please, we have far too little time here to waste any. Cable number three runs from point four in the diagram to cowl three,’ he said forcing himself to concentrate. Victoria, like a little girl, made a face at his back, stepped back into the Cyberman form and again ran her fingers along its tantalising inner surface.

Kaftan glanced at Viner to make sure he was fully absorbed. She quickly examined the controls, worked out which should logically be the main switch and pressed it down. Nothing happened. Victoria stood, idly humming, in the Cyberman form, and Viner, lost to the world, was niggling away in his notebook. Kaftan waited. But no beginning click or hum responded to the switch. The controls were dead.

She quickly threw the switch up again and turned to Victoria. ‘Are you pretending to be a Cyberman?’

Jamie and Haydon had progressed at a watchful pace down the right corridor. This corridor too glistened with silvery walls, completely blank.

‘You know!’ said Jamie. ‘It’s just struck me—these corridors are getting light yet there are no windows, away down here.’

‘Alpha meson phosphor,’ said Haydon casually. He looked at the arch at the end of the corridor, wondering where it led.

‘Eh?’ said Jamie.

‘It’s a lighting system that feeds on light. Works by letting cosmic rays bombard a layer of barium. These torches are enough to activate it.’

‘Oh, aye. That!’ Jamie answered as casually. Every day since he’d met the Doctor, he’d been surrounded with such a forest of things he didn’t understand. He’d found that by keeping his mouth shut and saying ‘Oh, aye, that,’ in an off-hand voice whenever people started mentioning such things, he could fool them into believing he knew what they were talking about. It usually worked.

The archway opened into a long rectangular room. At the far end there were a pair of close-fitting doors. But in this room too there was a central console, smaller than the one in the great control hall.

‘Point is,’ said Haydon, ‘what was this room used for?’

‘Mebbe to raise caterpillars,’ came Jamie’s voice. He bent down by the console and came up with something in his hand—a silver object like a large caterpillar or silver fish, the size of his forearm.

‘For heaven’s sake watch out, until we know what it is!’

shouted Haydon.

‘Och, I’m accustomed to handling creatures,’ said Jamie, holding the silver thing gently but firmly by its sides.

‘Anyway it’s dead,’ said Jamie, feeling the chill of its cold stillness in his hand. ‘Dead as a stone.’

‘No wonder,’ said Haydon. ‘It was never alive—it’s made from metal and plastic, like a Cyberman.’

He looked down at the metal object with its two red bulbs for eyes.

‘But what is it for, then?’ said Jamie. ‘Surely it’ll no be a pet!’

In the Control Room, the top brains of the party were working steadily at the Cyberman code. Klieg was leaning intently over the code machine, frowning slightly and working out combinations on the colour-coded tiers of buttons. The Professor watched over his shoulder, mentally checking each move. But the Doctor, as usual doing something entirely different from the others, seemed totally uninterested in the code, and was looking at the well hatch, which remained tightly shut.

‘Well?’ breathed the Professor impatiently over Klieg’s shoulder.

‘The basis of the code is binary,’ said Klieg.

‘Of course,’ snapped the Professor. ‘Go on.’

‘—To digital,’ continued Klieg, ‘with an intervening step involving a sort of Whitehead logic. When this Pourrier series is complete,’ he pointed to a board engraved with Roman numerals, ‘then there is no more to be done.’

‘Agreed. Yes,’ nodded the Professor.

‘But why do it?’ The Doctor’s lazy voice cut irritatingly into their concentration.

‘Really, Doctor.’ Professor Parry rounded on him. ‘For a professional archaeologist, you seem to be singularly lacking in curiosity.’

The Doctor looked back at him, his face grave for once.

‘Some things are better left untapped,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that this isn’t one of them.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said Klieg, suspiciously.

‘Well,’ said the Doctor slowly. ‘It’s all too easy, isn’t it?’

‘EASY!’ exclaimed Klieg, exasperated. He had mentally sweated blood to work out those equations.

‘Ahem, I would not call this an easy survey, would you, Klieg?’ said the Professor.

‘No. No.’ Klieg shook his head decisively. ‘Everything is designed to keep their secrets, whatever they are, insoluble.’

‘Insoluble?’ said the Doctor sharply. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘This mathematical sequence for example, I’m really no nearer the solution,’ said Klieg. ‘I’ve now tried every possible combination. You’d hardly call that easy.’

The Doctor glanced at the panel, with its arrays of buttons pressed down by Klieg into complex groups and patterns.

‘What you have done there is mostly right,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ said Klieg, bowing sarcastically.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, leaning against the gleaming console in his shapeless frock-coat, ‘you see, any progressive series can be converted into binary notation. If you take the sum of each integral, then express the result as a power series, the indices show the basic binary blocks.’

Klieg’s face lit up—’Of course!’ he shouted, and he started forward.

But the Doctor’s hand grabbed his sleeve.

‘Only I wouldn’t try it. I really wouldn’t try it.’

Klieg hesitated for a second, then broke free, snatched up his pad and started reading off the combination of figures on to the dial.

‘Don’t you wonder why their codes fit exactly the stage of mathematical knowledge you and your friends have arrived at?’ said the Doctor quietly.

The Professor looked back at him, puzzled, not understanding what he was driving at.

‘You’re right!’ shouted Klieg excitedly as his fingers moved fast over the code machine. ‘Look! Sum between limits of 1 and 91 integral into power series, yes, yes!’

He leaned across to pull a lever while still playing the keyboard of buttons with his other hand, and as the Professor and the Doctor watched, a low humming noise rose in the room and grew in volume and pitch. The lights set around the vast control room began to come on. The rows of buttons lit up in their reds, greens, blues and yellows, and the clock-like pointer on the dial began moving by itself.

‘What have you done!’ Professor Parry said, alarmed.

The three of them stood transfixed in the middle of the room which now seemed like the power room of some gigantic reactor. Below their feet they could see the floor vibrating with a steady, rumbling throb. The room began to shake as if moved by an earthquake. The main lights now began to flicker on and off and the Cybermen reliefs glowed as if they were coming alive.

‘What’s happening?’ said Klieg—shaken for the first time. He turned to the Doctor.

‘I’m not sure,’ the Doctor said calmly. ‘Maybe your Cybermen aren’t as dormant as you think. We’d better check on the others.’

6

The Target Room

‘What’s that?’ said Viner.

Victoria, still standing in the Cyberman shell, looked up startled, and the three of them listened with growing fear as the humming changed to a muffled roar and then the thudding began. Round them the floors and walls. began to vibrate.

Kaftan was the first to gather her wits together and realise what was happening. The machines were activating.

She turned back to the control console and pulled down the recharging lever.

The open doors of the Cyberman form began to close. A shadow moved across Victoria’s face, she looked up, gasped and moved, but her hand and leg were between the doors.

Blackness closed in on her, the cold metal touch on her leg and arm forced her to draw them back. The doors of the form closed tight. The form was complete. Victoria, trapped in the blackness of the shell, screamed and beat with her fists on the doors. Viner ran over to her, pulling at the outside of the doors, but there were no handles or any sign of an opening mechanism. He ran back stumbling to the control console, where Kaftan seemed to be gazing in alarm at the buttons and levers.

‘Did you touch anything?’ he shouted at her.

She shook her head in amazed horror.

‘No. No. I will try...’ She reached out her hand towards another lever—

‘Keep away from that board!’ shouted Viner, snatching her hand away and unceremoniously pushing her back.

He rushed back to the form and tried to wrench at the doors, tried to get a purchase with his fingers in the crack of the join.

‘Here. Help me! ’ he shouted at Kaftan.

She stayed by the control for a second more and pushed a button down.

‘Will you come!’

She ran over and scrabbled and scratched with him at the perfect, flush joining of the doors. Overhead the nozzles of the bio-projectors began to flash and arc.

‘We’ll need a crowbar to get this open,’ he said, sweating with the effort. ‘The poor girl.’

‘It may already be too late,’ said Kaftan.

‘That’s strange,’ said Jamie.

‘What?’

Jamie was looking down at the silver-fish creature that lay in his hand.

‘You know, I could swear the wee thing moved,’ said Jamie.

They both looked intently at the stiff glistening scales, the antennae of fine wire, the ruby eyes. But it lay cold metal in his hand.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Hayden.

‘Put it down, Jamie’

Jamie, thoughtful, set it on the faintly vibrating floor.

‘You’re seeing things, old chap,’ said Haydon jovially, trying to reassure himself. ‘Come and look at this. The whole control panel—look!’

Jamie had hardly registered the control panel before.

With all its lights, illuminated in red, green and blue, it could not be ignored.

‘The point is—which one to try first,’ said Haydon, scanning the panel like a boy with a new train set.

‘I wouldna touch any of it if I were you,’ said Jamie. It was his turn to be afraid now.

But Haydon wasn’t listening to him. He was alone in a wonderworld of new technological marvels to discover.

‘Let’s start from the main control row... here.’ He pushed a button down, stood back from the machine and looked around the room.

Nothing. He turned back to the console, thumb up-raised.

‘Hold on awhile,’ said Jamie.

There was something different about the room. The light had started to dim. Now if there was one thing Jamie didn’t like, it was darkness. Darkness was full of hobgoblins who led your horse into the bog, or footpads who robbed and dirked you before you had time to hit back. No one in Jamie’s village stayed out after dark if they had any sense.

‘It’s getting dark,’ whispered Jamie, and he didn’t know he was clutching on to Haydon’s arm. Haydon wasn’t too happy either.

As the light dimmed and faded and the darkness crept across the room, on the far wall something took form—a shape that gradually resolved into a circle. Out of it grew another circle. And another. Moving coloured circles that bubbled out of each other and as Jamie stared, fascinated, began to shimmer, like rainbows when the sun shines on the rain.

‘Hey, Jamie,’ said Haydon. ‘Snap out of it. Jamie boy!’

But as Haydon turned to examine the control panel again, Jamie was still staring at the glowing, growing circles as if hypnotised.

Viner raced through the corridor into the central control room, disturbing Klieg and the Professor, who were studying the revolving drums of numerals clicking up in a steady progression on the board.

‘Well?’ The Professor’s concentration was broken, again. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Quick... Doctor.’ He gasped for breath, his large eyes flicking nervously under the thick glass of his spectacles.

‘Victoria?’ said the Doctor sharply, as if he had expected something to happen.

The man nodded. ‘Trapped in...’ But the Doctor was already running to the entrance to the corridor.

The dark passageway was now as bright as a super market, the walls lit as if from behind.

The Doctor reached the archway leading into the room and stopped for a moment, taking in the dark sinister sarcophagus with the nozzles flashing and arcing above it.

Viner ran up to him. ‘She’s in there, Doctor, I told her it was...’

‘Yes! Yes!’ The Doctor cut him off abruptly, then turned to face Kaftan, still standing by the control panel.

‘I’d stand well clear of those if I were you.’ His voice rang, cold and clear, over the pulsating rumble of machinery. ‘Now get back.’

Kaftan, hearing the authority in the Doctor’s voice, moved away.

The Doctor walked forward into the room, his green cat’s eyes still on the woman’s face. ‘You never know who might get hurt when you touch these things.’

Kaftan shrugged, but the Doctor turned abruptly back to the controls, ignoring her.

‘There must be a release, Doctor, but where?’ Viner was literally wringing his hands.

‘The poor girl,’ said Kaftan. ‘You must hurry. Every moment could count.’

The Doctor remained silent, letting nothing intrude into his mind except the desperately necessary mathematical equations. He did not let himself wonder what Victoria must be feeling in the tight blackness.

‘I think this is the right sequence,’ he said quietly.

‘Viner, stand by to help her out, will you?’

Viner nodded and went over to the black Cyberman sarcophagus. The others watched while the Doctor hesitated a second, like a man on a high diving board, and then quietly pulled three levers, pressed a button and flicked a switch in one easy, fluid movement.

‘Doctor!’ shouted. Viner, as the Cyberform slowly opened up like a giant clam and released its prey.

Victoria stumbled out, with Viner helping, and by the time she was out, the Doctor had rushed over and she fell into his arms. She clung to him while he patted her gently, showing his concern in a rare moment of self-revelation.

‘It’s all right, you’re safe now.’

At last she moved, and slowly stood up.

‘I didn’t enjoy that much, Doctor,’ she said ruefully.

‘You’ll have to be a little more careful in future, won’t you?’ the Doctor smiled at her. But his eyes turned hard as he looked over the girl’s shoulder at Kaftan.

‘Jamie!’ Haydon was shouting, grabbing his arm and shaking the Scot—but Jamie didn’t seem to hear him.

Jamie’s whole attention was fixed on the endless whirling circles. They were more than circles; spheres, vortices, that ran into each other and trapped Jamie’s mind with them, endlessly round and round in a riot of colour, glittering with crimson, rose colour, scarlet, vermilion, orange, yellow, green, blue, royal blue, ultramarine, violet, purple, deep purple and back to dark, dark red.

‘Jamie!’ Haydon, shaken himself by the unearthly psychedelic beauty, roughly shoved his hands in front of Jamie’s face to shield his eyes from the shapes.

‘Don’t watch them! Jamie! Don’t watch them!’

‘I must. I must,’ murmured Jamie. ‘I canna take my eyes away—I dinna want to take my... to take my eyes away. I must look...’ He shook himself free of the older man’s restraining arm and moved slowly, step by step, towards the glowing wall. With every step he took, the shapes seemed to melt, open, glow deeper, bigger, welcoming him into their power. Haydon followed him and tried once more to stop him.

But it was as if Jamie was obeying an order and the archaeologist was no match for the tough Highlander.

‘Aye, I can see it well, now,’ he murmured, as he stepped first with one foot and then with the other, unable to stop himself, towards the lure of the wall.

Haydon let go of Jamie’s arm. In desperation he ran to the control console and with no time to think, pressed the first button his fingers met.

The loud hum changed key, the shapes changed suddenly—but smoothly, without losing their dream power—into green bubbles, great turquoise bubbles of something a thousand times cooler and more soothing than water, bubbles that whirled and circled and glowed, pulling Jamie in like a whirlpool.

‘Yes,’ said Jamie. ‘Yes.’

Sweating, Haydon pressed another button. The shapes fluttered for a moment, then remained unaltered. He tried another control button, again nothing seemed to happen.

He wiped his face with his sleeve, Jamie had only three steps more to go, the Scot’s body was already turning green with the shine from the wall—he pushed forward the remaining control of the board, a small T-shaped lever.

The lights died. The hum groaned down to nothing. The colours fell into grey and the wall turned blank again.

Jamie stood as if transfixed by the wall, as still as a statue—then he bowed his head, rubbed his eyes and turned away.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Haydon, anxiously. ‘Hey!

Jamie boy?’ He snapped his fingers in front of Jamie’s face.

‘Where have I been?’

‘Under some form of hypnosis.’

‘Hyp—What would that be?’ asked Jamie, too bemused to keep up his pretence of understanding everything.

‘It’s when someone gets power over you by getting your mind hooked on something—a flickering light, like that one. You can’t stop looking and your mind goes to sleep.

You fall under someone else’s control.’

‘You mean... like being bewitched?’ asked the boy, awed.

‘You could call it that.’

‘Aye,’ said Jamie, beginning to comprehend.

‘Enchantment, that’s what it felt like.’

They leaned against the console, resting from the strangeness of the experience.

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Jamie, some of his old spirit coming back. ‘What would a Cyberman want with enchanting? They’re no flesh and blood creatures like us.

They’ve no feelings.’

‘Yes. You’re right,’ mused Haydon. ‘What would the Cybermen want with a hypnotising machine? It must be for something else.’ He thought for a while. ‘Some kind of target. I remember reading about this—they used to use something like it on earth years ago.’

‘How does it work? Which bit do you aim at?’ said Jamie, recovering fast and pulling out a small wicked-looking dirk from his sock.

‘For Heaven’s sake, man, what’s that?’

‘D’ye not know a dirk when you see one?’ laughed Jamie, and striking a mock fighting pose, he held it poised as if to throw it at the wall. ‘Now, watch this.’

‘Hold on. I see what you mean, but I don’t think it was quite that kind of weapon. Put it away, there’s a good lad,’

said Haydon, half alarmed and half amused. ‘No, it wasn’t quite like a target on a tree, it was something more sophisticated.’

‘Aye, it would be,’ said Jamie, putting back the dirk in disgust. ‘Those Cybermen would never do a thing for the fun of it.’

‘Yes,’ went on Haydon, trying to work it out in his own mind, ‘there is a subliminal centre in those targets which you are trained to see.’

‘What’s that?’

But Haydon didn’t wait to explain.

‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s run it again and see what happens—but Jamie boy, keep your eyes off the wall, will you! You work the controls this time and I’ll watch.’

‘Right.’

‘This is the one you press,’ said Haydon, ‘and for Pete’s sake, don’t press any other one or anything might happen.’

Jamie walked over to the controls, his hand ready over the button. Haydon stood opposite the wall of images, but as far away as he could, with one hand holding the console rail to keep himself in touch with reality and prevent being drawn towards it.

‘O.K.,’ said Haydon. ‘Now, press the first button.’

‘I can’t understand it,’ said Professor Parry, irritably.

Professor Parry and Klieg were still trying to work out the symbolic logic that would tell them the key secret of Telos: where the tombs of the Cybermen were located: where, in this great complex of metal going down to who-knew-what depths, and how many miles of subterranean catacombs, were the bodies of the Cybermen themselves?

‘I can’t understand why when this whole building is alive that hatch stays firmly closed.’ Parry pointed over to the central conning-tower-like hatch.

‘It’s only a matter of time.’ Klieg carefully began another sequence of buttons.

‘You’ve said that before, Mr Klieg,’ said the Professor, now definitely ratty. ‘Where are your mathematics, Mr Klieg? You gave me to understand this sort of thing was right up your line of country, when you asked to join this expedition.’

Klieg ignored him. He finished his selection of the coloured buttons and again nothing happened The hatch remained closed.

‘I suggest you use deduction or even induction, rather than simple trial and error, Mr Klieg,’ snapped the Professor.

Klieg did not reply—checking his notes for the next sequence of numbers.

‘The tombs of the Cybermen must be below ground,’

said the Professor. ‘And their records must be there, too. If we can’t get down there, then all our work here and—the sacrifice of that unfortunate fellow’s life—will go in vain.’

The Professor felt that the death of the crewman at the doors would be somehow justified if they found the great archaeological treasure they were seeking. A find that would make Professor Parry the outstanding archaeologist of his time.

‘And a great deal more than that will be in vain,’ said Klieg to himself.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Professor, still angry with the other man and his arrogant manner. If only scholars didn’t need money all the time!

‘Just talking to myself—that’s all. Now if you would perhaps photograph this room and leave me to my work.

We shall make much better progress.’ Parry glared at him for a moment, then turned away.

In the Cyberman recharging room, Viner, aided by Kaftan, was examining the mechanism of the huge Cyberform.

‘That’s all you can remember—darkness, no sparks, flashes, electrical shocks?’ The Doctor spoke quietly to Victoria, who was sitting down, now calm and composed again, on a bench by the console.

‘Yes, Doctor. I don’t think I was actually touching any part of the interior.’

‘Hmm.’ The Doctor looked down at her heavy practical walking shoes with rubber soles. ‘I see. Of course, you are a little smaller than the average Cyberman... and very, very lucky.’ He turned away. ‘Come on.’

‘Where to, Doctor?’

‘Eh?’ He turned back as if surprised that she had not read his thoughts. ‘To find Jamie, of course.’

‘Jamie?’

‘We haven’t seen him for nearly an hour—goodness knows what trouble he’s in, by. now.’

‘You think he’s in trouble, Doctor?’ said Victoria a little anxiously.

The Doctor smiled for the first time since entering the grim Cyberman recharging room. ‘Well, look at you—it only took you twenty-five minutes to get yourself nearly fried. Out!’

