'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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage, their footsteps m.u.f.fled 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 s.p.a.ce-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 phosph.o.r.escent metal, they loomed in frightening order. A march of exactly similar beings.

As Victoria's s.p.a.ce-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 s.p.a.ce between planets, they marched over a rubble of tiny crushed people, they climbed out of their long cigar-shaped s.p.a.ceships, 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, a.s.sured, 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 ma.s.sed arrays of levers, b.u.t.tons 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 G.o.d?'

'Something like that,' said the Doctor.

'But what does it do 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 s.p.a.ce-torch and then with his fingers, leaning against the wall and tapping, crouching down and examining every inch of the surface with a magnifying gla.s.s.

'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 ma.s.sive 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 b.u.t.tons 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 a.s.sembled 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 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?' 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 pa.s.sage.'

'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.