Doctor Who_ Tomb Of The Cybermen Part 4

'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-a.s.surance, 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 s.p.a.ce craft by,' he glanced at his s.p.a.ce-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 pa.s.sageway 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 s.p.a.ce-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 exact.i.tude. '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 bioprojectors.' 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 you are with us, eh?' said Kaftan. Viner looked up suspiciously, scenting sarcasm, but the woman smiled warmly at him. 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 phosph.o.r.escent 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 fiddle,' snapped the quick-tempered Victoria. She went over to the Cyberman case and as she got close to its smooth hollow, could not resist putting her hand inside and touching its finely ribbed interior.

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

'A Cyberman would stand in that form and be-well- revitalised. No? That must be it.'

Viner looked at her with respect. 'Yes, of course!' he replied eagerly. 'That is most reasonable. These bioprojectors-' He pointed to the hose-like projections around the Cyberman form. 'They were probably meant to fire in some sort of neuro-electric potential. Yes, that's it. Not making Cybermen so much as revitalising them. Recharging their batteries, you might say.' He paused, but they didn't laugh at his little joke. 'Yes, that's it, Madam. I think you're right.'

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

'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 offhand 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 b.u.t.tons. 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.