He pushed the girl before him and they left the room.

As they left Viner looked up from his notetaking and glanced at Kaftan.

‘I sometimes feel that man has been here before,’ he said a little pettishly. ‘He never tries to record or examine anything, you notice.’

Kaftan nodded. ‘I have noticed. As if he understands the whole workings here.’

‘Exactly. And regards our work as a waste of time.’

Viner snapped his notebook shut. ‘We might be better occupied in following him.’

‘You follow him, Mr Viner. I will stay here.’ Kaftan, smiled, her eyes dark and inscrutable.

‘Yes, I think I will.’ Viner nodded to her, adjusted his glasses and went over to the archway—then remembered his manners. ‘But, are you sure you’re not afraid of being left alone?’

Kaftan raised her head proudly. ‘I am never afraid.’

Viner peered at her anxiously for a moment, then left.

In the target room Jamie and Haydon had made Some progress. Jamie had pressed the button, standing with his eyes away from the wall, and the dancing circles were again swirling in their intricate patterns. Haydon, his hands gripping the rail, had his eyes closed, only risking the odd look.

‘Is that all?’ asked Haydon. ‘Nothing more happening from that button?’

‘Aye, that’s all,’ said Jamie.

‘Any more buttons we haven’t tried?’

‘Och, two you didn’t find.’ Jamie was pleased ‘with himself. ‘You have to lift up this wee tray herethey’re underneath it. White and black. What do they do?’

Haydon looked over briefly. ‘I’m not sure, but we’ll soon find out.’ He turned his back on the colours and walked over to the opposite wall. ‘I’m going to trace the source.of these shapes. There must be a projector somewhere.’

He passed his hand along the gleaming wall, but felt nothing.

‘When I give the word,’ he said, ‘press both buttons.’

‘Together?’ asked Jamie.

‘Yes. They must be set there to work in unison.’

‘Aye, then,’ said Jamie. ‘When you’re ready.’

Haydon walked back to the centre rail, held it and looked back at the moving circles.

‘O.K.,’ said Haydon. ‘Go ahead.’

Jamie stretched his hand and put his thumb on the black button, his forefinger on to the white. He pressed them both down—hard!

Whirr! Hmmm! Whirr! The sound came from the end of the room opposite the circles.

There was a flash of light at the far end of the room, the wall lit up like sheet lightning.

‘JAMIE!’

It was the Doctor’s voice, as he and Victoria rushed in from the door.

‘DON’T TOUCH THAT CONTROL!’ shouted the Doctor.

‘It’s too late, Doctor, I have.’

The Doctor rushed over to the controls and tried to release the two depressed buttons. But they wouldn’t come up. Rapidly the Doctor glanced at the rest of the panel, working out its possible function with supermind speed.

‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’ asked Jamie. After all, nothing terrible had happened yet. They’d had far worse on this nasty planet.

As he spoke, the far wall seemed to lose its light and grow dark. They saw it was not a wall:, it was doors silently gliding open. Out of the blackness loomed a huge figure. A silvery apparition with gigantic limbs and a massive helmet for a face. Victoria screamed. Behind her, Viner, who had just entered the room stopped, aghast, his mouth open.

But the silver figure with the blank face raised its metal fist and in its fist was something like a gun, black and menacing. Every human stood there, mesmerised with fear.

The Cyberman went on raising his gun, slowly, slowly.

It was pointing at them, they could see the dark hole of the barrel.

‘Down.’ The Doctor pulled Victoria to the ground followed by Jamie and Viner. FLASH! There was a cry of agony. Lying on the floor they saw Haydon twitching, his eyes wide. Out of his tunic at his neck, arms and legs poured smoke, thick yellow smoke. Almost in slow motion his body crumpled up and he fell to the ground, his eyes open, staring.

7

The Finding of the Cybermat

The others clutched the floor in fear, but almost before they had time to look up again, the figure of the Cyberman had stepped back and the doors had glided shut.

They all lay absolutely still, expecting with every second another terrible flash and the Cybergun delivering its terrible, lethal charge at them. But as seconds ticked by and nothing happened, Jamie, impatient as always, raised his head.

‘Wait!’ said the Doctor. They lay there for another two minutes before he motioned them to their feet and went over to look at Haydon, signalling the others back. Then he took out his handkerchief and placed it over the man’s face.

‘Now, Jamie,’ said the Doctor in a businesslike voice,

‘what exactly happened here? What did you do? What sequence did you use?’

Jamie looked puzzled.

‘Sequence? Och, I just pressed these two,’ said Jamie, indicating black and white buttons, now fully extended again. Then, realising, ‘I’ve killed him, Doctor.’

Victoria turned to him and held his hand as Professor Parry bustled in, absorbed in his research.

‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘if you could spare us a moment...’ He gasped, seeing Haydon’s body, ran over to it, bent down and removed the handkerchief from the wide, staring eyes.

‘Haydon!’ He turned round fiercely on the others.

‘What’s happened to him?’

Before anyone had a chance to reply, Viner ran forward hysterically.

‘He’s dead!’ he shouted. ‘Another corpse! It’s this damned building. It’s watching us, it’s alive, it’ll get us all, if we stay here. We’ve got to leave!’

‘Silence, man! Control yourself!’ shouted the Professor.

He looked down at Haydon again. He’d known him as a promising student and had been pleased when a few years later Haydon had come to his office to ask if he could do some research on the history of the Cybermen with him.

He could see the young man now, standing eagerly in front of his desk in the old university building in southern England. So far away... now.

‘Terrible,’ said the Professor quietly. ‘Terrible. Poor Haydon.’

He gazed down at the body. Then he stirred.

‘How did it happen?’ he asked. But Viner, still shocked, was pressed against the indifferent silvery wall, as far from the terrible doors as he could get.

‘We’ve got to get out of this building,’ he was muttering, gazing wildly about him. ‘It’s deadly. They’ll kill us all if we don’t get back to the orbiter.’

‘They?’ asked the Doctor sharply.

‘The Cybermen!’ whispered Viner. ‘Didn’t you see him?’

‘A Cyberman?’ asked the Professor. ‘A live Cyberman?

My dear Viner, they’ve been dead for the last five hundred years.’

‘I tell you there was a Cyberman and he came out of there.’ He pointed to the doors. Parry looked unbelievingly at the hysterical man.

‘He’s right,’ said Jamie.

The Doctor was examining the. doors. Parry moved towards the screen.

‘Keep back,’ screamed Viner. ‘Keep back! You’ll bring it out again.’.

‘The question is,’ said the Doctor calmly, ‘what killed him?’

‘But you saw the Cyberman, Doctor,’ said Victoria.

‘I saw something,’ said the Doctor.

‘For Heaven’s sake, what else!’ said Viner.

‘Haydon looked at the screen,’ the Doctor said, ‘in the same direction as you were facing, right?’

‘Of course,’ said Viner, ‘must you state the obvious?’

‘Not quite so obvious,’ said the Doctor, ‘when you consider that he was shot in the back.’

‘In the back?’ exclaimed Jamie.

‘Are you sure, Doctor?’ the Professor interjected.

‘See for yourself,’ said the Doctor gravely.

The Professor and Viner crouched over Haydon’s body and gingerly turned him over. They all saw a large ragged circular burn mark on the material. The Doctor looked round the room. ‘If the Cyberman didn’t shoot him, then who did?’ he said. ‘The answer lies over there, I think.’ He went over to the wall he had been examining. ‘Jamie...’

‘Aye, Doctor?’

‘Can you remember what you did—the exact sequence?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure.’

‘You must try, Jamie,’ said the Doctor firmly. ‘I want you to repeat the operation when I give the word.’

‘Very well, Doctor,’ said Jamie, looking anxiously at the control console. ‘If you really think...’ He stopped, not wanting to show his fear.

‘You’re crazy, man!’ shouted Viner. ‘You’ll bring out...

that... thing again!’

‘I hope not,’ said the Doctor offhandedly. ‘We’ll just have to see.’

‘When you’re ready, Jamie,’ said the Doctor crisply, ‘let me know.’

‘Aye, any time you want, Doctor.’

The Doctor turned to face Viner and the others. ‘There is a distinct element of risk in what I am doing, so I suggest that anyone who wants to leave should do so now.’

They looked back at him, knowing the danger was real and close. Viner was in such a panic he couldn’t move. He stood where he was, pressed stiffly against the wall. The Professor set his stiff upper lip bravely to face death in the cause of science. Victoria was ready to go anywhere the Doctor went. But Jamie, who enjoyed life and didn’t see the point of throwing it away in this spooky place if he didn’t have to, stepped down from the console platform and started firmly for the doorway.

‘No, Jamie,’ came the Doctor’s voice. ‘Not you.’

For a moment the young Scot hesitated. ‘Of course, if you’re afraid?’ Jamie stiffened, glared at the Doctor, and stepped back on to the platform.

‘Can’t you stop all this? He’ll kill us all!’ cried Viner to the Professor.

‘Not if you keep back, I won’t,’ said the Doctor lightly.

‘Keep back against that wall in the corner there... please, Mr Viner,’ he added, because although the others had moved to the safest place, Viner didn’t apparently know who he was and what he was doing.

‘Come on, man,’ said the Professor.

Viner joined the others in the corner by the entrance arch.

‘Right, Jamie,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now!’

Jamie pressed the white and black buttons.

FLASH! Unable to look away they stared as the doors glided quietly open, the gleam of silver, the realisation that this was the shape of a Cyberman they were looking at a Cyberman holding a long black Cyberweapon.

‘Look the other way! The other way!’ said the Doctor.

Only Jamie and Victoria dared to look, and therea panel slid back and revealed a gun similar to the one held by the Cyberman.

There sounded the low rattle of the Cyberweapon. It had fired at the Cyberman. Victoria screamed as the Cyberman’s head rocked on the huge shoulders, toppled forward and off.

The Doctor leaned over the controls and flicked a switch by the two firing buttons. This time both the doors and the panel which had covered the gun remained open.

Cautiously the Doctor moved forward.

‘Careful, Doctor...’ said Victoria.

‘Quite safe now, I think,’ said the Doctor as he walked across to fhe open doors where the body of the Cyberman lay sprawled.

‘Don’t—’ squeaked Viner, but the Doctor had already crouched down and touched the trunk of the dead Cyberman. They watched, fascinated, as he lifted the great silver trunk and looked inside. It was as empty as a suit of armour..

‘There, you see, it’s only a model—a mock-up,’ said the Doctor.

The Professor, ever curious, leaned forward and tried to touch the gun, but the Doctor stopped him. ‘Careful. That may be real!’

‘It’s a trap,’ said Viner.

‘Oh, I don’t think it’s anything as elaborate as that,’ said the Doctor, ‘more likely it’s a testing room for weapons.

This,’ he said, turning over one of the great silver limbs, ‘is a purely robotic Cyberman. It contains no humanoid material. It’s simply made as a target for weapons.’

Once he had explained it, they relaxed. But Haydon was still dead.

‘Let’s go back to the control room with this poor fellow,’

said Parry.

Viner and Jamie picked up Haydon’s body.

‘What’s that?’ said Victoria suddenly, pointing to the silver fish creature that Jamie had been examining.

‘Och, only some wee creature I found on the floor,’ said Jamie over his shoulder as they carried Haydon away. Poor Haydon, he’d been afraid of the wee silver beastie, Jamie thought, as they manoeuvred the body through the door and along the corridor.

‘It’s a fossil,’ said Victoria curiously, as she picked it up.

It did look a bit like a crustacean from hundreds of millions of years ago that had turned to silvery metal instead of stone.

‘Victoria,’ said the Doctor sharply, coming over to her.

‘Be very careful. Let me see it.’

He took it from her gingerly, looked at the holes in the head where the ‘eyes’. and ‘mouth’ would be, and examined the antennae closely.

‘It looks inactive,’ he said, ‘but it’s not a fossil, Victoria.

It’s a...’ He hesitated, trying to remember a small fact from the recesses of his mind, then took his dog-eared diary out of his pocket and looked up something. under the ‘C’s.

‘Here we are—a Cybermat!’

‘What is a Cybermat, Doctor?’ asked Victoria.

‘Oh, it’s one of those...’ he began, but thought she had had enough unpleasant stories for a while. ‘I’d just leave it alone if I were you.’

He went out after the others. Victoria, whose scientific curiosity, inherited from her father, didn’t allow her to leave something unanswered once she had begun to wonder about it, made a face at his know-all back, picked up the Cybermat for later examination and put it in the large handbag she always carried.

In the great hall of the main control room Kaftan and Klieg were still standing by the master code console. The scientist was still wrestling with the symbols, trying to work out the correct sequence and getting more and more irritable when it continued to elude him.

The sound of a footstep made them look up. Toberman stood silently before them, his arms folded.

‘Well?’ asked Kaftan curtly.

‘It is done,’ said Toberman.

She nodded with a half-smile.

‘Good.’ She waved him back.

Toberman stood aside.

But Klieg was still absorbed in the code machine. ‘I’ll never completely understand this code,’ he said crossly.

‘The sequence just doesn’t make sense.’

Kaftan looked at him derisively. ‘You, a logician, and you say a code the brilliant Cybermen invented doesn’t make sense! What you mean is your brain’s not up to it, eh? You must. work harder. You must master it.’

‘How can I, in this short time?’ Klieg looked angrily at her.

‘We have plenty of time,’ said Kaftan. ‘You will see...’

Klieg was too deep in this defeating puzzle of mathematics to take in her meaning. Before he could question her, Jamie and Viner came in carrying the dead Haydon followed by the Professor and the others. Kaftan, seeing the body, stepped down from the console and looked concerned. Klieg looked up briefly, then went on with his maths.

‘Right,’ came Professor Parry’s voice. ‘We’re all here, it seems. If you will all sit down for a moment.’

Beside the control panels were benches for the technicians. They all sat down except Klieg, who seemed not to have heard.

‘Mr Klieg,’ insisted the Professor.

‘Oh, leave me alone,’ snapped Klieg disrespectfully.

‘Can’t you see I’m working—or have you forgotten the purpose of this expedition?’

‘You will kindly take your place.’

Klieg obeyed with bad grace.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ said the Professor. ‘I have reluctantly decided to abandon the expedition and return to Earth.’ They stared at him.

‘It’s impossible,’ said Klieg. ‘You can’t abandon this now.,

‘Why do you decide this?’ asked Kaftan.

‘What! Why?’ came from the others in a great babble of objection. After all this trouble, just when they were on the verge of making such exciting discoveries! The Professor raised his hands for silence.

‘I feel as strongly about it as you—this expedition has been my dream for years. But there were those, like Mr Viner, who said that more preparation was needed. More men and equipment.’ He paused. They were silent. Viner nodded to himself. ‘I refused to heed their warning,’ the Professor went on, ‘and the result is that two men have died.’

There was silence.

‘I’m sorry, but we must leave at the first available conjunction. We shall take back all we can for further study, of course—but that is my decision, and that is what must happen.’

Clattering his bench, Klieg stood up.

‘I insist that—’ he began, when he felt Kaftan’s hand on his. She gave him a reassuring look and shook her head slightly. He glanced around angrily but sat down again.

Only the Doctor had noticed.

‘My decision is final,’ said Professor Parry. ‘We leave when the north hemisphere is properly tangential, which will be—’ He looked at his space-time watch. ‘At 18.42.’

He had hardly sat down when there was the sound of someone running, heavy space-boots thumping on the metal floors. In burst Captain Hopper.

‘Ah, Captain,’ continued the Professor, absent-mindedly. ‘Just the man! Can you be ready to blast off at 18.42?’

‘No,’ cried Hopper, still trying to get his breath.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Professor, startled. ‘Did I hear you right? You are paid to take orders, Mr Hopper.’

‘Not impossible ones.’ The Captain’s gruff voice echoed around the large metallic room. ‘It’s the fuel pumps. Some character has messed up the lot.’

The others froze. To be stranded on the chill metal planet, to die slowly in the tomb of the soulless Cybermen...

‘Someone... or something,’ said the Doctor quickly, voicing their fears.

‘Well, whatever it is,’ answered the Captain bluntly, ‘it nearly sabotaged our chances of getting off this crumby planet.’

8

The Secret of the Hatch

Hours later, the outer surface of Telos was dark and silent.

Nothing moved. The remote stars of other galaxies shone in the clear atmosphere, but gave only a sliver of light on the black crater mountains.

Inside the control room the artificial daylight gave a harsh shadowless glare. Viner looked around at the others, annoyed at their apparent indifference. ‘Well, I don’t care what any of you do,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to spend the night on this planet.’

‘You seem to have little option now.’ The Doctor, relaxed as ever, leant back in his chair with his hands in his pockets.

Viner looked round at the bright walls where the Cyberman bas-reliefs still stood stiff and huge, dominating the humans below.

‘Well, at least we can get out of this sinister place,’ he muttered. He tapped the notebook in his hand. ‘I have recorded all I wish to. I suggest we all return to the orbiter and wait there.’

‘That’s a very bad suggestion, Mr Viner.’ Captain Hopper had just entered, unnoticed. ‘You know that?’

But Viner moved towards the door. The space orbiter glowed cosy and safe in his mind and he wasn’t going to stay a second longer in this gleaming metallic hall.

‘I insist!’ he said. The tall space-commander stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

‘You do a lot of “insisting”, don’t you, Viner,’ said the Captain. ‘Well, I’m going to tell you something now—the first guy who steps into my orbiter is going to stop the repair work just like that. My men will just down their tools.’

Viner glared at him but was no match for the other man.

He turned back and sat down, his back to the others, staring moodily at the metal floor.

‘How long will it take to get the orbiter operational again?’ asked Parry.

‘Working non-stop, without interruption, maybe some—

seventy-two hours,’ said the Captain.

At the words ‘seventy-two’ there was a gasp of indrawn breath against the silence. Viner jumped up again, like a puppet controlled by fear.

‘It’s quite impossible!’ he cried. ‘We’d be all out of our minds after three days in this place. We must go back on board.’

Captain Hopper had controlled his anger long enough.

‘I can’t afford to waste any more time with you guys,’ he snapped. ‘But I’m just going to give it to you once more, right!. You may not know this, but we’ve got to practically pull the ship apart and repair the damage. There just isn’t room for you all on board. No—room—to—work. Got it?’

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said the Professor, understanding that this was a professional problem. ‘I see now.’

‘It’s all right for you!’ shouted Viner, out of control, his voice cracking. ‘Have you any idea of what it’s like in this deadly building?’

‘It’s not exactly peaches back on the ship, buddy.’

Captain Hopper turned to the door.

‘Just a minute.’ The Doctor’s voice stopped the Captain at the door. ‘You have another reason for not wanting them back in the ship, haven’t you?’

‘I wasn’t going to mention it,’ said the Captain, looking at him gravely. ‘But yeah! Until we know who broke into the ship...’

‘Or what,’ said the Doctor.

‘ Who broke into the ship,’ Captain Hopper said firmly,

‘I mean to keep a round-the-clock guard on it.’

‘Very wise,’ said the Doctor.

‘I just aim to get off this damn place with my skin still tight-fitting all over—all right, Doc?’ He had raised his voice and was now speaking to the entire party as well as the Doctor. The Doctor nodded approvingly.

‘Right,’ said Hopper. ‘In case it gets a bit cold at night, I’ve brought along some anoraks—and some food.’ He indicated a couple of well-filled rucksacks by the door. ‘I’ll let you know when I’m ready to take off,’ he added and left.

Klieg strode forward and looked around.

‘Since we must stay’—Klieg’s voice had a slight rasp to it—’then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t finish our job and fully explore down there.’ He jerked his thumb towards the floor to indicate the unknown levels of tombs below them.

‘That is, if you have no objection, Professor,’ he added as an oily afterthought, with a glance at Kaftan.

‘We have little alternative, it seems,’ said the Professor, not sure if he was glad or sorry.

