The Cybermen—silver, indestructible monsters whose
only goal is power—seem to have disappeared from their
planet, Telos. When a party of archeologists, 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 archeologists
desperately want to re-activate these monsters! How can
the Doctor defeat these ruthless, power-seeking humans
and the Cybermen?

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




                        published by
                  The Paperback Division of
                   W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd
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, Iooking 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, Iight 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. Re-
charging 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 to-wards
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. 'Enchantrnent,
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 relent-less 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 honey-comb 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 through-out 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 ex-amine 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 up-ward
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 hatch-way 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 Con-troller, 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 bio-
projectors 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 trans-formed 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 tel 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.'