The Doctor drew Jamie further back behind the stacks of crates as the glow became a strobing glare which was almost intolerable to look at. A vaguely humanoid outline stirred inside the cocoon and a silver form began to flash with stronger and stronger pulses. Jamie and the Doctor covered their ears as the pulsating hum became an unbearable staccato shriek. In a sudden burst of thousands of silver fibres the cocoon exploded and a huge gleaming figure jerked spasmodically out of the crate, flashing and sparking.
Jamie went cold all over and his spine was tickled by a million icy needles. He gasped as the glittering giant strode forward trailing shreds of its chrysalis and breathing with a nightmarish mechanical rasp. He turned to the Doctor as the overwhelming noise quickly died away and only the monster's heavy rhythmic breath disturbed the awed silence.
'Cybermen...!' he whispered, a tremor of disgust rippling through him as he recalled his brief encounter in the freight wagon.
With the Brigadier absent on an emergency visit to the Ministry of Defence, Zoe and Isobel were left in the Operations Room chatting to Captain Turner, while the other personnel absorbed themselves in their Taskforce duties.
'So what do you think will happen now?' asked Zoe.
'Well, it's not really a UNIT matter now,' Turner explained, 'so we'll probably hand it all over to the police.'
Isobel looked disappointed. 'Pity, I could've got some great pictures and made a bomb selling them to Fleet Street,' she brooded.
Turner shot her a flirtatious glance. 'Perhaps you'd allow me to make up for it by buying you dinner,' he suggested gallantly, eyeing Isobel's long shapely legs appreciatively.
Isobel looked delighted. 'Why not? Are you stinking rich or something?' she teased.
Turner laughed. 'Not on a Captain's pay, I'm not, but money isn't everything you know.'
Isobel considered his dark, handsome features. 'No, perhaps it isn't,' she agreed.
At that moment the door opened and Sergeant Walters brought in Jamie and the Doctor. They looked tired and drawn.
'What happened?' asked Zoe, eagerly running to meet them.
Jamie put his arm round her shoulder. 'Some auld friends of ours are back,' he murmured.
Slightly miffed by Turner's attentions to Isobel, Zoe put her arm affectionately round Jamie's waist. 'Oh, really?' she grinned.
'Who?'
'The Cybermen.'
Zoe looked appalled.
'I'm afraid there's no doubt about it,' the Doctor confirmed gloomily. 'I suspected as much some time ago, but I didn't want to cause unnecessary alarm, my dear.'
'What on earth are Cybermen?' demanded Isobel.
'Cybermen are inhuman killers from another galaxy,' the Doctor informed her gravely, sipping some leftover cold tea with a preoccupied air.
Captain Turner floundered out of his depth. 'You mean they're... well, they're from another world, Doctor?'
'That must have been their spacecraft on the other side of the Moon,' Zoe confided to Jamie.
Isobel giggled nervously. 'What exactly are they? Little green men?'
Only Turner smiled with her.
'I'm serious,' Zoe protested. 'We've met them before. They're fiendish, sadistic monsters.'
'Well... where exactly are they now?' Turner demanded, realising that the three intrepid strangers were in deadly earnest.
'They are being stockpiled at Vaughn's London headquarters,'
replied the Doctor. 'There could be thousands of them.' He sat down, shaking his head.
'So Vaughn must be working with the Cyber Leaders...' Zoe concluded almost inaudibly.
The Doctor sighed and nibbled at a curled up sandwich. 'That deep-space communications installation Jamie and I spotted is no doubt being used to guide and communicate with a Cyber Fleet,' he told them.
Turner whistled. 'So that's what all those UFO things were...
But there's been hundreds of sightings!' he breathed.
Isobel looked shocked. She turned to the Doctor anxiously.
'How do you think my uncle is involved in all this?' she asked.
'I don't know yet, my dear,' said the Doctor gently. He turned sharply to the Captain and asked him where the Brigadier was.
Turner told him. 'I'd better get onto him immediately at the MOD and give him your news,' he added breathlessly.
The Doctor held up a restraining hand. 'Wait a moment, Captain. I believe that your people discovered that visitors to Vaughn's headquarters seemed somehow different afterwards?'
'You think the Cybermen are controlling them?' suggested Zoe.
'Controlling them?' Turned echoed uneasily.
Zoe explained that the Cybermen were able to exert control over human minds but that the victims could appear to be almost normal.
'Who is the Brigadier immediately responsible to?' the Doctor inquired urgently.
'To Major-General Routledge, Doctor. He's with him now.'
The Doctor sprang to his feet as if galvanised into activity.
'Contact the Brigadier at once!' he cried. 'We must warn him!'
The Brigadier was pacing angrily round and round Routledge's dark and musty office, slapping his brown leather gloves against his leg, his eyes flashing with indignation.