‘We could, of course,’ said the Doctor with an ironic smile at the others, ‘stay here. It’s quite a pleasant room really.’

‘Och, speak for yourself, Doctor,’ burst out Jamie, who could never bear sitting about and waiting.

‘You can leave here any time you please, Doctor, we won’t detain you,’ said Klieg. He went back to the control console and his open notebooks and calculations.

‘Yes, I can leave, of course,’ said the Doctor, smiling slightly to himself.

‘But you’re not going to?’ Victoria had come over to him and put her hand on his arm. She was beginning to read the Doctor’s mind.

Before answering, the Doctor watched as Kaftan, in one graceful movement, stood up and walked over to Klieg, leaning over the console to whisper to him.

‘Not yet awhile,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No. But you and Jamie can go back to the Tardis if you wish.’

‘I’ll stay with you.’ Victoria hardly needed asking.

‘Jamie?’ said the Doctor.

‘I’ll no gae without you and the lassie,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’ The Doctor seemed to rouse himself suddenly from his thoughtful mood. ‘I think the time has come to help Mr Klieg,’ he said briskly.

‘I want no help,’ cut in Klieg.

The Doctor smiled and walked jauntily over to him.

The shadow of a great hand passed over him and stopped against his chest.

‘You! Stay!’ said Toberman’s deep voice.

Jamie jumped up spoiling for action, even ready to take on the giant. ‘Let the Doctor pass,’ said Jamie, bristling, ‘or I’ll have to—’ He stepped in front of Toberman, his shoulders braced, his right hand near his dirk.

‘It’s all right, Jamie,’ said the Doctor lightly. He looked at Toberman who still stood there unmoving.

‘Your colleague has very strong hands, I notice,’ he said conversationally to Kaftan.

‘He is a strong man, like all my people,’ answered Kaftan, smiling at him a little contemptuously.

‘Enough to cause a great deal of damage,’ went on the Doctor, ‘if let loose in the right places.’

She stopped smiling and for an instant they stared at each other with cold eyes. Kaftan was the first to look away. She nodded to Toberman, who shuffled , aside.

‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. He stepped up to the console and stood by Klieg, immediately absorbed into the scientist’s problems. After a moment’s hesitation, Klieg let the Doctor glance over his shoulder at his notes.

Now that the immediate crisis was over, they settled down to their various expedition tasks: Klieg and the Doctor at the console, Viner and Parry working out a hypothetical plan of Telos and the underground workings and Kaftan’ sorting out the clothes and food left by Hopper. Only Victoria and Jamie had nothing to do. They stood isolated in the vault of the metal room, looking up at the Cyberman figures still marching in relentless stillness across the walls. They shivered and drew closer together..

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ they heard Professor Parry say, his voice now calm and academic again. ‘The major workings lie below. There are metal caverns down there, all interconnected. If only we can get down to them...’

‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Klieg, standing back from the console. ‘I’ve got it! A complete sequence linked by one stokastic manoeuvre. Finally a Boolean function of symbolic logic!’

‘Logical, yes, but...’ began the Doctor.

‘Everything yields to logic,’ cut in Kaftan, her underlying sharpness showing, ‘our basic assumption, Doctor.’

‘Really?’ murmured the Doctor sarcastically. ‘Who are

“we”?’

But Kaftan had turned back to the rucksacks. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking on thoughtfully.

Klieg feverishly worked the indicator and levers, ‘6 cap B4

if, and only if’—he muttered—’C is cap function of 2A.’

He pressed the lever and stood back, glowing with triumph.

‘Your logic couldn’t have got a bit thin, could it?’ asked the Doctor gently, as a whistling arose from conflicting electronic circuits. ‘What a pity,’ said the Doctor, sadly.

‘I must have made a mistake,’ Klieg rapped out. ‘I’ll run it again—more carefully.’

‘Of course,’ murmured the Doctor. He moved closer, scanned the numbers over Klieg’s square shoulder, and without the other seeing, clicked a 1 to an 0 in the sequence, then moved back as Klieg put down his calculations and looked back at the controls.

This time the numbers on the dials made sense to him.

He started to reset the controls. ‘6 cap B, 4, if and only if, C

is cap function of... ah, that’s it... 2F not 2A!’

Klieg reached out his hand and grasped the main lever with confident anticipation.

‘Now!’ he said triumphantly.

CRASH!

The lights flickered, and from below came a slow grinding roar—as if something in the depths of the earth had been disturbed and was moving relentlessly upwards.

The floor trembled.

‘The hatch!’ exclaimed Victoria.

It was moving, the metal barrier to the tombs, the gate to the secrets of the Cybermen! With a grind of heavy, long-disused gears, the hatch cover inched slowly up, and a blast of freezing stale air from the unknown depths hit the little group of people.

Victoria shivered and drew her anorak closer round her.

Slowly the heavy metal cover creaked to an upright position and stopped. The rumble of the gears died.

Cautiously the humans moved forward to look. They felt a death-like chill of ice which took away their breath. A steam of condensation seethed above the opening as the warmer air above met the chill tomb air. On the underside of the lid huge stalactites of ice spiked out like bayonets, and a brilliant rime sparkled on the metal ladder leading down to the black subterranean depths.

Klieg was the first to straighten up and step back. He couldn’t resist a triumphant glance at Kaftan.

‘You see! I did it!’ he said, sounding for a moment more like the competitive schoolboy than the professional scientist.

‘My congratulations,’ smiled the Doctor.

‘But, Doctor,’ Jamie whispered, ‘I saw you... you were the one...’

The Doctor put his finger to his lips.

‘Excellent,’ said Parry to Klieg. ‘Now to work. It will be extremely cold down there. We shall all need to put on some warm clothing. Viner, will you get the anoraks out of the rucksacks.’

Viner was glad to have something to do at last. He turned towards the entrance but Kaftan had already unpacked them and laid them out.

‘One moment,’ Klieg’s voice cut in. ‘Are we all to descend?’

‘There is safety in numbers,’ said the Professor.

‘But the women?’ asked Klieg arrogantly.

‘Ah, yes,’ said the Professor. ‘They will, of course, stay up here.’

He turned to Kaftan and Victoria.

‘In case of trouble,’ he said somewhat loftily, ‘contact the orbiter.’

Victoria turned eagerly to Kaftan. Surely a woman of her calibre wouldn’t put up with this male arrogance; but Kaftan was looking all silky and submissive. Victoria held her fury in while the others put on their anoraks—then burst out:

‘I’m coming down with you.’

‘Now, my dear young lady,’ demurred the Professor in an abstracted voice, not taking her seriously.

‘You heard me, Professor,’ said Victoria staunchly. She felt a touch on her arm and turned.

‘Victoria,’ said the Doctor quietly, ‘you will be much safer up here.’

Victoria bridled even more at this. Was the Doctor no different from the others?

‘... And much more use to us,’ added the Doctor under his breath, his green eyes full of meaning.

‘I don’t see—’ Victoria began.

‘By keeping an eye on things up here,’ the Doctor continued, ‘now, please...’

Victoria looked at him. Was he making excuses or did he mean it? But she knew that the Doctor was never anything less than fair and came from a time when no one believed women incapable of doing even the toughest and most hazardous jobs.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘All right.’

‘If we are all ready,’ came the Professor’s dry voice, ‘I shall lead the descent. Be ready to go back the instant I give the signal.’ He climbed a little gingerly over the edge of the hatch and set his foot on the rapidly thawing rungs of the ladder. Wrapped up in the anoraks, the others began to follow him. As Klieg was about to go down, he stepped aside and whispered to Kaftan.

‘You know what to do?’

‘The hatch?’ Kaftan scarcely moved her lips.

Klieg nodded.

‘Yes,’ she murmured.

Professor Parry, Viner, quaking a little but bullied into it by the Professor, and Jamie were already in the icy black shaft, holding on to the slippery rungs.

‘Now, Mr Toberman,’ said the Doctor smoothly to Kaftan, standing aside politely to let the giant pass.

‘He stays with me.’

‘Then I shall stay up here, too,’ smiled the Doctor. He folded his arms lazily and sat on one of the stools with all the time in the world ahead of him.

Kaftan gazed at him with her dark eyes for a moment, then smiled. ‘I am being selfish,’ she said softly, ‘of course he must go with you. His strength will be useful, Go down, Toberman.’

Toberman hesitated for an instant, then grunted, nodded and walked towards the hatch. He turned and looked at the Doctor suspiciously, then, as Kaftan nodded him on, shrugging to himself, swung down the hatch in one simple movement.

The Doctor stood up to follow him.

‘Remember!’ he said quietly to Victoria. He squeezed her arm gently. ‘And watch out,’ he said, ‘for yourself as well as us.’

He turned to the hatch and in a moment had disappeared down the cold black hole after the others.

Victoria shivered.

‘It seems we are to be left alone—to wait,’ said Kaftan in her warm liquid voice, and sat down, smiling at her.

Victoria admired Kaftan, but she was in awe of her.

Now they were alone together she couldn’t think of anything to say. Kaftan was always so pleasant and poised, it inhibited the younger woman. She nodded awkwardly, like a little girl, and clutched her bag for comfort. She felt inside it the hard weight of that peculiar silver animal thing she had picked up.

The Cybermat! She must take it out some time soon; that was a silly thing to do, picking it up just to defy the Doctor. But her bag contained her whole world right now.

She’d brought it with her from her Victorian home, and its rough feel made her think longingly of the old drawing room and her father reading in front of a crackling log fire.

‘Captain Hopper brought us some food from the orbiter,’ went on Kaftan, trying to put Victoria at her ease.

‘I’m sure you are ready for some.’

‘Oh! I’m ravenous!’ said Victoria, forgetting her nervousness. She put down her bag—and the lump in it moved a fraction of an inch—neither Victoria nor Kaftan saw it. They were opening the aluminium rectangular box the Captain had left, and taking out the small, transparent plastic food containers. At least, Kaftan was taking them out and Victoria was turning them over in puzzlement, wondering where the food was.

‘Roast Veal?’ asked Kaftan. ‘Roast Beef? Chicken?’

‘Oh, chicken, please,’ said Victoria visualising a plate weighed down with an enormous drumstick, tasty white meat and stuffing, onion sauce, brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. Kaftan handed her one of the small transparent packages.

‘What on earth is this?’ asked Victoria.

‘What you have asked for—chicken, of course,’ said Kaftan sharply. Was the girl stupider than she had supposed?

Sure enough, there was a label on it saying ‘Roast Chicken’. Not wanting to appear silly, she copied what Kaftan did, opening the end of the package and inserting a squirt of water from the water bottle, then massaging it until the dehydrated food swelled up.

Out of the transparent plastic came a smell which certainly was very like roast chicken. But Victoria didn’t fancy it somehow.

‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I’m not so hungry now,’

she said primly. ‘I would like something to drink.’

Kaftan reached into the aluminium box and took out a vacuum flask.

‘Perhaps you will pass me the other rucksack,’ she said.

Then, as Victoria walked over to fetch it, Kaftan quickly poured out a cup of coffee, took a small tube out of her pocket and tipped a white tablet into the cup. Victoria returned hugging the rucksack.

‘You are cold—yes?’ said Kaftan kindly as Victoria shivered and nodded. ‘This will warm us both up,’ said Kaftan, handing her a cup of coffee. Everything about the lovely Arab woman was now warm, friendly and even motherly towards Victoria. She took the coffee and cupped her hands round its comforting warmth.

‘Here is to success in their search,’ said Kaftan, raising her own cup and drinking it like a toast.

If the two women had not been so preoccupied with their drinks they might have noticed that Victoria’s handbag had moved two inches from its position on the bench.

Inside, the long dormant Cybermat was beginning to come to life.

The men meanwhile had climbed down the long ladder and were assembled at the foot of the wall. Ahead, the passageway, assembled in sections like a subway tunnel, sloping down into the interior of the planet.

As the Professor shone his flashlight ahead of them, the walls reflected back a million tiny diamond-like particles of frost rime. He stamped his feet impatiently as the Doctor and Toberman climbed down beside him.

‘Hurry up,’ he said, ‘we’ve no time to linger. It’s extremely cold here. Even with these anoraks.’

Jamie looked over at Klieg who was wearing his own expensive fleece-lined jacket. ‘ You obviously knew what to expect,’ he said.

Klieg gave a half-smile that was more like a sneer. ‘I always come prepared,’ he said insultingly, glancing at the Scot’s bare knees below his kilt.

‘Which way do we go?’ asked Viner vaguely, looking along the tunnel both ways.

‘Hardly back upwards,’ said Parry, indicating the upward sloping tunnel. ‘Let’s try this one.’ And decisively he strode along the downward passage. The others followed, their boots crunching on the powdered ice on the floor. The corridor was cut as straight as a Roman road, no difficulties such as hard rocks or underground streams could stand in the way of a race as efficient and ruthless as the Cybermen.

‘Ah! It seems we are arriving,’ said the Professor.

As the men followed the Professor out of the tunnel, they found themselves inside a huge, cathedral-like cavern.

As the Professor’s flashlight beam crept upwards they could see that, built against the rock surface, was a huge edifice that, at first sight, resembled a vast honeycomb.

The far wall was covered with a structure composed of hexagonal units, one neatly fitting into the other like the cells in a beehive. The surface of each cell was covered with a thin membrane, heavily coated with hoar-frost.

The Professor shone the torch downwards and around the cavern. Beside the entrance there was a control desk, similar to the ones in the surface rooms, but there seemed to be no further extension of the tunnel beyond the room.

‘It seems we’ve reached a dead end.’ The Professor was tired and disappointed. ‘There are no Cybertombs here.

We shall have to try the other tunnel.’

The rest of the party, except for the impassive Toberman, Klieg, who was examining the control board with his torch, and the Doctor, also voiced their disappointment.

‘This will be our tomb, if we don’t get back up to the surface,’ Viner snorted.

‘Wait,’ said the Doctor, ‘if I may borrow your flashlight.’

He turned to the Professor and walked over to the lower row of hexagonal cells.

‘Here,’ he called. Viner, Jamie and the Professor, struck by the note of excitement in his voice, walked over to him, as he put the torch against the side of the thin, white membrane.

The light illuminated the inside of the cell. Clearly visible inside was a hunched, humanoid figure curled up in an embryonic posture with its head on its knees.

‘I think you’ve found your tombs, Professor.’ The Doctor handed his torch to Parry and stepped back as the others clustered around, amazed.

‘It is—the Cybermen!’

The large silver helmet was plainly visible now, as the Professor shone his torch to and fro, around the surface of the cell.

‘Here’s another.’ Viner pointed to the next cell where a similar figure was crouched. The huge cavern seemed to be taking power from their torches and, as in the tunnel, the metal held the light and reflected, it back, gradually illuminating the whole vast honeycomb.

Klieg left the control board and strolled over to join them—apparently as unaffected by the general excitement as the stolid Toberman.

‘You don’t seem surprised, Mr Klieg,’ said the Doctors

‘You obviously knew what to expect.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Klieg. His eyes seemed to hold a different kind of excitement to the others, inner, triumphant.

The Professor, almost in tears, was shaking hands with Viner as the other congratulated him.

‘Forgive me,’ he said to the Doctor and Klieg. ‘But, after so many years of work... and such a long search...’

Jamie had been examining one of the Cybermen through the membrane. He turned to the Doctor.’ ‘They didna’ look dead, or even damaged.’

‘They’re not,’ said the Doctor. ‘They are in a state of hibernation. All their power for evil is locked up in this ice. And so they must remain,’ he added, almost to himself.

‘Like bees. in a gigantic honeycomb waiting for the signal to arise from their winter sleep,’ said Klieg.

‘A signal they are never going to get,’ said the Doctor sharply.’ But Klieg merely smiled his superior closed smile, and walked back to study the control board.

Viner, his fears returning as the euphoria of the great discovery wore off, blew into his hands to warm them. ‘We had better get busy, Professor. Everything must be recorded.’ He took a notebook from his pocket.

‘Eh,’ said the Professor, jolted out of his reverie. ‘Yes, of course. Inconsiderate of me. We must get busy. It’s far too cold to stay here for long.’

‘Unless we can find a way of warming things up,’ Klieg called over his shoulder.

The Doctor, looking suspiciously over at him, saw that he was laughing quietly to himself, as though he had made a joke. The Doctor wondered again about the secret motives of Klieg and Kaftan in financing and coming on this trip. Neither seemed really interested in the pleasures and satisfactions of archaeology. With a slight stab of apprehension, he wondered how Victoria was coping, left alone with Kaftan. He had trusted to the girl’s quick intelligence, but had he failed to put her on her guard with the woman?

Victoria was not feeling either quick or intelligent. She was overpowered with sleepiness. Whenever she opened her eyes, the room seemed too bright for her, so it was easier to shut them. Why was she so sleepy, she wondered drowsily.

All the strain, she supposed. But she’d stayed up here because the Doctor was worried about something. There was something she should be on her guard against...

something... her head fell forward on to her chest.

‘You have hardly touched your coffee,’ said Kaftan’s concerned voice. ‘It must be cold by now. Here, I will give you some more.’

Why does she keep on about the coffee, wondered Victoria, half inside the place of sleep.

‘No thanks,’ said Victoria. ‘I feel much warmer now.’

‘That is good.’

‘I just feel sleepy,’ murmured Victoria and then gave in.

Her head settled back against the table and she relaxed into a full sleep.

Kaftan waited a moment, then went over to look at her.

Yes, the girl was breathing the deep slow breaths of sleep, her head on her arms, her hair flowing on the table.

Without wasting a moment more, she went straight to the control console, looked at it for a moment, pressed the levers and buttons, and taking a notebook from her pocket, pressed a sequence of buttons.

Below the gears of the hatch were engaged, and as she watched, the great metal lid creaked slowly down from its upright position, until it slammed shut with a clang that echoed down the icy blackness of the shaft.

What was that?’

Viner, whose fear made his ears sharp as a bat’s, lifted his head as the distant sound of the slamming hatch echoed as a muffled thump, along the metal corridor.

‘It sounded like...’

The Doctor, Jamie, Viner and the Professor turned and listened with dread as the vibrations trembled into silence.

‘It’s the hatch,’ said Jamie.

Only Klieg and Toberman seemed unworried. They exchanged quick glances. The Professor, his camera busy at the far end of the vault, seemed unconscious of the situation. Jamie, followed by Viner, turned and rushed along the frozen tunnel towards the entrance well, slipping and scraping on the ice-covered metal floor. It seemed longer now, an unrelenting climb. They got to the shaft, gasping for breath, their lungs hurting with the cold, and gazed up. Above them there was no friendly circle of light, only the faint phosphorescence of the shaft walls.

‘It’s closed!’ shouted Jamie, his voice cracking.

He started up the ladder, his fear making the larger-than-man-sized gaps between each rung hardly noticeable.

He must get it open. But as he climbed he remembered the heavy sound of the gears. No one with human strength could open that great metal hatch and he knew it.

Viner had started on the bottom rung of the ladder, but halfway up its icy gaps filled him with the fear of falling.

He gazed upwards, panicking.

‘What’s the use?’ he called to Jamie, who was still climbing. ‘We’re trapped down here, now. We’ll never survive in this cold.’

Jamie ignored him and climbed on. ‘Better get back,’

Viner added to himself. Let Jamie look after himself, he thought.

He climbed down the ladder and ran back along the tunnel.

‘Well?’ said the Doctor, as Viner re-entered the vast cavern.

‘It’s closed,’ said Viner gasping for breath. ‘What have they done that for?’ he added shakily. ‘What are they playing at?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t them,’ said the Doctor. Viner looked at him with growing horror.

‘Where’s Jamie?’ asked the Doctor.

‘He went up the ladder to try it.’

Viner rushed over to the Professor who was still calmly photographing the glittering tiers of Cybertombs.

