Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen (11 page)

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 Controller of the Cybermen raised his hand. The Cybermen stopped, facing the humans. Silence: Everyone and everything looked at the Controller, waited for him to make the next move. But he stood still, as if welcoming a response from the humans.

'How did you know that we would come to release you?' asked Professor Parry. 'You could have remained frozen for ever.'

'The humanoid mind,' said the low vibrating chord that was the Controller's voice. 'You are curious.'

'As I thought,' said the Doctor. 'A trap. A very ingenious trap, too.'

'What do you mean, ingenious?' asked the Professor, confused.

'Don't you see—they only want superior intellects—that's why they have made the trap so complicated. If it was too easy, everyone could have wandered down here.'

They looked at the great gleaming figure that stood before them. It seemed to nod slightly, like a god who chooses for the moment to be benign.

'We knew intelligent life would visit our planet. some day,'

said the Controller.

'And we've done exactly as you calculated, haven't we?' said the Doctor. 'Followed your directions to the letter. You should be very pleased. What else can we do for you? Perhaps we can go now?'

'We cannot let you leave,' said the Controller loudly. 'You belong to us.'

His voice echoed and vibrated in the cavern and along the corridor.

Above the hatch, where the terrible voice did not reach, Victoria had fetched Captain Hopper and Callum from the orbiter and the two of them were examining the controls. Victoria was impatiently trying to hurry up the slow, deliberate Captain. But Hopper, seeing Kaftan's unconscious body on the floor, and still suspecting the Doctor and his entourage, wouldn't be hurried.

'Come on, quickly,' she said. 'You must find ,the opening device for me. I don't know which it is.'

'Now hold hard, young lady,' said the Captain. 'I'm not pulling any levers until I know just what it's all about.'

'I don't reckon we should have left the orbiter, Captain,' said Callum suspiciously. He indicated Kaftan. 'She's O.K. She only fainted. I can't see much else wrong here.'

'Not much wrong... are you blind, the pair of you?' shouted Victoria, hot with fury. She went over to the hatch, which was shut tight. 'What about this?'

'I don't see any change in this room, Vic,' said Callum slowly.

Victoria was so furious she didn't have time to comment on being called 'Vic'. 'That's just it,' she shouted at them, out of breath.

'The others are down there now. The Professor, Jamie, the Doctor..

Kaftan, on the floor, stirred and opened her eyes.

'Well, in that case, Vic,' drawled the Captain, as though trying to calm an hysterical child. 'Why close the hatch down on them? It don't make sense.'

'I didn't,' snapped Victoria. 'And don't call me "Vic".
She
closed the hatch.' She indicated Kaftan.

'Oh, really?' said the Captain, humouring the young girl. 'Did she now?' He smiled, not taking her angry mood seriously.

'Are you going to help me or not?' asked Victoria in a voice every bit as cool and cutting as her father's when he was about to demolish an academic colleague. 'They're probably freezing to death down there. If you won't help, I'll pull all the levers on this board and see what happens.'

'I wouldn't do that, Vic,' said the Captain, still amused but giving in to her evident concern. 'O.K. then. We'd better do as the little lady says.' He turned to Callum and pointed over to the control column.

The three of them gathered around the control console. Behind them Kaftan again opened her eyes, more awake this time and taking careful note of what was happening.

'Now,' said the Captain more briskly. 'Were you here when they opened it all up?'

'Yes,' said Victoria.

'Then,' said Hopper, 'you must have some idea how they did it, right?'

'I don't know,' said Victoria, still furious with his manner, but too absorbed in the problem to let it worry her. 'I wasn't really looking. I think it was one of these lever things down here.'

She indicated the left-hand side of the board.

'She thinks!' said Callum scornfully.

Victoria glared at him but he was beginning to examine the wiring system at the left of the board. Even if he didn't know as much symbolic logic as Klieg or the Doctor, he was a first-class electrical engineer, able to calculate which wire led to which lever...

After the Controller Cyberman had spoken, he turned back to his Cybermen. The humans had edged back towards the tunnel entrance.

'Can we not make a run for it, Doctor?' whispered Jamie.

