Doctor Who: Earthshock (13 page)

Unknown to them, the Doctor was at that very moment very close. Together with Tegan, their escorts and the Cyberleader, he was making his way through the deserted hold towards the TARDIS. Ironically, the two parties passed within a few metres of each other, moving in opposite directions in the maze of walkways between the silos.

The Doctor was walking along frowning silently, deep in thought, constantly fiddling with something he had concealed in his pocket.

Tegan walked beside him, blinking back her tears with great difficulty. The image of Adric's face as he bade them goodbye was printed indelibly upon her memory. Her anger surged inside her and at last it boiled over: 'You won't like Earth you know,' she snapped at the Cyberleader.

His ventilator bubbled energetically. 'Like or dislike does not enter my consideration,' he responded.

'It will once you start going rusty!' Tegan retorted crisply.

At that moment, the Cyberleader abruptly stopped beside a silo numbered 099.

Tegan and the Doctor looked at each other in amazement as a curved rectangular panel opened in its wall and the Cyber Deputy emerged from the gloomy interior.

'Main fleet acknowledges your revised intentions, Leader,' the Deputy hissed efficiently.

'Excellent.'

'As soon as the freighter impacts, main fleet will rendezvous with the secondary taskforce which has just completed embarkation in the cargo shuttle...'

The Doctor suddenly lunged towards the open panel. 'So this is where it all happens!
This
is your little hideaway,' he cried. 'Mind if I take a look?'

Just then the panel started to close and the Doctor was stuck half in and half out of the silo. He just caught a glimpse of the mysterious twilight within and the silhouette of the weird Cyber equipment cluttering the interior before the Cyber escort seized him by the collar and yanked him free. The panel zipped shut with a crash which echoed through the tall silo.

'Your hunger for knowledge is commendable, Doctor, but you must curb it for the present,' rasped the Cyberleader.

With a vicious shove the escorts propelled the Doctor and Tegan on their way towards the TARDIS, while the Leader and his Deputy strode behind them with relentless mechanical steps.

But the sharp vibration of the violently slamming panel had accidentally upset the delicately balanced instruments on the main module inside the deserted silo.

Unknown to the Cyberleader and his Deputy, a sequence of lights suddenly flickered on the reactivation panel and the unit began to surge into life once again, drawing power from the freighter's propulsion system and pouring it into the thousands of chrysalid Cyber units stacked abandoned in the silos...

With enormous effort, Nyssa had accomplished the grim and lonely task of clearing away from the control chamber of the TARDIS the bodies of Professor Kyle and the dead trooper, and the macabre wreckage of the Cyberman. Now she was trying to make sense of the readings on the console instruments, which once again warned of a huge magnetic field around the police-box.

All at once the radio Scott had left on the console bleeped urgently. Nyssa snatched it up.

'What's happening out there?' she asked nervously, her eyes glued on the console instruments.

'I don't know,' Scott answered faintly, 'It's eerie - those robot things seem to have left the ship.'

'Well, be careful, Lieutenant. That magnetic field seems to be building up again.'

'There's no sign of the Doctor and the others...' Scott reported, barely audibly amid the increasing buzz of static, 'but we're about to...' At that point his voice was completely swamped. Nyssa fiddled with the receiver, but she could not re-establish contact.

She almost jumped out of her skin when, seconds later, the exterior door swung open and the Doctor and Tegan walked in.

'Doctor... Tegan...' she exclaimed in delighted relief, barely managing to retrieve the radio before it slipped out of her fingers to the floor. The brilliant smile was immediately wiped from her fine features as the towering figures of the Cyberleader and the Deputy strode through the door.

'It's a shambles,' muttered Tegan, 'an absolute shambles.'

The Doctor threw Nyssa a brief, shamefaced glance as he crossed to the console. He closed the exterior door and then started working feverishly away at preparations for departure.

Where's Adric?' Nyssa asked, smuggling the small radio unit onto the console behind her. She backed away as the Deputy advanced ominously around the console towards her.

'Safe,' replied the Doctor evasively, without looking at her.