‘Professor—’ he began.

The Professor waved him to silence as he crouched for the perfect shot. These pictures, he could see them already, beamed on to the viewing screens of half the universe—

’Professor Parry Discovers the Lost Tombs of the Cybermen’...

‘Professor, listen to me, for Heaven’s sake!’ squawked Viner, jabbing him in the shoulder and spoiling his angled close-up shot of a tomb. ‘The hatch is down. The hatch is down, Professor. We’re trapped down here.’

Realising the situation at last, the Professor straightened up. ‘Eh? Trapped ? Are you sure ?’ He looked at the little scientist. ‘But there are some of my party up there.’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ snapped Viner. ‘You know how heavy that thing is. It’s down now.’

He looked round him and as he looked, the ice seemed to creep closer.

‘We must do something. I’ll give us a couple of hours in here at the most!’

Professor Parry looked confused. He looked around uncertainly. Klieg was still standing at the control console, not bothering to join in the conversation, and Toberman stood next to him, as if waiting for a command.

‘Mr Klieg doesn’t seem too worried,’ said the Doctor.

‘No,’ said Klieg over his shoulder. ‘No, Doctor. I’m not.’

Jamie ran back in. ‘It’s nae good,’ he said. ‘Stuck fast! I can’t make anyone hear.’

‘You see,’ said Viner, in an I-told-you-so voice.

But the others were looking at Klieg. He alone seemed unshaken by their plight—filled with a new assurance. He turned.

‘There is an easy way out of our situation.’

‘I—you’ve found something? Quick man, tell me,’ said Viner.

‘Of course,’ said Klieg icily. ‘You’re forgetting something. A simple law of logic. If it closes it can be opened. From here.’ He pointed to the central control.

‘Conveniently labelled in symbolic logic, I see,’ said the Doctor.

He examined the lever shape. ‘Fits a human hand too.

Hmmm!’

‘You mean—not a Cyberman hand...’ said Jamie, next to him, beginning to get the idea. ‘Why would they do that?’

The Doctor did not answer, merely glancing expectantly at Klieg—waiting for his move.

‘So,’ said Klieg crisply. ‘There is a simple way out again.

Via this control.’ He turned back to the board followed by the others.

‘If you will stand clear, I will operate the sequence.’

‘If it is the opening device,’ said the Doctor softly.

‘It is obviously an opening device of some kind, Doctor,’

said Klieg, smiling.

‘Hurry it up. I don’t know how you can all be so blasted calm about it,’ blurted Viner. ‘I’m half frozen.’

Jamie looked at him in disgust. ‘If you’d help for a wee change,’ he said, ‘instead of always moaning.’ He started back along the tunnel.

‘I’ll tell you if it works,’ he called to the Doctor and Klieg. ‘Go ahead.’

Decisively Klieg followed a simple sequence of levers and coloured buttons. The switchboard lighted up and the dynamo-like hum told him the controls were working.

Klieg finished his sequence, watched closely by the Doctor, then stood back with arms folded, watching the dials.

There followed what seemed like an endless pause to the waiting men.

Then Jamie entered, out of breath and despondent.

‘Nae, it didna work.’

Viner turned away stricken. They all looked along the icy tunnel, as though it could somehow show them the opened hatch and that everything would be all right. Even after they had realised that the hatch would not open, the others stood silent, each with his private thoughts.

The Professor felt something on his cheek. Something that in normal circumstances he would hardly have noticed—a drop of water. He brushed it away, then his mind registered the significance of it.

‘Water!’ he said aloud. Drops of water were beginning to fall all over the cavern now.

‘It’s getting warmer,’ said Jamie.

With the warmer air the light inside the cavern was steadily increasing in intensity. The three-storey honeycomb of cells seemed to be illuminated from behind. The huge curled-up Cybermen were becoming visible in sharp focus as the ice melted from the outside of. the clear plastic membranes.

There was something threatening in the three banked rows of insect-like figures as the cavern lightened. Only the Professor seemed impervious to the threat—like a happy child he reloaded his camera and darted forward, recording his find for posterity.

‘Perfect! Perfect! Gentlemen!’ he called to the others.

‘They are in perfect condition. This is unique in archaeology.’

It was Viner who noticed it first.

‘Professor,’ he called, pointing to the nearest Cyberman.

‘I’m sure that one moved!’

‘Nonsense,’ said Parry.

‘No, he’s right.’ Jamie’s keen eyes roved over the now defrosted cells. ‘Look! Up there.’

In the middle of the second row of cells, one of the Cybermen was visibly stretching his body—stiffly, one small jerk at a time, like a chick emerging from an egg.

‘My God!’ Viner’s voice had shrunk to a whisper.

‘They’re all moving!’

The process of defreezing had now accelerated. Water was streaming clown the side of the honeycomb and running away in specially built gullies. The air in the cavern was now oppressively warm and humid.

All over the honeycomb the Cybermen were coming to life, their huge limbs illuminated from behind in a slow-motion shadow ballet.

The men stared, as if hypnotised. Viner finally broke the silence.

‘You fool!’ He turned to Klieg. ‘You must have worked the wrong controls. We must shut it down—quickly!’

He rushed to the control panel and with an insight bred of desperation, managed to reverse the ‘start-up’ sequence activated by Klieg.

Almost immediately cold air began to blow into the cavern, once more the sheets of water froze against the honeycomb. Inside the cells the Cybermen’s movement stopped and they froze back into immobility like run-down clockwork dolls. The light began to fade once more.

Klieg, who had been watching, as hypnotised by the terrible ballet as the others, snapped back into life.

‘What... what is happening?’ He swung back on Viner, his eyes wild. ‘Get away from those controls.’

Viner raised his slight body to its full height and stared back at Klieg through his glasses. ‘Certainly not!’

Klieg put his hand into the inside pocket of his coat and brought out a small but deadly handgun.

‘What are you doing, man?’ The Professor was now hopelessly bewildered by events. Jamie stepped forward but was blocked by the giant Toberman, arms folded, protecting Klieg.

‘Keep back.’ Klieg’s voice rose in pitch and emphasis.

‘All of you. I shall not hesitate to kill. For the last time.’ He turned to Viner. ‘Stand away from those controls.’

The little man, whose nagging anxieties and complaints had got on the nerves of his companions throughout the expedition, now showed an unexpected reserve of will and courage. He stared unflinchingly into the mouth of the levelled gun.

‘Put that away. You can’t intimidate me.’

There was a sharp stinging crack, a wisp of smoke, and then Viner reeled back against the control desk, his hand clutching his chest, an incredulous look on his face. He tried to speak, his eyes widening behind his glasses, and then sagged slowly to the ground.

‘You’ve killed him!’ Parry stared from Klieg to Viner, almost unable to realise what had happened to his well-ordered world.

‘He’s mad!’ Jamie’s dirk gleamed in the light from the control panel and he started forward, only to find the Doctor’s arms around him, pinioning him with unexpected strength.

‘Wait, Jamie,’ he said.

He was just in time. Klieg had raised the gun again to fire at Jamie. Now he replaced it in his pocket and sprung’

back to the controls—his finger stabbing a staccato tattoo on the buttons.

Again the lights came up behind the cells, the air changed to a warm blast and the ice melted—a much quicker process this time.

‘Haydon dead, and now poor Viner,’ said the Professor.

He looked at Klieg in horror. ‘What kind of man are you?’

Klieg drew out his gun again and placed it close to hand on the control console. ‘You will soon find out,’ he said.

‘Now, back, all of you. Over there.’ He pointed to a spot against the rock wall opposite the Cybermen tombs.

‘Let us see what happens now,’ he continued. ‘As you said—this a unique archaeological event. It would be such a pity to miss it. Now stay quiet—and watch.’

He motioned to Toberman, who stooped down, picked up Viner’s body as easily as a rag doll and placed it over by the others. The Professor bent over his colleague and looked up at the Doctor, who shook his head sadly.

‘Look, Doctor—have ye ever seen anything like it?’

The honeycomb had cleared of ice once more and, as they watched, the Cybermen were slowly uncurling and stretching. At last the most advanced one, now in a sitting position, raised his steel fist and struck sideways, as at a gong, at the plastic membrane.

The plastic split under the blow.

Another blow from his fist and the membrane was in shreds like a split drum. The Cyberman stiffly rose up and with his arms held out like a swimmer before him, pushed his way out of the cell and stood upright in front of the honeycomb.

The terrible blank stare of the Cyberman swept over the group of humans, to Klieg at the control desk and then back to the honeycomb as he turned to face the other emerging Cybermen. One by one the huge silver giants broke out of their centuries-old cells and climbed down to stand beside their companion.

In the control room above, Kaftan sat by the console making notes on the sequence for opening the hatch.

Victoria was still asleep but was making the slight movements that showed the drug was wearing off and she was near waking.

Kaftan glanced at her and then went back to her notes.

At last Victoria stirred and opened her eyes. She looked around her.

‘Hello,’ she asked, still somewhere in her sleep world.

Then, more alert, she remembered where they were. She turned and saw the hatch was down. ‘What’s happened?

The hatch is down. Oh, good, they’re back.’

She shook her head to get the sleep out of it and winced slightly from headache. Then she looked around. There was nobody there but Kaftan.

‘They are still down there,’ said Kaftan, entering another neat row of figures in her little book.

‘Then why is the hatch closed?’ asked Victoria, her head aching but now thoroughly awake. ‘They won’t be able to get up again.’

She rose. She looked down at Kaftan.

‘I shall open it when we are ready,’ said Kaftan quietly, going on with her notes.

‘When who is ready?’ asked the girl. ‘Did you close it?’

‘I did.’

Victoria looked at the Arab woman whom she had so admired, confused. There could be no good reason for Kaftan to have closed the hatch. Quickly she adjusted herself to this new character. And knew why she had slept so soundly.

‘Then you had better open it again,’ she said steadily.

‘No,’ said Kaftan, still writing. ‘It must remain closed.’

And in another flash, Victoria understood why the Doctor had wanted her to stay on the surface.

‘The Doctor warned me to keep an eye on you,’ she snapped, furious enough to stand up to this sophisticated woman from a future age.

‘That was very clever of him,’ smiled Kaftan. ‘You should have taken more notice of his words.’

Victoria strode up to Kaftan and pushed her away from the controls.

‘Out of my way,’ she stormed.

‘Why?’ asked Kaftan with that all-knowing smile that now made Victoria furious instead of submissive.

‘Because I’m going to open the hatch,’ said Victoria, and reached out for the controls. She looked at the complex rows of buttons and levers, bewildered. Still smiling, Kaftan pulled out a small neat gun, similar to the one used by Klieg, and pressed it against the girl’s back.

‘Now, stand back,’ she said gently. ‘Games time is over for today.’

Victoria turned round slowly to face her and saw the gun. There was certainly no doubt now.

‘That is better,’ said. Kaftan pleasantly. ‘Now, let us move away from these controls. We shall be more comfortable over here.’

They moved together away from the controls, back to where Victoria had been sleeping. Victoria sat down, thinking out clearly what to do next. Next to her was her handbag, a comforting bit of her past life, with the hard lump of that funny Cybermat thing in it, that she had put there despite the Doctor... She could have kicked herself for disregarding his advice. But it was too late for that now.

If she didn’t keep a clear mind they would all be killed. It depended on her alone.

‘Why have you done this?’ asked Victoria. ‘You’ve trapped your friends down there as well as mine.’

‘I shall open it—when Klieg has completed our plans,"

answered Kaftan. ‘Meanwhile, it is safer for them to remain undisturbed. And if you touch those controls, I shall have to kill you.’

Behind Victoria, unseen by either of them, her homely leather handbag was opening slowly. Out of it moved the strange crayfish-like creature made of shining metal. Its two red ‘eyes’ were now alight and glowing—its antennae quivering in response to some hidden signal.

The Cybermen were now gathering opposite the centre cell in the honeycomb. This cell was larger than the rest, the membrane thicker and darker. The Cybermen seemed to be waiting for something or someone.

‘Doctor,’ said Jamie urgently, ‘I’ve a feeling yon man,’

he nodded to Klieg, ‘has planned the whole thing. He knew that control wouldn’t open the hatch.’

‘So did I, Jamie.’

‘You knew, Doctor!’

‘Yes. I wanted to find out what he was up to.’

‘And now, you know, Doctor,’ said Klieg, coming up behind them, his gun held ready down by his side, shadowed by Toberman.

‘We know nothing,’ returned Parry, trembling with anger. ‘This is the action of a lunatic,’ he said, pointing to Viner’s body.

‘Not at all, Professor,’ said Klieg. ‘A necessary detail, that’s all.’

‘But for Heaven’s sake, why? Is any scientific discovery worth the sacrifice of human life?’

‘The answer is logic, my dear Professor. Logic and power,’ said Klieg complacently. ‘On Earth, our brotherhood of logicians is the greatest man-intelligence ever assembled. But that’s not enough by itself. We need power. Power to put our ability into action. The Cybermen have that power. We have come here to find and use it.’

‘So that was your motive in financing my expedition,’

said the Professor.

‘Precisely! Your complete lack of organisation made it ideal for our purpose.’

‘And you think the Cybermen will help you?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Of course. I shall be their resurrector,’ said Klieg, and looked on in triumph as the last Cybermen clambered down to join the thirty-strong group of silent silver giants watching the last intact cell.

But something else, too, was warmed and moved by the reactivated computers from the frozen Cyberworld: the Cybermat! Its antennae moved slowly from side. to side as if seeking their range. The red eyes flashed and it began to move, its body undulating like a centipede, along the table top. It was now in Victoria’s line of vision. She saw it, reacted and started back in fear.

‘Keep still,’ said Kaftan, raising the gun.

Victoria shook her head—staring as the Cybermat crept towards the back of the Arab woman.

‘Behind you... that thing...the Cyberthing... it’s come alive,’ said Victoria.

Kaftan was amused. ‘You are so simple,’ she smiled.

‘You don’t really expect me to be taken in by a trick like that?’

Victoria watched, fascinated, as the Cybermat continued its silent passage along the table top. This pet of the Cyberman was no harmless toy. It crept along the table, aiming clearly for the vibration of human flesh in its path: Kaftan.

‘It’s true. Look!’ cried Victoria, shrinking back.

The Cybermat was nearly at Kaftan’s arm.

‘I warn you! Will nothing keep you still,’ said Kaftan dangerously, moving the gun up and pointing it at Victoria’s head. The Cybermat reached a point six inches from the woman, paused, then sprang up on to her shoulder. Kaftan screamed and dropped her gun as she felt claw-like spikes dig into her back.

Victoria rushed forward, grasped the Cybermat, wrenched it from the woman’s back and flung it to the ground. It landed on its back, its antennae moving wildly, then slowly righted itself and curled back into position like a scorpion, ready to strike. This time it was aimed at Victoria.

She picked up the gun, dropped by Kaftan, aimed at the metal vermin—and fired.

The bullet seemed to bounce off the creature. It reared itself back on its hind legs ready to spring. Again and again she fired. One of the red eye lights went out. She continued firing, hitting the silver body at point-blank range and bouncing it away from them with the impact of the bullets.

Finally it lay on its backboth lights out, the faint whirring noise it had made when attacked dying out the metal shell curling over like a dead woodlouse.

Kaftan was still lying on the metal floor, stunned by the horrible sting of the Cybermat.

Victoria shook her, but the woman was unconscious, her head lolling back. She ran over to the controls and stared at them hopelessly. Then she remembered Captain Hopper and his crew. She ran towards the outer door. She must get help, and quickly!

Inside the cavern the silent group of Cybermen were watching as one of their number approached the largest Cybertomb. He stopped outside, turned back to the others and looked around the circle. One by one they all raised their right arms in silent assent. The Cyberman turned back to the cell face and released three special catches. He swung open the membrane like a door.

Watching from the other side of the cavern, the humans gasped as yet another Cyberman was revealed inside the cell.

This one was larger than all the rest with a black helmet instead of a silver one.

Klieg walked forward three paces towards the Cybermen, his face lit up with excitement as he watched the giant Cyberman slowly uncurl and emerge from the cell.

‘He’s the biggest of them all,’ Jamie said in an awed whisper. ‘Like the queen bee in the hive. Who is he?’

‘I’m not sure, Jamie.’ The Doctor sounded equally awed.

‘I think he must be their leader.’ He searched his memory for the right word. ‘I think they call him their Controller.’

The Cyberman finished climbing out of the cell and stretched up to his full height of seven feet—some three inches taller than the giant Toberman.

Klieg could contain himself no longer. All his carefully laid plans had now come to fruition. He stepped forward confidently, facing. the black-headed Cyberleader.

‘I am Klieg. Eric Klieg. You may have heard of me. I am the President of the Brotherhood of Logicians. We planned for this moment—many, many years ago.’

There was no answer from the huge Cybercontroller and his waiting half circle of Cybermen. With their black eye holes and impassive metallic masks for faces they might have been a group of space-age statues.

Klieg looked around, a trifle uneasy at their complete lack of reaction, then plucked up courage and moved closer.

‘Don’t you understand. You are alive because of us.

Because of me! I reactivated you.’ He pointed to the control board.

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Professor Parry started forward but the Doctor held his arm and motioned him to keep silent. Neither the Cyberman nor Klieg seemed to have noticed the interruption.

‘Now that you are alive again, you can help us. We need your power, you need our mass intelligence.’

There was still no reaction from the waiting Cybermen.

Klieg became annoyed with them.

‘Are you listening to me? I released you. You belong to me... Ah!’

The Cyberman Controller’s huge steel hand shot out and gripped Klieg by the shoulder in an agonising grasp.

The man gasped, his face whitening, his eyes widening in pain, as the Cyberman slowly pushed him down to a kneeling position in front of him.

‘Now, you belong to us.’ He looked over Klieg at the others. ‘All of you!’

The Cybermen turned at an unspoken command of their leader and, with slow deliberate steps, started walking towards the Doctor and the others.

9

The Cyberman Controller

The Controller of the Cybermen raised his hand. The Cybermen stopped, facing the humans. Silence: Everyone and everything looked at the Controller, waited for him to make the next move. But he stood still, as if welcoming a response from the humans.

‘How did you know that we would come to release you?’

asked Professor Parry. ‘You could have remained frozen for ever.’

‘The humanoid mind,’ said the low vibrating chord that was the Controller’s voice. ‘You are curious.’

‘As I thought,’ said the Doctor. ‘A trap. A very ingenious trap, too.’

‘What do you mean, ingenious?’ asked the Professor, confused.

‘Don’t you see—they only want superior intellects—

that’s why they have made the trap so complicated. If it was too easy, everyone could have wandered down here.’

They looked at the great gleaming figure that stood before them. It seemed to nod slightly, like a god who chooses for the moment to be benign.

‘We knew intelligent life would visit our planet some day,’ said the Controller.

‘And we’ve done exactly as you calculated, haven’t we?’

said the Doctor. ‘Followed your directions to the letter.

You should be very pleased. What else can we do for you?

Perhaps we can go now?’

‘We cannot let you leave,’ said the Controller loudly.

‘You belong to us.’

His voice echoed and vibrated in the cavern and along the corridor.

Above the hatch, where the terrible voice did not reach, Victoria had fetched Captain Hopper and Callum from the orbiter and the two of them were examining the controls.

Victoria was impatiently trying to hurry up the slow, deliberate Captain. But Hopper, seeing Kaftan’s unconscious body on the floor, and still suspecting the Doctor and his entourage, wouldn’t be hurried.

‘Come on, quickly,’ she said. ‘You must find ,the opening device for me. I don’t know which it is.’

‘Now hold hard, young lady,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m not pulling any levers until I know just what it’s all about.’

‘I don’t reckon we should have left the orbiter, Captain,’

said Callum suspiciously. He indicated Kaftan. ‘She’s O.K.

She only fainted. I can’t see much else wrong here.’

