Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen (5 page)

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 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

'What's that?' said Viner.

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

Round them the floors and walls. began to vibrate.

Kaftan was the first to gather her wits together and realise what was happening. The machines were activating. She turned back to the control console and pulled down the recharging lever.

The open doors of the Cyberman form began to close. A shadow moved across Victoria's face, she looked up, gasped and moved, but her hand and leg were between the doors. Blackness closed in on her, the cold metal touch on her leg and arm forced her to draw them back. The doors of the form closed tight. The form was complete. Victoria, trapped in the blackness of the shell, screamed and beat with her fists on the doors. Viner ran over to her, pulling at the outside of the doors, but there were no handles or any sign of an opening mechanism. He ran back stumbling to the control console, where Kaftan seemed to be gazing in alarm at the buttons and levers.

'Did you touch anything?' he shouted at her.

She shook her head in amazed horror.

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

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

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

'Here.
Help me!
' he shouted at Kaftan.

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

'Will you come!'

She ran over and scrabbled and scratched with him at the perfect, flush joining of the doors. Overhead the nozzles of the bioprojectors 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.'