The Doctor shook his head.

'We'd never even reach the ladder. Too risky.'

'What can we do?' asked Parry, frankly, turning to the Doctor for help.

'Play for time and watch for our chance,'. said the Doctor decisively. 'Leave it to me.'

The Doctor walked towards the Controller, his hands out of his pockets, with a respectful air. He cleared his throat.

The Cybermen turned their mask faces towards him, waiting for him to speak.

'May I ask you a question?' he said, dwarfed, yet seeming completely unbothered by the big silver figures with their still air of menace.

The Controller indicated by inclining his helmet a millimetre that the Doctor might talk.

'Why did you subject yourself to freezing?'

The Controller took a step nearer the Doctor to examine him more thoroughly. The Doctor flinched slightly from the intense scrutiny of the giant.

'Er, well, you don't have to answer that, if you don't want to.'

'It was necessary...' The Controller's speech mechanism was still a little stiff and halting—like a talking computer. 'To survive,' he said.

'Ah...' said the Doctor ironically. 'I had guessed that bit. Well, if that's all you have to say.' He turned.

'Wait!' The Cyberman's voice gained volume. 'Our history computer contains full details of you and,' he looked over at Jamie,

'that young humanoid male there.'

'Oh, splendid!' said the Doctor lightly. 'It's so nice to be recognised, isn't it, Jamie?'

'We know of your high intelligence,' said the Controller.

'Thank you very much,' said. the Doctor, as if highly flattered by this compliment. 'Ah, yes,' he added. 'The lunar surface, you mean?'

'Yes. Our machinery had stopped and our supply of replacements was depleted,' continued the Cybercontroller.

'That's why you attacked the moonbase?' said the Doctor..

'It was necessary. You had destroyed our first planet, Mondas, and we were becoming extinct.' There was no anger or hint of revenge in the Cyberman's voice. Anger, hate and revenge were as unknown to him as love, pity or mercy.

'What difference does capturing us make?' called Jamie, suddenly finding his voice. 'You'll still become extinct.'

The Controller seemed to grow in height. His voice took on a new, deeper vibration. 'We will survive.' Around him the assembled Cybermen took up the chant echoing their credo.

'WE WILL SURVIVE.'

'And you will help us,' he added, as the reverberations of the Cybermen's harsh voices began to die away.

'What makes you think we are going to help you?' said Professor Parry with sudden courage. 'That murderer'—he pointed to Klieg— 'does not speak for us.'

'You will become the first of a new race of Cybermen,'

answered the loud harsh voice. 'You will return to the Earth and control it for us.'

'Never! Never!' cried the Professor.

'Everything we decide is carried out,' continued the level voice of the Cyberman. 'It is useless to oppose our will.'

'A new race of Cybermen?' puzzled Jamie. 'But we're human.

We're no like you—'

The huge Cyberleader turned and raised his hand threateningly. 'YOU... WILL... BE.'

As his sound died away, the humans shivered and stood closer together. But still the Cybermen did nothing more terrible than stand and seem to communicate together without spoken words. But while the Doctor had been talking, distracting the Cybermen's attention, Toberman had glided quietly away down the tunnel.

The Cybercontroller turned back and the Cybermen closed around him in a circle, as if to confer.

Now Jamie too dropped back from the cluster of humans. But he wasn't so quick that the hypersensitive antennae of the Cybermen hadn't noticed. One of the Cybermen silently moved to the back of the group towards the tunnel. Holding his breath, Jamie slipped into the entrance to the tunnel. Nothing happened ! His ears had been waiting for an explosion, his body held tense for a shot—but nothing had happened. Maybe he was going to get away. He turned the corner into the tunnel. Facing him was a Cyberman, his arm outstretched, his finger pointing at his head. A stream of sparks seemed to fly from the outstretched finger to Jamie's head. He twitched, and fell backwards into darkness.

Toberman had almost reached the ladder. He glanced behind him—but the tunnel was clear. Relieved, he set his foot up the rung, only to feel a large claw-like metal hand grip his foot in a vice-like hold.

A Cyberman! He must have come down from the 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 overpowered 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 forward.