‘Not much wrong... are you blind, the pair of you?’

shouted Victoria, hot with fury. She went over to the hatch, which was shut tight. ‘What about this?’

‘I don’t see any change in this room, Vic,’ said Callum slowly.

Victoria was so furious she didn’t have time to comment on being called ‘Vic’. ‘That’s just it,’ she shouted at them, out of breath. ‘The others are down there now. The Professor, Jamie, the Doctor...’

Kaftan, on the floor, stirred and opened her eyes.

‘Well, in that case, Vic,’ drawled the Captain, as though trying to calm an hysterical child. ‘Why close the hatch down on them? It don’t make sense.’

‘I didn’t,’ snapped Victoria. ‘And don’t call me “Vic”.

She closed the hatch.’ She indicated Kaftan.

‘Oh, really?’ said the Captain, humouring the young girl. ‘Did she now?’ He smiled, not taking her angry mood seriously.

‘Are you going to help me or not?’ asked Victoria in a voice every bit as cool and cutting as her father’s when he was about to demolish an academic colleague. ‘They’re probably freezing to death down there. If you won’t help, I’ll pull all the levers on this board and see what happens.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, Vic,’ said the Captain, still amused but giving in to her evident concern. ‘O.K. then. We’d better do as the little lady says.’ He turned to Callum and pointed over to the control column.

The three of them gathered around the control console.

Behind them Kaftan again opened her eyes, more awake this time and taking careful note of what was happening.

‘Now,’ said the Captain more briskly. ‘Were you here when they opened it all up?’

‘Yes,’ said Victoria.

‘Then,’ said Hopper, ‘you must have some idea how they did it, right?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Victoria, still furious with his manner, but too absorbed in the problem to let it worry her. ‘I wasn’t really looking. I think it was one of these lever things down here.’

She indicated the left-hand side of the board.

‘She thinks!’ said Callum scornfully.

Victoria glared at him but he was beginning to examine the wiring system at the left of the board. Even if he didn’t know as much symbolic logic as Klieg or the Doctor, he was a first-class electrical engineer, able to calculate which wire led to which lever...

After the Controller Cyberman had spoken, he turned back to his Cybermen. The humans had edged back towards the tunnel entrance.

‘Can we not make a run for it, Doctor?’ whispered Jamie.

The Doctor shook his head.

‘We’d never even reach the ladder. Too risky.’

‘What can we do?’ asked Parry, frankly, turning to the Doctor for help.

‘Play for time and watch for our chance,’. said the Doctor decisively. ‘Leave it to me.’

The Doctor walked towards the Controller, his hands out of his pockets, with a respectful air. He cleared his throat.

The Cybermen turned their mask faces towards him, waiting for him to speak.

‘May I ask you a question?’ he said, dwarfed, yet seeming completely unbothered by the big silver figures with their still air of menace.

The Controller indicated by inclining his helmet a millimetre that the Doctor might talk.

‘Why did you subject yourself to freezing?’

The Controller took a step nearer the Doctor to examine him more thoroughly. The Doctor flinched slightly from the intense scrutiny of the giant.

‘Er, well, you don’t have to answer that, if you don’t want to.’

‘It was necessary...’ The Controller’s speech mechanism was still a little stiff and halting—like a talking computer.

‘To survive,’ he said.

‘Ah...’ said the Doctor ironically. ‘I had guessed that bit.

Well, if that’s all you have to say.’ He turned.

‘Wait!’ The Cyberman’s voice gained volume. ‘Our history computer contains full details of you and,’ he looked over at Jamie, ‘that young humanoid male there.’

‘Oh, splendid!’ said the Doctor lightly. ‘It’s so nice to be recognised, isn’t it, Jamie?’

‘We know of your high intelligence,’ said the Controller.

‘Thank you very much,’ said. the Doctor, as if highly flattered by this compliment. ‘Ah, yes,’ he added. ‘The lunar surface, you mean?’

‘Yes. Our machinery had stopped and our supply of replacements was depleted,’ continued the Cybercontroller.

‘That’s why you attacked the moonbase?’ said the Doctor..

‘It was necessary. You had destroyed our first planet, Mondas, and we were becoming extinct.’ There was no anger or hint of revenge in the Cyberman’s voice. Anger, hate and revenge were as unknown to him as love, pity or mercy.

‘What difference does capturing us make?’ called Jamie, suddenly finding his voice. ‘You’ll still become extinct.’

The Controller seemed to grow in height. His voice took on a new, deeper vibration. ‘We will survive.’ Around him the assembled Cybermen took up the chant echoing their credo.

‘WE WILL SURVIVE.’

‘And you will help us,’ he added, as the reverberations of the Cybermen’s harsh voices began to die away.

‘What makes you think we are going to help you?’ said Professor Parry with sudden courage. ‘That murderer’—he pointed to Klieg— ‘does not speak for us.’

‘You will become the first of a new race of Cybermen,’

answered the loud harsh voice. ‘You will return to the Earth and control it for us.’

‘Never! Never!’ cried the Professor.

‘Everything we decide is carried out,’ continued the level voice of the Cyberman. ‘It is useless to oppose our will.’

‘A new race of Cybermen?’ puzzled Jamie. ‘But we’re human. We’re no like you—’

The huge Cyberleader turned and raised his hand threateningly. ‘YOU... WILL... BE.’

As his sound died away, the humans shivered and stood closer together. But still the Cybermen did nothing more terrible than stand and seem to communicate together without spoken words. But while the Doctor had been talking, distracting the Cybermen’s attention, Toberman had glided quietly away down the tunnel.

The Cybercontroller turned back and the Cybermen closed around him in a circle, as if to confer.

Now Jamie too dropped back from the cluster of humans. But he wasn’t so quick that the hypersensitive antennae of the Cybermen hadn’t noticed. One of the Cybermen silently moved to the back of the group towards the tunnel. Holding his breath, Jamie slipped into the entrance to the tunnel. Nothing happened! His ears had been waiting for an explosion, his body held tense for a shot—but nothing had happened. Maybe he was going to get away. He turned the corner into the tunnel. Facing him was a Cyberman, his arm outstretched, his finger pointing at his head. A stream of sparks seemed to fly from the outstretched finger to Jamie’s head. He twitched, and fell backwards into darkness.

Toberman had almost reached the ladder. He glanced behind him—but the tunnel was clear. Relieved, he set his foot up the rung, only to feel a large claw-like metal hand grip his foot in a vice-like hold.

A Cyberman! He must have come down from the upward sloping section of the tunnel. Toberman gripped his attacker by the helmet and exerted all his great strength, forcing the Cyberman to let go his hold. For a moment the computer-sensory messages in the Cyberman reacted as if to an equal in strength—but gradually the superior cybernetic power of the Cyberman’s arms over-powered the great human and forced him backward on to the ground.

‘TO... STRUGGLE... IS... FUTILE’

The Controller’s voice echoed through the cavern and along the tunnel passages as the Cyberman touched his hand to the man’s head and released his knockout spark.

Above the hatch, Callum, using his engineer’s know-how, had removed the control board and was examining the intricate mass of colour-coded wiring.

‘You’re sure they’re the ones?’ asked Hopper, as Callum isolated a multi-coloured group of lead wires.

‘Yup,’ said the engineer confidently. ‘Only thing it could be. It leads up to... two control levers.’ He indicated the levers on the left-hand side of the board.

Kaftan looked around her, saw the gun lying on the floor near her and edged towards it.

‘Please hurry, Mr Hopper,’ said Victoria anxiously as the two men prepared to try out the opening switch.

‘Just keep back, will you,’ said Hopper briskly. ‘Leave this to us. Jim, stand by to cut the power off—just in case.’

He waved Victoria back out of the way, and the three of them braced themselves for the unexpected.

‘Do not move!’ cut in Kaftan’s voice.

Startled, they turned around. She stood behind them, the gun in her hand. Victoria too turned and saw her. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried despairingly.

‘Raise your hands.’

‘Now look here, lady,’ began Hopper, stepping for-ward.

‘ I shall kill you,’ she said clearly. Hopper stopped and raised his arms.

‘Look, your own men are down there too, remember?’

Hopper said. ‘What are you doing all this for, anyway?’

‘Move away from that board,’ she said, ignoring his words. ‘Over here.’ She indicated the side of the room opposite the hatch. ‘I shall open the hatch when Klieg gives me the signal,’ she said.

‘But, why close it in the first place, for Pete’s sake?’

‘Eric Klieg must not be disturbed.’

‘Klieg!’ Victoria burst out, ‘what about the Doctor, Jamie and the Professor?’

‘Your friends will not escape from there.’

‘But I saved your life,’ Victoria said. ‘Does that mean nothing to you?’

‘Nothing must interfere with our work,’ Kaftan said, moving sideways past the control panel and keeping her gun levelled. Just a few more steps—but then her foot stubbed against something metal. The Cybermat. She did not dare look away from the men in case they jumped her.

Victoria could see that the Cybermat was still curled and lifeless, but she could also see the fear in Kaftan’s face.

She screamed, piercingly.

Kaftan started, looked down at her feet, saw the Cybermat and jumped back in terror. In that moment Callum and Hopper jumped forward, grabbed the woman by the arms and took away the gun.

‘O.K., Jim,’ said Hopper: ‘Take this.’ He gave Callum the gun. ‘Watch her. If she moves—let her have it.’ He turned quickly to Victoria.

‘That scream was pretty good, Vic,’ he said to her with respect. ‘Thanks.’

But Victoria was already at the control board.

‘Come on, please,’ said Victoria. ‘Open the hatch.’

‘We’ll take the risk,’ said Hopper. ‘Stand by.’

He pressed two buttons—then pulled down the two levers. The gear noise started, rumbling from below in exactly the same way as before, and reassuring Victoria.

Gradually, but hardly fast enough for her, the heavy hatch cover creaked back into its upright position. She rushed over and looked down the shaft, followed by Hopper and Callum.

They could see nothing but the ladder leading down to hidden depths. The melting of the ice had hardly begun here, and the blast of air from the tunnel had not warmed up enough to be noticeable.

‘It’s terribly quiet down there,’ said Victoria, and felt a shiver across her back.

‘Yeah,’ said Hopper. ‘Too quiet.’

‘Something must have happened.’

‘How long have they been down there?’

Victoria looked at her space-time watch. ‘Nearly an hour.’

‘Yep,’ said Hopper. ‘That’s long enough.’

He swung his feet over.

‘I’m going down.’

As he stood on the first rung, he pointed to Callum’s.

belt. Hanging from it were two metal canisters, rather like hand grenades.

‘What are those things loaded with, Jim?’ he asked.

‘Smoke. I thought they might come in handy.’

‘Great, let’s have a couple,’ said Hopper.

‘Here,’ said Callum. Hopper took the two slim metal canisters from him and tucked them in his anorak.

‘Well,’ he said, standing on the top rung and looking at Victoria. ‘Here we go.’

‘I’m coming too,’ said Victoria.

‘Later maybe,’ said Hopper’s voice. ‘Not this trip. We don’t know what’s going on down there. You stay with him.’

Callum and Victoria watched as he disappeared into the cold dark. Then Callum sat down to wait, his gun still held ready for action—pointing at Kaftan. Victoria sat down too, wondering what was going on below the icy shaft. It seemed an age since she had last seen the Doctor and Jamie. What could be happening to them?

In the tomb the humans still huddled in one corner while the Cybermen, now with their voice boxes activated, talked together quietly beside the tombs that had been their homes for so long.

Jamie, shaken but not badly hurt, had been dragged back to join the others by the Cybermen. Toberman had also been carried easily on the back of the attacking Cyberman and left unconscious on the cavern floor.

There was a click, the humans looked up and saw that the Cybermen were ready to speak to them. The five leading Cybermen again formed a semicircle and the Controller strode over to the humans. He spoke to Klieg.

‘We have decided how you will be used.’

‘Yes?’ said Klieg hopefully. He stood before the silver giant like an ambitious young army officer before his king.

‘You are a logician,’ said the Cyberleader. ‘Our race is also logical. You will be the leader of the new race.’

‘You will listen to my proposals then?’ asked Klieg eagerly.

‘Yes,’ said the Controller’s flat electronic voice. ‘We will listen. But first you will be altered.’

‘Altered in what way?’

‘Your brain.’

Klieg shrank back, horror dawning on his face.

‘You have fear?’ came the deep chords of the Super-cyber voice. ‘We will eliminate fear from your brain. You will be first.’

He took another step towards Klieg, who stumbled away from him, his confident expression disintegrating in terror.

The semicircle of Cybermen moved a step nearer.

‘And you,’ said the first of the Cybermen, reaching out towards Parry, ‘will be next.’

His steel hand gripped Parry’s arm, closed in on it steadily.

‘YOU...WILL... ALL... BE... MADE... LIKE... US,’

rang the voice of the Controller through the cavern and tunnel.

In the tunnel beyond a figure was standing flat against the now damp walls. Captain Hopper, his hands on the smoke bombs, stood listening to the echo of the terrible voice.

‘YOU... WILL... BE... LIKE... US.’

The Captain pulled the firing pin out from one of the smoke grenades and cupped it ready in his palm.

‘To die is unnecessary,’ he heard the Controller say.

‘You will be frozen until we are ready to use you. Your lives will be suspended,’ said the level emotionless voice.

‘Prepare the tombs.’

From the tunnel Hopper saw the Cybercontroller press down the console temperature lever and almost immediately the cold air rushed into the cavern and the thin sheet of melting water in the tunnel began to freeze again.

Hopper edged forward a few centimetres. Now he could see Klieg and Parry in the steel grip of the Cybermen, crushed bowed humans being pressed into the empty Cybercells and. new membrane walls being rolled out ready to be bolted on them.

‘They really mean it! They are going to freeze us,’ cried Parry.

‘Not me!’ burst out Jamie, ready to make a run for it.

‘No, Jamie, not that way,’ said the Doctor, grabbing his arm.

Hopper threw his first bomb into the group of Cybermen. There was a flash, a tremendous bang and the floor of the cabin filled with- thick blinding smoke.

The Cybermen staggered, spun, toppled in bewilderment. They let go of the humans.

‘Come on, you guys! Make a run for it!’ shouted Hopper, throwing the second smoke bomb at the confused Cybermen.

‘Quick, get the Professor,’ the Doctor called to Jamie.

Their lungs bursting with the smoke, they reached Parry, and half supporting him, staggered from the cavern, easily evading the blundering Cybermen.

Jamie held up Parry, half dragging him along the corridor, with the Doctor running beside him.

‘Is he all right, Jamie?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Aye, Doctor,’ said Jamie, looking at the drooping figure leaning against him.

They came to a junction in the tunnel.

‘That’s funny. I canna remember this,’ Jamie said. ‘The Cybermen must have opened a door,’ said the Doctor.

They looked baffled at the two. ways, both of which seemed to run upwards.

‘This way,’ said the Doctor.

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, but try it,’ said the Doctor decisively. ‘I’ll join you in a moment.’

Jamie ran down the right-hand fork and the Doctor waited while Klieg staggered up behind him, stumbling with the fear and the smoke. He halted for a moment at the junction, hardly noticed the Doctor, then took the left fork.

‘Hey, this way,’ called the Doctor. But Klieg took no notice, pressing on down the tunnel. Hopper returned, glancing anxiously behind him for the dangerous gleam of silver. ‘Hurry, will ya! They’ll soon recover. It was only smoke.’

‘We’ve got to stop them,’ said the Doctor.

‘Block off this tunnel perhaps,’ said Hopper.

‘Not a hope. We’ll just have to get out before they do.

Come on!’

They ran down the right-hand fork after Jamie and the Professor. Toberman appeared stumbling and coughing, partially blinded by the smoke, feeling his way along the slippery walls of the passage.

In his path loomed something silver—a Cyberman.

Toberman turned to run but the Cyberman reached out a hand and grabbed his shoulder. Toberman turned and delivered a massive blow at the Cyberman’s neck and sent the Monster clanging back against the metal walls of the tunnel. Toberman turned to run, only to face another Cyberman. He pointed his metal finger at Toberman and the terrible spark came out like a laser and struck Toberman on the forehead.

Toberman staggered and blinked—but this time he did not go down. He stayed standing, his human muscles gleaming with the sweat of effort as he wrestled with the two silver beings, a human with nothing but muscle and strength against the bionic power of the Cybermen.

And in the end he fell.

Through the smoke loomed the Cybercontroller. ‘Where are the others?’

‘They have escaped through to the ladder,’ one of the Cybermen replied.

‘Follow them,’ said the Controller. He turned to look down at Toberman. ‘This humanoid is powerful. We will use him. Prepare him.’

The other two Cybermen picked up the inert Toberman and carried him like. a dead warrior back to the waiting tomb.

Jamie and Hopper were pulling the half-conscious Professor up the ladder, sweating with the effort and the need for speed.

‘Can’t you hurry up?’ said Hopper. ‘For Pete’s sake, get a move on.’

Finally, the two of them managed to drag Parry over the top, helped by Callum and Victoria. She saw Jamie behind the Professor.

‘Jamie!’ she cried, almost weeping with relief. ‘Look at all that smoke!’ Behind them, curling out of the shaft, the smoke began to well out into the control room.

‘Keep back, Victoria,’ said Jamie. ‘There’s the others to come yet.’

Hopper’s head showed. ‘The Cybermen! They’re right behind us,’ he shouted, breathless, and as he climbed out they saw the Doctor a long way below, and behind him the horrible gleam they had been waiting for—a Cyberman, climbing fast.

‘Quick, Doctor. Hurry.’ Victoria wrung her hands and looked helplessly down the hatch as the Doctor scrambled up the gigantic rungs. The Cyberman below, moving with a steady driving rhythm, was catching up with him.

‘Start closing it!’ shouted Hopper. Callum threw the switch and the great lid started creaking down over the Doctor and the swift-moving terror below.

The Doctor’s head and shoulders came over the hatchway to be grabbed by Jamie and Hopper.

‘He’s got my foot!’

‘Stop the hatch!’ Hopper called over. Callum pressed a button, the gears stopped, suspending the hatch half-way open over the Doctor.

‘It’s no use!’ gasped the Doctor. ‘I can’t get free.’

Victoria looked round in desperation. There must be something she could use. The coffee flask! She ran over to it, picked it up and threw it at the Cyberman. The vacuum exploded on the Cyberman’s head. He let go of the Doctor and quickly Hopper and Jamie dragged him to safety.

‘The hatch,’ shouted Hopper. But Callum had already activated the mechanism. The hatch started to move down again and the watching group held their breath, as they saw the Cyberman’s long silver arm come up to try to hold it open. For a moment it seemed to stop, but even he could not prevail against the power of the gears, and millimetre by millimetre, the massive metal crushed down on him, driving him back down the shaft, and the lid was closed.

Thud! Thud! The Cyberman beat upon the closed hatch with his steel fists. At each blow a small dent appeared in the heavy metal, but the hatch held. Finally, the great clanging blows died away, as the Cyberman gave up and retired down the ladder.

Everyone in the control room drew a long breath, feeling their fast throbbing pulses subside. The Doctor massaged his foot, but smiled at the others and indicated that it was all right.

Jamie went over to Victoria, who was sitting with her head down, trembling, faint.

‘It was horrible...’ she whispered. ‘So strong.’

‘It’s all right, Victoria. Dinna worry. It can’t get up here,’ said Jamie, holding and comforting her.

Professor Parry, who had seemed almost in a state of shock from the desperate chase, came to and sat up as if he had been dozing at a lecture.

‘That was a near thing,’ he said in his clipped, precise voice. ‘Anyone missing?’

The Captain got to his feet and looked around. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mr Klieg... and Toberman. They’re still down there.’

Klieg had found a niche in the tunnel, used to give access to the maze of electrical cables that ran throughout the Cybermen’s underground workings.