A moment later there was a hideous scraping noise and the TARDIS creaked and wobbled alarmingly as it dematerialised from inside the hold. The Cybermen's rigid faces betrayed no reaction as the craft shuddered and shook before gradually stabilising again as it materialised outside the hull of the freighter. A few seconds later, the freighter's gigantic bulk flickered into view on the screen.

'There,' the Doctor mumbled. 'We are locked onto the freighter's co-ordinates.'

'Excellent,' boomed the Cyberleader, who had been watching the Doctor's activities at the console closely. He turned abruptly to the Deputy. 'Search the TARDIS,' he ordered.

'What are those things doing here?' Nyssa demanded, turning angrily to the Doctor as the Deputy marched out through one of the internal doors.

'We shall observe the collision of the freighter with Earth and the planet's final destruction,' the Leader hissed.

At this, Tegan flared up. 'You'll ruin your own plan,' she shouted. 'Earth surveillance radar will pick up the TARDIS!'

The Cyberleader bubbled and whirred quietly. 'The TARDIS is not radar-reflective,' he retorted, consulting the chrono-disc built into his forearm. 'The time draws near... our victory is imminent.'

Tegan gritted her teeth and glared hard at the Doctor as if he were responsible.

'Doctor, can't you do
anything
?' she cried, her pale face creased with grime and exhaustion.

'Not just at the moment,' he replied in an undertone.

'Do not mislead the Earthling,' the Cyberleader boomed. 'You can do nothing now Doctor.'

Suddenly Tegan went absolutely wild. Before anyone could restrain her she threw herself onto the console. 'I don't have to stand by and watch my planet being destroyed...' she screamed, flailing madly at the controls. The TARDIS immediately started to shudder convulsively, tilting this way and that and emitting howls of protest from deep within its mechanism.

The Cyberleader snatched Nyssa by the arm and thrust his blaster brutally against the side of her head.

'Stop it, Tegan, stop it!' the Doctor yelled, frantically grabbing hold of her and struggling to drag her away from the console. But Tegan clung on, screaming and fighting, while Nyssa began to whimper with pain and terror. Eventually the Doctor managed to twist Tegan round so that she could see Nyssa's plight as the Cyberleader threatened her with instant disintegration.

Gradually Tegan calmed down, and went limp and quiet. The Doctor held her firmly with one hand while he readjusted the controls with the other. Soon the TARDIS had steadied and settled into its familiar contented humming.

'You do things like that and we'll all finish up dead in no time at all,' he whispered into her ear, hugging her tightly.

Slowly the Cyberleader released Nyssa's arm. It had been gripped so tightly that her hand was a livid chalky white and totally numbed.

The Leader surveyed them with intense concentration, as if he were watching some extraordinary experiment. 'Fascinating,' he hissed. 'What a fascinating species...'

On the bridge of the freighter, Adric and First Officer Berger were standing on either side of Captain Briggs, who was slumped gloomily in her command seat. The trio were talking in low voices, out of earshot of the two Cybermen standing guard over them at the entrance. Adric had been surreptitiously eyeing the complex little device which the Cybermen had connected into the navigation circuits earlier. It consisted of a rack containing three sets of small discs all of which were capable of rotating relative to one another and forming different combinations.

'Any chance of undoing whatever that is?' Briggs murmured quietly.

'How much time have we got?' Adric whispered.

'Not long. We're on full warp drive,' Berger answered.

Adric glanced across at the Cybermen. 'Given time, I'm sure I could do something,' he murmured. 'Even if we diverted the ship only a few degrees, we'd still miss Earth by a safe margin. But we'd have to do it soon.'

'We'd also have to divert our two knights in shining armour a lot more than a few degrees first,' Briggs muttered sceptically.

The fluorescent lighting concealed in the ceiling had been fading for some time and now there was a sudden spasmodic flicker. One of the Cybermen went over to the console.

'There is a power malfunction,' it grated, adjusting some controls.

Adric and the others tensed and held their breaths, ready to seize their opportunity should it arise. But the second Cyberman was still aiming its blaster directly at them. 'That is not possible,' it hissed. 'Reactivation has been cancelled.'