Smoke from Callum’s bombs still swirled through the tunnel, hiding him as three Cybermen marched past in heavy unison. They looked up the ladder. Klieg strained to hear what was being said.

‘The humanoid has escaped,’ came the deep voice of the controller.

‘Yes,’ replied the Cyberman, who had pursued the Doctor. ‘They have secured the hatch. We must return to the tombs once more.’

The Cybermen tramped back along the passage looking neither to right nor left and disappeared in the smoke towards the cavern.

As quietly as he could Klieg ran along the passageway, hoping their fine hearing antennae would not pick up his footsteps. He reached the ladder and looked up at the closed hatch.

As he clambered up, the rungs were still slippery with the remains of the ice, and more than once his foot skidded off the metal, bringing his body into painful impact with the iron walls, but nothing stirred below. Another few rungs and he was at the top.

He stood there undecided. What could he do? If he banged on the hatch, the Cybermen would hear him. If he didn’t, the humans above would never know he was there, and it could only be a matter of time before the Cybermen returned.

He looked at the unmoving lid, dented from the impact of the Cyberman’s incredibly powerful fists and shuddered.

Then he raised his fist and knocked softly.

In the control room the humans, recovering from the.

chase, thought they heard something. They listened. One tap. Two taps. Soft, not the great rending clangs of the Cyberman.

‘Don’t open it,’ said the Professor. ‘It may be the Cyberman.’

‘No, no,’ said the Doctor. ‘Too soft. Human knuckles this time. It must be Toberman and Klieg. We must open the hatch.’

Hopper and Callum stared at him.

‘Come again,’ said Hopper. ‘After all they’ve tried to do—you want to let them up here?’

‘He’s right,’ said the Professor primly. ‘We can’t leave them down there, even if they are killers.’

The Captain looked at him as if wondering how a man could be such an innocent fool.

‘Most likely they’re both frozen solid by now,’ said Jamie with a shudder.

The knocking started again.

‘You must let them up,’ said Kaftan. ‘They must be saved.’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor.

‘But why, Doctor?’ said Jamie. ‘Ye canna trust that man.’

‘Agreed,’ said the Doctor, ‘but they’re more dangerous to us down there than up here.’

Hopper drew his gun. ‘Now you’re making sense,’ he said. ‘O.K., Jim.’

Callum began to set up the sequence for opening the hatch again. Jamie grabbed one of the stools and stood ready.

The knocking started again, soft, persistent.

‘O.K.,’ said Hopper. ‘Let it go.’

Callum worked the opening levers. The others watched tensely as the lid slowly ground up. Hopper raised his gun and levelled it. Out of the hatch burst Klieg and flopped over the rim on to the floor. Hopper ran to the hatch and looked down the shaft for Toberman.

‘Eric,’ cried Kaftan. ‘Where’s Toberman?’

‘They’ve got him!’ gasped Klieg hysterically, breathless.

‘They’ve got him! Close it, quick!’

Hopper nodded to Callum who started the closing sequence. Everyone held their breath as the hatch began its slow descent, only letting it out as the lid finally closed up tight again.

They gathered round Klieg, who lay on the floor, leaning against the table, looking up defensively. Hopper kept his gun ready in his hand. ‘Still convinced that you can form an alliance with the Cybermen, Mr Klieg?’ asked the Doctor.

But Klieg’s jaw tightened and the fanatical gleam came back into his eyes.

‘If I’d only been in a stronger position to bargain with them,’ he said.

The Professor turned away contemptuously. ‘The man’s obviously out of his mind,’ he said.

‘You’re in no position to bargain with anyone right now,’ said Hopper grimly. ‘What are we going to do with him and the woman?’ he asked the Professor.

‘I’d feel happier if they were not left in here,’ said Parry.

‘What about the testing room?’ suggested the Doctor.

‘There’s only one door. They can’t get out.’

‘A good idea,’. said Parry. ‘They’ll be quite safe in there.

Callum!’

‘O.K., Mr Klieg, let’s go,’ said Callum. He drew his gun and led off Klieg and Kaftan, Hopper following behind.

They pushed them into the testing room, slammed and locked the door, watched by the others.

‘Now,’ said the Captain briskly. ‘If I don’t get back to that orbiter, we’re not going to take off inside a week.’

‘We’ll come with you,’ said the Professor, preparing with much relief to leave. To find Cybermen in tombs was an archaeological triumph. But to find Cybermen rising from the dead and taking over the universe: that was something quite different. He wanted to get away as soon as possible, while his rolls of film were still intact.

‘I’ve told you, not until I’m operational again,’ said Hopper. ‘You stay right here till I’m ready for you.’

He picked up his anorak and space-torch, ready to leave.

‘I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with our friends down there,’ he said, as he passed the hatch.

‘We shall see,’ said the Doctor quietly to Jamie.

10

Release the Cybermats

Below in the cavern the Controller and his five head Cybermen consulted together by the control board. He came to a decision and raised his hand. ‘We shall release the Cybermats! We will use the power of Cybernetics on the humanoids.’

He pressed a button on the control desk. To the right of the Cybertombs a large square sheet of metal slid silently aside. Behind it were a series of pigeon-holes, some twenty in all, in each of which lay a dormant Cybermat.

‘Test them,’ said the Controller. ‘The brain of this humanoid will be their target.’ He indicated Toberman, who lay unconscious on the floor at their feet.

The Cybermen carefully drew out three and placed them on the floor near Toberman.

The Controller turned to the control panel and turned a large knob clockwise. The Cybermats’ head lights came on and the low humming sound came from their bodies, but they remained still.

‘These Cybermats are dormant through lack of use,’ said the Controller. ‘Activate them!’

The Cybermen picked up the three silver creatures, turned them over and opened up a small compartment on the underside. With skilled precision, they adjusted some small electronic controls, then carefully put them back on the floor next to Toberman.

Inside the testing room Klieg lay asleep, exhausted by his flight from the Cybermen.

Kaftan sat by him, as cool and collected as ever, her uniform neat, her hands folded, thinking. She looked around the testing room, then saw something that made her start to her feet.

The shattered remains of the Cyberman target still lay where they had fallen—among them, a short length of black, deadly barrel protruding—was the Cyberman weapon.

She picked it up curiously. It was about as long as a forearm, black, with a short stock and a button instead of a trigger.

As she turned away her feet caught the Cyberman arm shell. It clattered down on to the metal floor. Klieg was startled into wakefulness.

‘What’s that?’ he shouted, still dazed.

‘Just me,’ said Kaftan’s soothing voice.

Klieg grunted angrily. ‘Well, keep quiet and let me sleep,’ he muttered, turning over ready to sleep again.

‘Sleep later,’ said Kaftan sharply. ‘Look at this!’

Klieg sighed. He wanted to sleep. He wondered in the moment between sleeping and waking if he would ever have come this far on this wild chase for power, if it had not been for this unrelenting woman.

‘What is it?’ he asked, raising himself on to his elbow.

‘It’s one of the weapons they were testing,’ said Kaftan.

‘Here, let me see,’ said Klieg, sleep forgotten.

He scrambled to his feet, took the gun and examined it.

It felt cool and sleek in his hand. A gun. A gun better than anything yet developed on Earth.

‘You’re right!’ he whispered in excitement. ‘It’s a Cybergun!’

‘Take a look at that control. Make sure everything is switched off,’ Klieg continued.

‘It must gain power via a small transmitter from the central power unit. We don’t want any accidents.’

‘It could be a mock-up—like the Cyberman,’ said Kaftan.

‘We’ll soon know,’ said Klieg. ‘Turn off the power. The switch on the right of that board.’

Kaftan clicked over a switch. ‘All the sequences show negative,’ she said quietly.

‘Good,’ said Klieg.

He put his hand into his side pocket and took out a set of jeweller’s tools. Kaftan watched while he began to dismantle the weapon. Skilfully he worked out where each separate part must be, unscrewed it and placed it gently on the metal floor. It was a beautiful piece of design, made of better metal alloys than anything they had yet seen on Earth.

‘There is nothing wrong with this,’ said Klieg. ‘Now, they will have to listen to us.’

‘The Cybermats are ready.’

‘Stand clear,’ said the Controller.

The Cybermats were arrayed in a horseshoe round the body of Toberman, their antennae pointing towards him.

The Cybermen stood watching.

‘Now,’ said the Controller’s level but precise voice. He turned the control knob.

There was a low buzzing noise, a whine, rising slowly to a higher and higher pitch. Nothing moved except the antennae on the Cybermats. They started moving forward towards the giant lying in front of them.

‘Excellent!’ Klieg was saying. ‘A small X-ray laser, I’d guess.’

He took aim with the Cybergun, pointing it at the metal panel on the other side of the room. Kaftan moved back nervously and waited.

Klieg pressed the trigger button and, with a flash, smoke began to come out of the metal panel. With the trigger pressed, he burned a neat circle in the panel. A round piece of metal clattered forward on to the floor.

‘Yes! A laser! Cuts metal, drills through anything we want it to, my dear Kaftan,’ he smirked, the gun in his hand giving him the power he knew he had to have.

‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Kaftan.

‘Take command of course,’ said Klieg. ‘What do you.

think? With this, we shall be able to deal with those people in there.’

Behind him was the hole torn in the metal by the laser gun.’ Up through it came the chill wind from the Cybercaverns, and creeping up towards it came the first of a swarm of something else: the first of the reprogrammed Cybermats.

‘Never mind about the others,’ said Kaftan. ‘The important thing for us is to command the Cybermen.’

‘Er... yes... I know,’ said Klieg. ‘But...’

Even with the gun in his hand, he now looked anything but the arrogant conqueror.

‘Isn’t it, Eric?’ insisted Kaftan’s clear voice.

‘You haven’t been down there,’ he muttered. ‘You haven’t seen those... vile things.’

He shivered.

‘You’re not scared, are you?’

‘We have completely underestimated their power,’ said Klieg, trying to convey to her some slight inkling of the horror that still waited below them in the chill cavern.

‘But this time we have the power,’ said Kaftan. ‘At least, you do.’

Klieg didn’t understand her.

‘The gun, Eric. The gun. You have the Cybermen’s own weapon. This laser. You can turn it against them. Now they will have to obey,’ she went on, her eyes shining. ‘If they refuse, we shall destroy the opening device and seal them up in their tomb for ever.’

Klieg looked at her, understanding, full of arrogance again.

‘Do you understand?’ asked Kaftan.

‘Yes, you are right. I am invulnerable with this,’ said Klieg. ‘I shall be Master of the Cybermen.’

‘Come on!’ said Kaftan briskly. ‘Let’s deal with the others.’

She moved towards the door, but Klieg was not following her. She turned around.

‘Eric?’ she said.

‘Master,’ he said, ‘the supreme moment of my life.’

She looked at him hard. But he stood still, a strange fixed expression on his face.

‘... The supreme moment of my life,’ he repeated. ‘It was logical that it should happen this way.’

‘Eric, we have work to do,’ she said firmly.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, rousing himself. ‘But hardly work—’ A slow smile spread over his features, different from anything she had seen on his face before, a strange self-satisfied grin, but dangerous, blind...

‘... More of a pleasure.’

‘A what?’ asked Kaftan.

‘A pleasure,’ said Klieg. ‘When I think the moment is right to turn this gun on that Doctor and his companions.’

He smiled again. ‘The rest are of no account,’ he said with a casualness that would have done credit to a Cyberman,

‘but the Doctor...’ He licked his lips as if his mouth was dry with excitement. ‘He will make a most precise target.’

Kaftan looked at him again, worried over this new Eric Klieg, then shrugged. Perhaps his mood would pass. On the floor, unseen, the small silver creature crept towards them, pointing its antennae towards the two logicians.

Down in the cavern Toberman, now awake, watched anxiously as the Cybermats stopped three inches away from his head and reared up to make their fatal leap.

‘Enough!’ said the Controller. ‘These humanoids are not like us. They still have fear.’

He switched the control back and the three Cybermats subsided on to the floor.

‘Place the Cybermats on the runway,’ said the Controller, and the Cybermen cautiously picked up the virulent creatures, placed them on three platforms at the back of their cupboard and opened trap doors in the wall.

They looked up three small chutes and made sure they were clear. Each chute, leading up to the top level, where the humans were, was a clear runway for the Cybermats.

The Controller stood by the control panel. He turned the control again.

‘The Cybermats will attack!’ he said.

A humming sound began and, their red eyes flashing, the silver scorpions moved up the chutes.

In the control room upstairs the exhausted humans were asleep. Victoria, whose watch it was, was nodding off, trying vainly to keep awake, but the others—Jamie, the Doctor, Parry and Callum were deep asleep.

Suddenly the Doctor started awake. He blinked and stretched, then noticed Victoria still sitting up but nodding forward, her long hair round her like a cape.

‘Hey, why didn’t you wake me?’ asked the Doctor. ‘I’m on your side, remember?’ He smiled at her with his rare kind smile, a smile so kind that it seemed to take all the sadness there was inside it and still come out as a smile.

‘I ought to have been on watch half an hour ago,’ he said.

‘I thought you should rest,’ said Victoria primly.

‘Why me?’

‘Oh, well—no reason really,’ stumbled Victoria, embarrassed.

The Doctor looked at her, puzzled, then his face broke suddenly into a smile.

‘Oh, I think I know. Was it because I’m... ‘

‘Well, if you really are four hundred and fifty years old, you must need a great deal of sleep,’ said Victoria in her best governess voice.

‘Very considerate of you,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I’m really quite lively actually, all things considered.’

He looked at her affectionately. She was quite a girl, Victoria. Plucked suddenly from her comfortable home in the Victorian age, to cope alone with people and places centuries ahead, she kept her affections and used her intelligence remarkably well.

He sat beside her.

‘Are you happy with us, Victoria?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I am. At least, I would be if only my father... were still alive.’

‘I know. I know,’ murmured the Doctor.

‘I wonder what he would have thought if he could just see me now,’ she murmured.

‘You must be missing him very much.’

‘It’s when I close my eyes,’ she said, turning to him and looking at him earnestly with her grave, blue eyes. ‘I think I can still see him standing there—before those awful...

Dalek creatures came to the house.’

She tried not to think about that and the way the Daleks had killed him. Instead, she had trained herself to remember evenings sitting together in front of the fire and the way he laughed, saying, ‘Toria! Listen to this!’ while reading out something that amused him in his book.

‘He was such a kind man, you know,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I shall never forget him. Never.’

‘Of course, you won’t,’ he said softly. ‘But the memory of him won’t always be a sad one.’

‘I think it will,’ said Victoria.

‘It must be difficult for you to see what I mean,’ she said wisely. ‘I suppose, because you’re so ancient. I mean old...

You probably can’t remember your family.’

‘Oh, but I can,’ and the Doctor again gave her that smile that was full of everything. ‘I can, when I want to, and that’s the point, really. I have to really want to bring them back in front of my eyes—the rest of the time they sleep in my mind and I forget.’ He looked at her compassionately.

‘So will you.’

Victoria looked doubtful.

‘You will, you know,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll find there is so much else to think about—to remember. Our lives are different from everybody else’s, that’s the exciting thing,’

he said. ‘Nobody in the universe, in the whole universe, can do what we’re doing, be what we are. Nobody.’ He looked at her young intelligent face.

‘Now, get some sleep and leave this poor old man to try and keep awake,’ and he smiled at her again, but this time with his old ironical smile, the casual Doctor again.

Victoria lay down and let the sleep she had been fighting roll over her, comforted as she always was by the Doctor’s gentle philosophy.

So slowly, it was not perceptible by a human, the Cybermat pushed open the top door of its chute, well concealed at the foot of the Cybermen bas-reliefs, and the supple, silvery body crept like a rat into the room. Then another, and a third. The Doctor sat still, his thoughts far away, perceiving no danger—until something touched. his foot. He started, looked down, rose up and jumped back out of reach.

‘Jamie!’ he shouted. ‘Victoria! Callum! Wake up!’

The others started awake.

‘Eh—’ said Jamie.

‘What... what is it?’ said Victoria.

Callum was still sleeping heavily, a difficult person to wake. The Cybermat, its antennae tense with the proximity of human flesh, nudged cold against his foot, crawled nearer, and like a spider, ran up his body to his chest, its antennae pointing straight at his skull—homing in on his brain waves..

‘Callum! Callum!’ shouted the Doctor.

Callum grunted and started to wake up.

‘Those terrible things again!’ said Victoria.

Callum was awake now, staring down at the silver machine prickling up across his chest..

‘DON’T MOVE!’ said the Doctor, willing Callum to obey.

Callum froze as the creature swarmed up his chest, he could feel the antennae buzzing towards his head, the red eyes flashing in his face, already he felt a dizziness...

The Doctor edged nearer and nearer... Callum. didn’t move. With a sudden jerk the Doctor whipped the Cybermat off Callum’s shoulder.

The creature fell on its silver segmented back and like a fallen hedgehog, couldn’t get its balance for a moment, its side legs trying to get purchase on the ground.

‘Quick,’ said the Doctor. ‘All of you. Get over this side of the room. Don’t make any sudden movements.’

They backed away slowly. Parry was still drowsy: he stumbled and fell over one of the rucksacks.

‘Steady, steady,’ said the Doctor, and Parry, seeing the Cybermats, pulled his body away, got up carefully and crept with the others to the controls side of the room.

‘Now, don’t panic,’ said the Doctor in a firm quiet voice.

‘We’ll go to the Cyber-recharging room and shut them out.’

They backed away towards the door of the recharging room. Victoria was first, the nearest to the door. Suddenly she turned and screamed.

The others looked back: there were three more Cybermats, silver, segmented, squirming, progressing towards them with a faint buzzing, their antennae pointed at the humans’ brains.

‘Let’s get out to the surface,’ said Callum. ‘Main doors—

’

They took two steps, three steps, they were nearly there, when in through the passage to the main door came three more creeping Cybermats.

‘Doctor!’ cried Victoria.. ‘We’re trapped!’

The nine Cybermats now communicated with each other, in a series of small high-pitched bleeps. Their antennae moved towards each other as if they were co-ordinating some plan.

‘Back there to the controls, everyone,’ said the Doctor.

The Doctor and Parry backed to the control panel, and for a moment, the forward movement of the Cybermats stopped. They seemed undecided about which direction their victims had taken. The Doctor, pressed back against the control panel, looked around, thinking what he could do with the available weapons, control panel, lever, buttons, metal bars, stool, electrical cables...

‘Quick, give me a hand,’ he said to the Professor. He looked at the control board for a moment—and turned off a power switch. Then whipping a pair of clippers out of his roomy pocket, he grabbed a length of the stout cable running between the two parts of the control console.

He cut the cable free of the wall and started laying it down on the ground between them and the Cybermats, like a magic circle. Parry caught on fast, yanked down more cable and helped him.

The Doctor cut the other end of the cable free and jammed the two ends into two power sockets on the underside of the console.

‘Stand back!’ shouted the Doctor.

But Callum had drawn his gun and was outside the cable.

‘Let’s blast the filthy things,’ he shouted, still shaken from the feel of the creature on his chest. He fired three times.

One of the Cybermats, knocked over on to its side, curled up like. a leaf in a fire, crackled, burst into smoke and the red eyes’ lights went out. But the others crawled on, their antennae like missiles pointing with deadly accuracy.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ said the Doctor. ‘You can’t kill them all with that. Do as I say. Come back here. Keep close to us.’

Callum turned and stepped back into the half circle of the cable. Towards the cable advanced the Cybermats, bleeping to each other, their antennae pointed, slowly and relentlessly.

The Doctor turned on the power. A spark seemed to arc along the cable from the tremendous voltage. The first three Cybermats swerved and skittered erratically around, travelling in circles, until they crashed into one another.

‘There we are!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘The current will destroy them.’

The bleeping rose to a new high as if the small dynamos of the Cybermats were burning themselves out.

‘What are those creatures?’ asked Professor Parry, scientific curiosity again uppermost.

They looked at the metal crustaceans, now completely disorientated, running in repeated circles, and, one by one, curling up, their segments crackling apart with the current.

The last Cybermat turned over, smoke rising from its casing, its silver legs stiffening, as the machine burnt out.

‘How did you do it, Doctor?’ Jamie said. It was all beyond his comprehension.

‘By generating an electric field in that cable, I’ve confused their tiny metal minds. You might say they’ve had a complete—er, metal breakdown.’ The Doctor smiled at his little joke.

‘What about Klieg and Kaftan?’ asked Victoria suddenly. ‘The Cybermats have probably attacked them as well.’

‘The testing room,’ said Parry. ‘We’d better go.’ Klieg and Kaftan were standing just inside the entrance to the testing room.

‘Ah, Klieg,’ said the Professor. ‘I must warn you—’

Klieg swung the Cybergun from behind his back.

‘No, I must warn you,’ he said, ‘what can you do against this?’

He slowly raised the Cyberlaser and pointed it at. the Doctor.

‘Look out, Doctor!’ shouted Callum.

Callum rushed forward, the gun fired, Callum jerked back, clutched his shoulder and fell to the ground.

Parry started towards him but Klieg lifted the gun again.

‘Get back,’ said Klieg.

‘You’ve killed him! You murderer!’ shouted the Professor.

‘No, no,’ said Klieg. ‘He is fortunate.’

‘You mean you missed him,’ said Jamie.

‘Silence,’ Klieg said. ‘I could have destroyed him if I had wanted to.’ He turned to Kaftan. ‘Shall I kill them now?’ he asked, casually.

‘No,’ said Kaftan. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said.

‘I’m sure the Cybermen will have a good use for them.’ The Professor looked at her with disgust.

‘You will make excellent experimental specimens,’ she said.

‘Let me help him,’ said Victoria. ‘Please?’

Klieg looked at Kaftan. She nodded her consent.

‘But no tricks or I shoot,’ said Klieg, lifting the gun.

They watched as Victoria went over to the wounded Callum, crouched down by him and gently opened his space-tunic to examine his wound. Then Klieg went over to the control panel and pulled the hatch lever.

‘And you still hope to bargain with the Cybermen?’

asked the Doctor.

‘Certainly. But this time, on our terms,’ said Klieg.

The grinding noise began again, and once again the heavy metal lid creaked up to vertical. Cold air from below chilled the room.

Klieg, the Cybergun in his hand reassuring him, went over to the hatch and looked down the still icy shaft with its gigantic rungs.

‘I wish to speak. to the Controller,’ he called. Then again, louder, ‘I wish to speak to the Controller. I WISH

TO SPEAK TO THE CONTROLLER!’ His voice echoed back at him up the chill shaft.

11

The Controller is Revitalised

The Cybermen had heard. Klieg’s voice, puny and human, came quavering along the tunnel to the cavern where they stood and conferred.

‘That humanoid is not to be trusted,’ said the first of the five Cybermen to the Controller.

‘He is not important, we have power,’ the Controller said in his deeper voice.

‘Our energy units are nearly exhausted. We must go up to the revitalisation machine,’ said the first Cyberman..

‘The humanoids must first be destroyed,’ said the Controller, adjusting the sequence of necessary events to fit in this detail. ‘You will re-enter the cells to conserve energy,’ he said, and in a great silver wave, the Cybermen began to step back into the honeycomb cells. ‘We shall need the big humanoid, bring him to me,’ said the Controller. Toberman was brought before the Cyberleader.

‘Is he prepared?’ the Controller asked.

‘He is now prepared,’ answered the Cyberman.

‘Release him.’

Toberman took a step forward. He was now dressed in a loose white smock. His eyes were set, unseeing.

‘Listen!’ said Klieg excitedly at the hatch. He could hear the metallic thump... thump... thump of their feet along the tunnel. ‘They’re coming!’

He turned to the others, with a childish eager look on his face. ‘Now, gentlemen, you will see how I shall use the power of the Cybermen!’ he said gleefully.

‘Use—maybe,’ said the Doctor. ‘But you’ll never control a Cyberman.’

‘Eric!’ cried Kaftan. ‘Behind you!’

Klieg, his heart hammering, turned back to the hatch.

And there, silent, larger than they had dared to remember him, stood the great bulk of the Cybercontroller. He moved up another rung.

‘Stop!’ cried Klieg. He lifted the Cybergun, but his hands were trembling. ‘You know what this weapon can do to you,’ he said as steadily as he could.

The Controller stopped moving and stared at him as impassively as only the Cybermen could.

‘That’s better,’ said Klieg. His voice was firmer. ‘You are now under my control. Do you understand?’

The Controller said nothing.

‘Do not think we logicians came here unprepared. We understand everything about you. We know you have little energy. We know you must come up to be revitalised, or you will perish. Agree to my terms, and I shall allow you to survive. Otherwise, you will be shut up below for ever. I shall destroy the control board with this weapon.’ To the others, he sounded like a child telling the waves not to fall, but Klieg was completely lost to reason.

‘I will listen,’ said the Controller.

Kaftan came up to Klieg and whispered, ‘Make them release Toberman.’

‘If you think that they’ll listen to you,’ burst out Jamie to Klieg, ‘you’re even dafter than I thought.’

‘Silence!’ shouted Klieg. He swung the Cybergun at Jamie. ‘And sit down!’

Jamie shrugged his shoulders, unimpressed by Klieg, and sat down.

‘Our first condition,’ said Klieg to the Controller, ‘is that you release our man.’

The Cyberleader looked down and gave a signal. ‘I must come inside,’ he said.

For a moment Klieg hesitated, then nodded. The Cyberleader stepped over the rim of the hatch and stood beside it, as Toberman climbed up into view behind him.

Kaftan seemed the only human glad to see him, but he showed no sign of recognition. The Controller turned and faced him. Toberman looked back. They stood facing each other for more than a moment, then the Cyberleader stood aside and Toberman moved forward.

‘Toberman!’ cried Kaftan, touching his cheek. ‘It is so good that you are back.’ She indicated the Doctor and the others. ‘Watch them,’ she commanded, and Toberman, as he had always done, obeyed her.

‘He looks all right, doesn’t he?’ said Jamie, who had been expecting to see Toberman wounded by the Cybermen.

‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor, looking at Toberman sharply.

The Controller stepped forward.

‘Stay where you are,’ snapped Klieg, raising the Cybergun again. ‘Do you agree to accept our plan?’ asked Klieg.’

‘Plan?’ asked the Doctor.

Klieg took a deep breath and gave the Doctor a scornful glance.

‘The conquest of Earth,’ he said.

‘What?’ gasped the Professor. ‘You must be quite mad.’

‘Silence!’ shouted Klieg. ‘Your answer?’ He turned back to the Controller.

What was going on behind the Controller’s impassive mask? What was his computer brain making of the situation? The humans waited for his reply. ‘We accept,’ he said at last. ‘We will give you some of our power devices.’

‘Good!’ said Klieg, sweating with triumph. He turned to the Professor. ‘I told you an understanding could be reached. Now I shall let you be revitalised,’ he said condescendingly. ‘For you to survive, I realise it must be now. Right?’

The Controller inclined his head. ‘Yes!’

‘Come forward slowly,’ said Klieg.

‘Eric,’ breathed Kaftan, tense, next to him. ‘Be careful.’

Klieg brushed her aside. ‘Leave this to me.’

The Controller walked forward step by step, slowly, as if his energy was draining out with every minute that passed.

The humans shrank back from his terrible silver presence.

He reached the door to the recharging room, turned around and turned his face first towards the group of humans, then to Toberman. Then he walked in.

The Doctor looked about him uneasily.

‘You are absolutely crazy to trust them,’ said the Professor.

‘You think so ?’ asked Klieg. He smiled. ‘Then, perhaps you and your colleagues had better join him. Go on.’

He pushed the Doctor, Parry, and Jamie after the Controller. Victoria rose from Callum to follow them, but Klieg barred her way.

‘The girl stays with us,’ said Klieg. ‘If there is any trouble, she is our hostage.’ He nodded to Toberman.

‘Close the hatch.’ Toberman stood still. ‘Do you hear me,’

said Klieg loudly. Toberman just moved behind Klieg and folded his arms.

Klieg looked at him angrily, but Toberman just stood.

there. Kaftan turned the closing lever herself. Tobernian stood as still as a Cyberman. She looked at him wonderingly, but his face was blank and gave nothing away.

The others followed the Controller into the revitalisation room filled with an awed compulsion to see what he would do. As he moved into the room, his steps were visibly flagging, the last few steps across the room to the control panel were almost in slow motion.

They watched, fascinated, as he pressed the lever to open the lid of the recharging machine. His motions had become stiff and jerky. As he lumbered forward to the recharging sarcophagus, he seemed about to topple forward with each laboured step. Finally, the silver giant stopped in front of the machine, teetering slightly as if unable to move.

‘Look. It’s too weak to get in,’ said Jamie in awe.

‘Shhh, Jamie,’ said the Doctor.

After a moment the Doctor walked cautiously towards the fumbling Cyberman. He put out a hand towards it, but felt the chill from the silvery metal and drew his hand back.

‘You seem to be in trouble,’ he said to the Controller.

With difficulty, the great creature turned his whole body so that he could see the Doctor.

‘The... energy... levels... are low...’ creaked his voice; no longer a magnificent array of chords, now a croak that moved in jerks like a stuck record needle. ‘We... will...

survive...’ he went on. He waited, his great silver body drooping into massive immobility. The Doctor waited.

‘You will help us,’ said the deep voice, still imperious. ‘You will help us.’

The Doctor waited and watched while the great black head drooped lower. He came to a decision.

‘Certainly,’ said the Doctor briskly. ‘Jamie. Professor.’

‘You’re not going to help him?’ cried Jamie, thunder-struck.

‘Surely not,’ said Parry. ‘You can’t support these...

things.’

‘I think it best,’ said the Doctor with authority. ‘Come on.’

The other two moved over towards the Cyberman. They also stretched out their hands to the giant’s arms, hesitated at the touch of the chill metal and drew back.

‘It’s all right,’ said the Doctor quietly. Again they reached out and touched the huge arms, grasped them more firmly, and the three of them pushed the enormous weight of the Controller towards the inside of the sarcophagus. Now the Cybercontroller stood inside the form, weak but erect.

The humans propped him up and moved away.

‘You... understand the... mechanism?’ the Controller said.

‘I think so,’ said the Doctor. He went over to the controls, his hands in his pockets. ‘One moment.’ He examined the code system.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Doctor?’ yelled Jamie, rushing over and taking him by the arm. ‘Let’s get away from this room.’

‘It does seem somewhat unwise,’ said the Professor.

‘We’ll see,’ said the Doctor mildly, operating the controls. ‘Now, are you ready?’ he asked.

The Controller moved his head very slightly. It was all the giant could manage.

The Doctor pressed the first lever, moved his fingers fast over the sequence of buttons, and immediately the buzzing noise started, the lights flashed, the floor trembled—and the lid began to move over the waiting form of the Cyberman.

‘We will... survive..’ rasped the voice. ‘Weee... wulll...

srrrvvv...’ The words slurred and ran down as the lid closed.

The Doctor relaxed and put his hands in his pockets.

‘There,’ he said, smiling. ‘Where would you rather have him—in or out of there?’

Casually he turned back to the control board and examined it.

‘Och,’ said Jamie, smiling in relief. ‘You do give us a hard life of it, Doctor.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said the Professor. ‘Good idea.’

The Doctor gave a wry shrug at the chorus of congratulation. The others did not notice his crossed fingers.

12

Toberman Returns

Victoria sat quietly in the Control room, still in the power of Klieg and Kaftan, trying to work out a plan of action.

She realised that she was alone again, and anything she did would have to be her own decision. There was no one else around to help this time.

‘Do you really believe,’ she forced herself to say to Klieg. ‘Do you really believe you will be able to bargain with those terrible Cybermen?’

‘That is our concern,’ snapped Kaftan. ‘Keep quiet.’

‘I’m talking to him, not you,’ snapped Victoria, as sharply as Kaftan. Kaftan herself rose for a moment, her eyes flashing—then subsided at a glance from Klieg.

‘They will agree to our terms,’ he said complacently.

‘What about the other weapon?’ asked Victoria, lying in as natural a voice as she could muster.

‘What other weapon?’ pounced Klieg.

‘I saw another one like that in that room there,’ said Victoria, pointing to the recharging room. ‘It was behind the sarcophagus.’

‘Is that true?’ Klieg asked Kaftan quickly.

‘I don’t know. I did not see one. But we’d better make sure.’ Kaftan walked towards the door. Surely that gauche child couldn’t be plotting something again?

‘NO. Wait!’ Klieg stopped Kaftan. ‘That means that any one of them could...’

‘Yes. You’re right, Eric.’

‘Then we had better wait in here. If the Cyberman is aroused, we’ll be ready for him.’

He steadied the gun in his hand, and as before the solid feel of the cold metal calmed his sweating hands.

‘Now, stand clear,’ he ordered. ‘I’m taking no chances.’

He stood tense, the gun pointing at the door, his face full of his mission to conquer the world, his bald head gleaming with sweat, his finger nervously on the trigger button.

Kaftan nodded and went over to the control board.

None of them noticed particularly when Toberman came over to stand behind by Klieg. He would be an extra bastion against the invading Cybermen.

The revitalisation process was now in full spate. The bioprojectors were pulsing and inside the sarcophagus form, the electronic neuro-charges were blasting full power into the Cyberleader.

‘Quick,’ said the Doctor. ‘Those cables. Tie them around the form.’

‘Aye. Those doors won’t be strong enough to hold him,’

agreed Jamie.

The three of them cut cables from the walls, coiled them around the great coffin-form and pulled them tight, tying them in enormous knots, devised-by Jamie. The pulsing light from the bio-projectors was reflected on the faces of the three men as they watched the sarcophagus anxiously, to see what would happen. Finally the projectors changed from buzzing and humming to a high-pitched siren whine.

Red lights flashed to show that it was time to turn off, that the Cyberman’s energy cells were now fully recharged and were now approaching overload. Still the Doctor left the switch on.

From inside the sarcophagus-shape came an insistent hammering from the now fully powered Cybercontroller.

Boom—boom—boom.

The Professor looked anxiously at the others. What if he should get out? Fully charged with power?

Boom—boom—boom—the sarcophagus was shaking with the impact of the blows. Cracks began to appear on the surface. There was a louder crash and the sound of rending metal, but still the solid metal casing held together. The great cables leading up to the form now began to smoke, the control panel lit up and shook with the vibration, the bio-projectors turned from red-hot to white-hot—the form itself began to reek smoke from the cracks of the seams.

‘Keep back, it’s smoking!’ shouted Parry.

All, the humans backed away.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have touched it!’ cried Jamie.

‘Turn it off! It’s out of control! It’ll blowup!’ Professor Parry, shaken, ran forward to the throbbing control panel and reached out towards the hot metal. CLICK! At that moment it turned itself off.

He started back.

‘It’s taken over,’ the Professor said terrified. The unbearable scream of the dynamo whined down, the lights dimmed.

‘I think not,’ said the Doctor. ‘There must be an internal timing mechanism.’

Boom—boom—boom.

The blows of the giant Cyberman against the metal sounded even louder, now that the machine had turned off.

CRACK! A gauntleted hand appeared through one of the fractures and began enlarging the hole.

‘Are you sure those cables are secure?’ said the Doctor to Jamie nervously.

‘Aye. The King of the Beasties himself couldna get out of that one.’

The crack widened. The massive wire cables began to stretch. The metal was now rent like tissue paper, the cables snapped asunder and fell aside. Knocking back the lid contemptuously, out of the crush of metal rose the greatest of the Cybermen, new power glowing from his gigantic metal limbs. The three humans drew away from the giant in awe as he stepped from the ruins of the recharging machine and bore. down upon them.

‘Jamie,’ said the Doctor, ‘remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots, some time.’

‘YOU... WILL... REMAIN... STILL,’ said the voice, now so vast and powerful it seemed to blast them back against the wall.

The Cyberleader pressed a button. A light flashed on the control desk and a high-pitched buzzing sound began.

The buzzing reached the control room, where Klieg still stood holding his gun and no one there noticed that it made Toberman’s eyes widen, as if something was happening in his brain.

‘Stay here,’ Klieg ordered Toberman, ‘and watch that door.’ Toberman stood where Klieg indicated and Klieg assumed he was obeying. ‘Now at least we shall have some warning,’ he said, and sat down, putting down the heavy Cybergun.

Callum was now sitting up, his wound dressed by Victoria with pieces of his torn under-tunic.

‘What do you two hope to gain by all this?’ he asked.

‘That does not concern you,’ said Klieg, an arrogant superman once again.

Toberman did not stay where Klieg had ordered him; he was moving slowly and quietly around behind Klieg and Kaftan. Victoria noticed but said nothing.

‘He might as well know,’ said Kaftan. She turned to Callum, her face proud. ‘We are going to build a much, much better world than there has ever been—responsive to the laws of pure logic.’

‘That’s... better?’ asked Callum, unimpressed. ‘Who for ?’

‘What are you doing?’ shouted Klieg, suddenly noticing Toberman. ‘What are you standing there for?’

For answer, Toberman slowly raised his arm, his white smock fell away and below glinted a metal Cyberman arm.

As they stared, horrified, he raised his arm, gleaming like a heavy sword and brought it down with the terrible Cyberman chop on the back of Klieg’s neck.

Klieg fell unconscious, Kaftan screamed and Toberman turned towards her, as if hypnotised, raising his arm for another blow.

‘Toberman,’ she screamed. The giant Turk stopped, confused. And then, over Kaftan’s screaming, came the great bass of the Controller’s voice.

‘Silence! He is now under our control.’ The Cybercontroller entered the room and looked at Klieg, then up to Toberman. ‘You have done well,’ he said, picking up the Cybergun. ‘NOW... OPEN... THE...

TOMBS...’

‘No,’ said Kaftan, shrinking back. ‘You have broken your promise.’

‘Cybermen do not promise. Such ideas have no value...

open!’

‘Never!’ said Kaftan.

The Controller turned and walked heavily over to the control console and switched the levers to open. As they watched, helpless, the gears worked and the hatch began to rise. The cold from the shaft again rose and chilled the humans.

Kaftan darted across the room, snatched Callum’s space-gun from his belt, turned and fired at the great metal creature, but the bullet ricocheted off the Cyberman and he stood unharmed.

‘That gun cannot harm me,’ he said.

‘Careful!’ screamed Victoria, but Kaftan fired again and again, too furious to hear her. The Controller raised his Cybergun. Again Victoria screamed, but it was too late. As Victoria and Callum watched in horror the black Cyberweapon rattled its deadly message and Kaftan slowly subsided on to the floor—the telltale smoke creeping from the neck of her tunic.

Victoria screamed again and Toberman, still in his trance, moved towards her, but hesitated. The flash of his own metal hand raised to strike confused him; he looked at it and looked down at Kaftan lying dead.

The Doctor, Parry and Jamie entered and took in the scene. The Doctor, noticing Toberman’s confusion, went up to him and spoke quietly.

‘See what they have done,’ he said. ‘You are not one of them. You’re still a man like us. You must help us.’

The Controller was now standing over the opened hatch.

‘He has killed Kaftan,’ said the Doctor urgently to Toberman. ‘You must help.’

The Controller bent forward to let his great voice echo down the icy shaft.

‘YOU... WILL... COME... TO... THE... SURFACE...’

Toberman, as if unable to take in what he saw, looked again at Kaftan’s body sprawled at their feet, then over at the giant silver Cyberman leaning over the hatch.

He stepped forward hesitantly, lifted up his new silver arm and chopped the Cyberweapon from the Controller’s hand.