At that moment, Adric glimpsed a familiar figure framed in the debris of the exploded shutter behind the second automaton.

It was Lieutenant Scott. Just as Scott put his finger to his lips, a fierce burst of blaster fire sounded from the main hold. The two Cybermen both turned just as Scott stepped through the hole onto the bridge. Adric dived behind the end of the console, dragging Briggs and Berger with him, a split second before Scott fired his blaster, hitting the Cybermen with a devastating fusillade of sonic pulses which shook them to pieces, their outer casings collapsing as if the inside had turned to jelly.

'Where's the Doctor?' Scott shouted as he heaved the smoking wreckage of one of the Cybermen off the console.

With the ominous sounds of battle getting louder from the direction of the main hold, Adric explained in a few hasty sentences exactly what had been happening, while Briggs knelt and tugged at the panels protecting the navigation circuits.

Berger had already tried to key new instructions into the guidance computer.

'It's no good, my instructions are instantly countermanded,' she cried despairingly.

'That's our problem there,' Adric informed the Lieutenant, pointing to the disc rack, 'but I think it can be disconnected if I could solve the three logic codes...'

There was another prolonged burst of laser and blaster fire from outside.

'That could take you forever,' Berger objected. 'The combinations must be almost infinite.'

'And the thing's probably booby-trapped,' Briggs warned.

'Then I'd better start at once!' Adric cried, peering closely at the weird device on his hands and knees.

One of the troopers rushed onto the bridge, 'Lieutenant, those silver things . . .

they're breaking out of those containers . . . the hold's crawling with them and the lasers are almost finished,' he panted.

'I'm coming,' Scott shouted, tossing him the two blasters abandoned by the two wrecked Cybermen. 'We'll hold them off as long as we can!' he called over his shoulder to Adric before rushing out behind the trooper.

Adric knelt by the device and very carefully started moving the discs on the top set around. He knew that the possible combinations totalled several billions, but he guessed that there would be patterns of more likely sequences - if only he could use his formidable mathematical ability to work them out in time.

'Power seems to be fully restored again,' Berger reported after a few minutes.

'We seem to be going faster than ever now...'

Out on the walkway above the main hold, Scott and his squad had managed to rebuild a sort of makeshift fortification out of the debris left by Ringway's crew earlier. From behind it they did their best to pick off the newly activated Cybermen as they emerged from among the silos below them. In the centre of the huge hold, several silos had burst open and wave upon wave of gleaming automatons were advancing on the stairway. They seemed intent on revenge, as if they somehow knew that they had been abandoned by their masters and had only been reactivated by accident.

These Cybermen did not seem to be as powerful as the previous attackers, as if their reactivation had been premature or incomplete. Pieces of them flew everywhere as they marched unsteadily into the concentrated barrage of blaster fire unleashed by Scott and his troopers and the air was filled with smoke, sparks and streams of oily fluid. Gradually, however, their retaliation grew stronger, and more and more of them began reaching the stairway before being sent reeling by the defenders behind the barricade. Little by little, the troopers found themselves being forced to retreat back along the walkway towards the bridge...

With the horrifying sounds of the battle for the walkway growing louder every minute, Adric darted backwards and forwards between the Cyber device and the main computer, desperately struggling to solve the complex algebraic combinations.

'Are you sure that's right?' Berger queried doubtfully as he tapped some figures into the input.

'It has to be. It's the only logical answer,' Adric murmured, watching the print-out anxiously. There was a long pause. Then, at last, a long series of symbols chattered out.

'That's it!' Adric yelled joyfully. 'The first code is solved!' He knelt down and feverishly adjusted the discs on the first of the three tiers of combinations. There was a hum and then a sharp click. 'Yes, it's worked. See if it's released anything.'

'We're running out of time,' Briggs muttered darkly. 'Your friends won't be able to hold off those silver dummies much longer.'

'Stand by!' Berger called out, gradually easing the navigation controls slightly, her face furrowed with apprehension. Nothing happened. Biting her lip, she eased them a little further. Still nothing happened. With a fearful glance at Adric and Briggs she moved them more and more...