As it fell, Jamie snatched it up, but the Cyberman swung his arm like a whiplash against Toberman, just missing him. Toberman, the ex-wrestler, ducked easily and then, with a roar of rage as the true situation began to be clear to him, joined his hands and struck down with all his force on the Controller’s neck, sending the giant Cyberman reeling back against the control panel. The others saw smoke begin to escape from his frontal power-pack. The Cyberman straightened up, but his movements had become jerky and uncontrolled.

Toberman waited for the next blow from the now staggering Cyberman, dodged it and, bending down, lifted the Cyberman from the floor, and with a wrestling throw, flung him against the other control panel. There was a flash and crack from the panel—the Cyberman was flung off by the force of the shock and the huge body lay on the floor, twisted and apparently dead, smoke curling from his helmet.

The humans watched, breathless with awe, as Toberman walked over to the shattered Cyberleader and looked down at him in grim triumph.

There was a sound at the hatch. The Doctor looked over—another Cyberman had appeared, his helmet gleaming in the bright light of the control room.

‘Quick!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘The hatch! Jamie—the gun!’

Jamie ran across to the hatch and for an agonised moment, couldn’t find the trigger to the Cybergun. Then he found the button, the rattle sounded and the Cyberman lay jack-knifed over the edge of the hatch, smoke pouring from his mouth-place.

Jamie ran forward and tipped the heavy metal body, still twitching and jerking, over the hatch edge. There was a crash below. Jamie looked down after him.

‘There’s another coming up!’ shouted Jamie, leaning over the chill shaft and seeing a silver gleam growing larger. Again he shot with the laser-gun and watched as the silver monster lost his footing and crashed backward down the shaft. There was silence.

‘Any more?’ asked the Doctor.

‘No, it’s quiet,’ said Jamie. ‘Close the hatch.’

‘No, wait,’ said the Doctor. They looked at him. ‘We’ll have to go down,’ he said.

‘Oh, no!’ cried Victoria. ‘Please don’t go down there again.’

‘It’s the only way to make sure,’ said the Doctor with a look that was fully four hundred and fifty years old.

‘Then I’m coming too,’ said Jamie staunchly.

‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘Stay and look after Victoria. This time I’ll take someone else.’

And he walked over to Toberman.

13

Closing the Tombs

‘Toberman,’ said the Doctor to the huge man who was still gazing at the shattered hulk of the Controller. ‘Look what these creatures have done to you. They’ve tried to make you look like, them, do you understand?’ Toberman moved his stare from the Controller’s body to the Doctor. ‘They tried to make you their slave. They only wanted to use you.’

Toberman looked at Kaftan’s body.

‘They are evil,’ the Doctor went on. ‘Think of what they have done to Kaftan. Evil!’ he said.

Toberman clenched his fists. ‘Evil!’

But as they all watched him, behind them, unseen, Klieg’s body stirred. Slowly, still a little dizzy from the Cyberman’s blow, he propped himself up on his elbows and listened to their conversation.

‘Toberman!’ the Doctor was saying, as Toberman’s injured powers of concentration again slipped. ‘Toberman!

They must be destroyed, do you hear me? Evil must be destroyed.’ Toberman nodded.

‘Destroyed,’ he said. And again he clenched his fist and raised it.

Klieg behind them listened.

‘Come with me,’ said the Doctor and led Toberman towards the dangerous hatch. Toberman looked at it, seemed to remember something that had happened down there, and flinched back.

‘Come with me now,’ said the Doctor.

As they turned, Klieg closed his eyes again, pretending to be unconscious.

The Doctor reached the hatch and waited until Toberman had clambered over.

‘Good luck,’ said the Professor. Victoria, hardly able to speak, watched the Doctor follow the Turk down the icy shaft. Jamie ran over to the Cybergun, picked it up and leant down the shaft with it.

‘How about taking the gun?’ he shouted.

‘Never use the things,’ said the Doctor and disappeared from view.

‘Och, he should have taken it,’ said the disappointed Jamie, shuddering as he watched the Doctor disappear into the gloom of the shaft. He put the gun down beside the shaft—ready in case the Cyberman reappeared. Callum, when they had gone, could not prevent himself letting out a groan of pain.

‘Oh, poor Mr Callum,’ said Victoria. ‘How are you feeling?’

Callum had turned paler, and was bent over to relieve the never-ending pain in his shoulder.

‘If only we had some pain-killers,’ said Victoria. ‘I suppose they’ve all been left on the orbiter... Professor, can you help?’

As they gathered around him in concern, Klieg got up quickly, unseen by the others, seized the Cybergun and slipped down the hatchway after the Doctor.

As the Doctor and Toberman reached the bottom of the shaft, all was silent. Around them lay the shattered debris of the two dead Cybermen, but there was no sound. Ice gleamed as before from the sides of the tunnel. Nothing moved.

‘This way,’ whispered Toberman, and they walked as quietly as possible along the tunnel towards the cavern, though the crunching of their feet on the re-formed ice seemed to echo backward and forward along the corridor.

They reached the cavern and looked cautiously around.

The remaining Cybermen were lying in their cells, but not quite in the final position of rest. The membranes had not reformed into place over the entrance and their heads were unbowed. The sound of electric throbbing quietly pulsed through the cavern, as the controls, still switched on, waited in neutral. Toberman saw the fearful conversion unit that had transformed him, lying by the control desk and with sudden rage, picked it up and slammed it against the wall, shattering it.

‘Evil!’ he shouted.

‘Shh!’ said the Doctor anxiously. ‘Keep quiet, you’ll wake them. They’re not frozen, not yet. We’ve work to do—you watch.’

Toberman, his rage over, stood impassive, as the Doctor went over to the controls and studied them. His eyes ranged the control board. That was what he wanted—the cryostat. He pressed the switch and immediately a louder humming noise filled the cavern.

‘The cryostat!’ cut in an angry voice behind him.

‘You’re freezing them!’

‘Klieg!’ The Doctor turned, astonished.

Klieg stood behind him, the Cybergun raised. He motioned the Doctor aside—then turned off the cryostat.

‘Please! Don’t do that!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘You’ll wake them up!’

‘That is exactly my intention,’ said Klieg. He smiled his superior smile. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? The Controller is dead. Now I shall control the Cybermen.

They will do what I say.’ As his voice echoed out through the vast cavern, one of the Cybermen stirred and began to raise his head. ‘You see, Doctor,’ said Klieg. ‘Yours is the privilege to witness for the first time the union between mass power and my absolute intelligence.’

But the Doctor wasn’t giving Klieg his full attention.

Klieg saw him make a slight sign to someone behind him.

‘Who is that?’ said Klieg, wheeling and raising his gun.

‘Come out of there.’ Silence. A drip of water splattered on the floor. ‘Come out,’ said Klieg, delighting in his power,

‘or I shall kill the Doctor.’

There was a footstep in the tunnel and out came—

Jamie.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it,’ said Klieg virulently. ‘Get over by the wall, both of you. Now!’ He motioned to Toberman.

‘You, too.’

There was no arguing with the Cybergun. They all went over to the wall.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ said Jamie. ‘But I had to...’

‘That’s all right, Jamie,’ said the Doctor easily. ‘I have come to believe that we are very privileged to witness the take-over of Mr Klieg.’

Klieg watched him suspiciously, suspecting irony, but the Doctor went on, smiling at him: ‘Such a combination of intelligence and power must make you formidable. For a man with your brilliance to be Commander of the Universe, makes one’s imagination reel with the possibilities.’

‘A very sudden conversion, Doctor,’ Klieg sneered, but the Doctor could see he was impressed in spite of himself,

‘Better late than never, surely,’ the Doctor said.

‘If only I had known that you shared my imagination, you might even have worked for me,’ said Klieg, only half sarcastically, wanting to believe the Doctor.

‘Perhaps there’s time yet,’ said the Doctor.

‘Doctor!’ exclaimed Jamie, startled and shocked.

While they were talking the Cybermen in their warm cells were quickly gaining energy again. Unnoticed by the humans, who were absorbed in their conversation, there was a slight clanking and clinking as the great silver creatures turned their heads and sat up, straightening their limbs.

‘No country, no person... no creature, will dare to have a single thought that is not your own,’ the Doctor went on, and Klieg hung on his words now. ‘Eric Klieg’s conception of the rights of Man will be the final law of the finished Universe.’

‘Brilliant!’ said Klieg, his eyes burning. His hold on his gun loosened. ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself. Yes!

You’re right. Master of the world!’

‘I just wanted to make sure,’ said the Doctor, ‘now I know you’re mad.’

Klieg jerked back as if he had been struck in the face.

He jabbed the gun up and levelled it. This was the final insult. He aimed the gun at the Doctor.

In the control room above, Victoria and Parry were listening nervously at the hatch.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have let your friend go down after him,’ said the Professor, still burdened with the responsibility for all the deaths his expedition had caused.

Victoria put her hand on his arm. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘We had to warn the Doctor.’

There was a footstep behind them. They jerked round

—but it was only Captain Hopper.

‘Well, the fuel system is O.K., now,’ he was saying. ‘We can blast off any time.’

They looked at him as though he came from another planet. They had forgotten he and the orbiter and the Universe existed.

‘Shhh!’ said Victoria, afraid to miss a crucial sound from below.

‘Hey, what gives? Where is everyone?’ asked Hopper.

He looked around and saw the wounded Callum sleeping by the control board. ‘Jim?’

‘Don’t wake him,’ said Victoria. ‘He’s wounded.’

‘What’s happened?’ Hopper said.

‘It would take too long to explain,’ said the Professor.

He pointed over at the Cybercontroller, lying almost under one of the benches.

‘God!’ Hopper started back. ‘Where are the others now?’

‘Down there,’ said the Professor, pointing down the shaft. ‘And so are Klieg and the Cybermen.’

‘Well, I hope they know what they’re doing,’ said the Captain. ‘I’ve been down there once and I don’t reckon to go again.’

‘That’s all right, Captain Hopper,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s comforting for a weak female like myself to know we have your superior strength to call on—should we need it.’

She turned back to the hatch as the Captain looked back at her, not quite sure what to make of that remark.

After an agonising moment, Klieg lowered the Cybergun.

He liked the feeling of having the Doctor in his power. He would keep him alive, just for the pleasure of choosing the time to annihilate him.

‘You have forfeited your right to survival,’ he said. ‘I shall make an example of you to all who question my intelligence and the supreme power of the new race of Klieg Cybermen.’

‘I’ve heard all this before, you know,’ said the Doctor.

‘Somewhere.’

‘Aye, and your trouble is,’ said Jamie, unabashed, ‘you talk too much.’

‘You are both stupid,’ said Klieg. ‘You still think your puny minds can survive against us. You are decadent!

Weak! There is no place for you now.’

‘Go on, then, kill us,’ said the Doctor casually, but watching the man intently with his hypnotic green eyes.

Again, with that crazy surge of power through him, Klieg raised the gun, then lowered it again.

‘No. I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘A much better idea. I shall leave you to the Cybermen. I have no doubt they will have a use for you, or parts of you.’

He smiled, and as he smiled, a metal hand and arm swung down in a tremendous fatal chop. Still smiling, he fell forward to the ground, dead. A Cyberman. The first of the newly aroused Cybermen. He crunched towards the control board; Jamie, the Doctor and Toberman advanced towards him.

The Cyberman turned, magnificent, silver, looming above them, and raised his arm ready for another terrible Cyberman chop. Toberman pushed the others aside and went forward alone to meet him. The Cyberman brought down his arm, but Toberman’s Cyberarms were in his way, defending his human body, and the blow clanged metal on metal.

Toberman raised his hand and, while the Cyberman was off-balance from the force of his own first blow, dealt him a sideways slam so fierce that the Cyberman staggered, his neck dented with chips of metal sparking and showering from the place.

While they struggled, the Doctor and Jamie rushed over to the controls.

‘Jamie, that lever there, and this one—together.’

‘I canna shift it,’ grunted Jamie, with all his weight against the great lever.

‘Press that button first,’ said the Doctor urgently. Jamie pressed the release button for the lever.

Together they slowly lowered the levers that would freeze the Cybermen for ever.

Behind them. the Cyberman tried to rise, but Toberman’s metal hands grabbed at the plastic control unit and, with one mighty pull, wrenched it away from the monster’s chest. Foam welled up, the Cyberman staggered, poised and crashed forward like a pylon.

Toberman, feeling alone after the intensity of the struggle; gathered himself together and walked away down the tunnel. The Doctor did not stop him.

Awed, the Doctor and Jamie turned towards the tombs.

Now at last they were freezing properly; the Cybermen were lying back in their rest positions, the membrane had started forming across their hexagonal cells, already frost was clouding the gleam of their bodies and a thin wall of ice was forming. The floor beneath their feet hardened as the thin film of water congealed.

‘Last time it was for five centuries,’ said the Doctor.

‘Now it must be for ever. Come on.’

He looked over the controls and made sure that each one of the Cybercells was individually sealed away. This time he was taking no chances.

With one backward look at the now frozen cavern, horribly beautiful with its glittering hexagonals and sparkling hoar-frost, they turned and walked quickly away up the tunnel.

At the shaft they clambered up the rungs that were now recoating with dangerous black ice.

They reached the top, felt Victoria’s warm hand helping them over the rim and jumped out on to the smooth metal floor.

‘Doctor!’ cried Victoria in relief, tears in her eyes.

‘Hurry now,’ the Doctor said. ‘Close the hatch.’

Hopper operated the lever and the harsh groaning of the gears filled the room. The hatch creaked down from its vertical position, down to forty-five degrees, thirty, twenty, and then clanged shut.

‘One thing about a machine that makes good sense,’ said the Doctor. ‘You can just as easily make it turn out nonsense.’

They looked at him. But before they had time to comment on this typically cryptic remark, he went on,

‘Now then, I think you had all better leave.’

‘Why?’ asked Parry. ‘What are you going to do, Doctor?’

‘Re-electrify the main doors,’ said the Doctor. ‘Only this time I’m going to include the hatch and the control panel in the circuit. Anyone touching any of them will get a considerable electric shock, a fatal one.’ He looked over at Hopper and the Professor, who both nodded agreement.

‘Now, all out!’ ordered the Doctor. ‘And take him with you.’ He nodded at Toberman. ‘He’s been magnificent, but I shall feel safer with him out of the way.’

Victoria hesitated, as the others turned with relief for the main doors.

‘Go on—follow them,’ said Jamie. ‘I’ll help the Doctor.’

She went with them, and immediately the Doctor busied himself with the controls, creating new circuits, helped by Jamie. Neither of them saw the body of the Cyberman Controller, lying half under a bench, stir and change position.

‘There, Jamie,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s about it.’ He placed the front panel back in position and screwed it firm.

They smiled at each other. At last, they were beginning to feel they had won.

Behind them, silent as a great silver ghost, the Cyberman Controller rose to his feet.

‘All we have to do now is to close the main doors,’ said the Doctor, ‘and the circuit is complete.’

‘Aye,’ said Jamie, and he turned to go.

Ahead of him, blocking the way to the doors, stood the giant form of the Controller.

‘Doctor!’ shouted Jamie. The Doctor turned around and the Controller took a step forward, swaying slightly, his chest unit blackened and bent, but still a formidable adversary.

‘You go round this way, Jamie,’ said the Doctor fast.

‘And I’ll go this. At least, one of us will stand a chance.’

They started to circle the Controller, who looked from one to the other with his great black mask of a head, undecided whom to block.

‘When I say run,’ said the Doctor, ‘run!’

They both ran past the Cyberman, one on each side, dodging under the great weaving metal arms into the short entranceway and out of the doors.

The daylight outside was blinding and they reeled back, protecting their eyes.

‘Quick, Jamie. We must get these doors shut before he gets out,’ panted the Doctor. Jamie nodded and together they pushed the great doors to, until they were three-quarters closed.

‘Stop!’ said the Doctor. ‘No more. We’ll be electrocuted.

We need something to insulate.’ He looked round him quickly. ‘Some of that shoring timber over there.’

Jamie ran over and dragged two pieces of timber back to the doors. Both he and the Doctor took a heavy piece of wood and started pushing at the doors with them, one on each door.

At first the doors swung easily, but then they ground to a halt. In the gap between the nearly closed doors, they could see the huge black helmet of the Cyberman.

‘He must be holding them,’ said the Doctor. ‘Push, Jamie.’

They pushed desperately with all their strength against the doors but were no match for the strength of a Cyberman, even a damaged one. Slowly, slowly, the doors began to inch open again.

‘He mustn’t get out, Jamie,’ grunted the Doctor. ‘All...

our... work... will be wasted.’

Every muscle in Jamie’s strong body was standing out, but still the doors were pressing open. More than a gleam of silver hand now showed, they could see a leg. and arm of the Cyberleader.

‘I can’t hold him, Doctor.’

‘We must.’

But the doors were opening wider, inch by inch. ‘It’s no use,’ Jamie cried despairingly.

Suddenly the doors stopped opening and held fast; beside them, his arms flexed, with one giant hand on each door, was Toberman. Now the match was a more even one.

‘WE... WILL... SURVIVE...’ came the voice of the Controller, but with the combined strength of the three of them, the doors were slowly closing, sealing up the last of the Cybermen.

The door closed to a narrow gap. The two ends of the fatal circuit were now only inches apart.

‘Toberman!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Let go now. When these doors close, you’ll be killed.’

‘They... are... evil,’ grunted the Turk.

‘If he lets go, the Cyberman will push the doors open again, Doctor,’ cried Jamie.

‘He must,’ cried the Doctor. ‘Do you hear me, Toberman?’ The doors closed to a bare inch. Toberman flexed his shoulders and gave a final great push. The doors closed; there was a blue arc of current that flung the Doctor and Jamie away like ninepins. As they picked themselves up, they saw the great figure of Toberman, his metal arms spreadeagled as he slid slowly down to the ground, still for ever, in front of the doors he had closed with his life.

The Professor sat beside the space orbiter with his head in his hands. Another life. Another life for which he was responsible. For the rest of his life he would be burdened with this. What a terrible toll for an archaeological expedition.

‘Come on, Professor,’ said Hopper briskly. ‘Blast off in nine minutes.’ He looked round him. ‘Anyone else coming for the ride? What about you, Vic?’

‘We have our own flying machine, thank you,’ said Victoria politely.

‘Flying machine!’ said Hopper. ‘Did you say “flying machine”?’

‘At least, it works,’ said Victoria, getting the last word in and turning her back on him.

Hopper laughed. ‘Guess you’re right at that. So long, Doctor, Jamie. O.K., let’s go,’ he said to the others and stepped into the orbiter.

The Professor sighed and got up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We must go.’ He turned to the Doctor. ‘We can never thank you enough,’ he said.

‘Goodbye, Professor,’ said Dr Who, taking his hand and giving him his rare, ancient, four hundred and fifty year old smile.

‘I’m sorry it had to end this way,’ began the Professor.

But the Doctor raised his hand to stop him saying more.

‘I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘I know.’

Document Outline

Front cover

Rear cover

Title page

Copyright

Contents

The Creation of the Cybermen

1 Victoria and Jamie

2 An Expedition in Space

3 The Entrance to the Tombs

4 Cyberman Control Room

5 The Recharging Room

6 The Target Room

7 The Finding of the Cybermat

8 The Secret of the Hatch

9 The Cyberman Controller

10 Release the Cybermats

11 The Controller is Revitalised

12 Toberman Returns

13 Closing the Tombs

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Victoria and Jamie

2 An Expedition in Space

3 The Entrance to the Tombs

4 Cyberman Control Room

5 The Recharging Room

6 The Target Room

7 The Finding of the Cybermat

8 The Secret of the Hatch

9 The Cyberman Controller

10 Release the Cybermats

11 The Controller is Revitalised

12 Toberman Returns

13 Closing the Tombs