'No cause for alarm!' he shouted scornfully. 'Billy, do you realise that they actually took potshots at a UNIT helicopter?'
Routledge leaned on his desk, smiling wryly. 'Alistair, your chaps were trespassing over their restricted area. What do you expect?'
'Oh, for heaven's sake, Billy, if Vaughn can't trust my mob then he must have a skeleton in the cupboard.'
The Major-General looked up sharply at this, his green eyes showing a momentary fear. 'I'm sorry. There is no action I can authorise,' he declared in an official tone.
Lethbridge-Stewart forced himself to calm down. 'Look, I know Vaughn's a powerful chap but there should at least be a discreet inquiry into his organisation,' he proposed reasonably.
Routledge started to blink rapidly. He mopped his forehead with a spotted handkerchief and cleared his throat awkwardly. 'It isn't our province,' he stalled, loosening his club tie and undoing his top shirt button.
'Then whose damned province is it?'
Routledge waved his hands about ineffectually. 'All you've given me is vague reports, Alistair. No conclusive evidence.'
This was too much for Lethbridge-Stewart. 'No evidence?' he shouted incredulously. 'What do you need, Billy? Corpses?
Wreckage?' He stopped, noticing that a sickly pallor had crept over Routledge's face. 'What's the matter, Billy? Are you all right, old chap?' he asked with sincere concern.
Routledge dabbed at his glistening brow again. 'Course I am...
It's nothing...' he mumbled. 'Probably all a terrible misunderstanding.
Leave it with me, Alistair. I'll talk to the Home Office.'
The Brigadier waved his gloves dismissively. 'Talk's no good.
I want immediate action, Billy.'
Routledge clutched at his temples and shook visibly.
'Impossible!' he shouted adamantly.
The Brigadier leaned across the desk, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. 'What sort of a hold has Vaughn got over you?' he murmured ominously.
For a few minutes Routledge remained silent, slumped awkwardly in his chair. Then he suddenly sprang up. 'Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, your forces will take no action whatsoever without my personal authorisation!' he hissed dangerously. 'That is an order.'
Taken aback by this abrupt transformation, the Brigadier stood to attention. 'General Routledge, you can override my authority but not that of UNIT Central Command, sir,' he declared through clenched teeth. 'I shall telex a full report to Field-Marshal Thatcher in Geneva and act according to his instructions. Good day, sir.'
With that, he turned smartly on his heel and strode out, jamming his cap firmly on his head.
Routledge sank shakily into his chair. After a while he touched a button on the videophone and the neat secretary appeared on the screen.
'Yes, General?'
With a supreme effort, Routledge pulled himself together. 'Get me International Electromatix Headquarters. Mr Vaughn. Top priority scramble...' he snapped, struggling to preserve his composure.
As Tobias Vaughn, closely followed by Packer, strode purposefully out of the private elevator into his London office, the videophone was bleeping urgently on the desk. At Vaughn's touch the screen flickered and the pale tense features of William Routledge appeared.
'This is priority scramble, Vaughn.'
'Yes, Routledge, what is it?' Vaughn demanded impatiently.
'I'm busy.'
'Listen, Vaughn, Lethbridge-Stewart's started stirring things up and I can't prevent him,' Routledge blurted out.
Vaughn snorted contemptuously. 'Nonsense, pull yourself together. You have the authority to...'
'I have no jurisdiction outside this country,' the General interrupted. 'He's sending a report to UNIT Command in Geneva.
They're bound to investigate. I must say your staff were a bit heavy-handed.'
Vaughn threw a furious glance at Packer who was hovering at the window. 'Listen, Routledge, when will Geneva make a move against us?'
The General closed his eyes and pressed his fists against his temples. 'I think they... I think... they...' he stuttered feebly.
'What the hell's the matter with the man?' Packer snarled.
Vaughn ignored him, staring impassively at the videophone unit. 'Listen to me, Routledge...' he enunciated slowly. 'You will obey my instructions.'
Routledge shuddered and opened his eyes. 'Obey your instructions...' he repeated dutifully.
'You will leave your office immediately and come here to me.'
'Come to you...'The tortured face seemed to relax a little, but the eyes were pitifully confused.
'Do you understand, Routledge? You will tell no-one.'
'I understand. No-one. I obey. Now.'
The screen dazzled into static and went black.
Packer looked severely shaken. 'What's wrong with him?' he repeated nervously.
Vaughn frowned, clearly somewhat disturbed. 'Our control over him seems to be weakening,' he admitted.
'But that could be fatal,' Packer protested. 'If he doesn't obey you then we...'
Vaughn stood up, quickly regaining his customary bland manner. 'Oh, he will, Packer, he will,' he murmured confidently.
Then he rounded sharply on his Deputy. 'What concerns me far more, Packer, is your bungling ineptitude. That is what has precipitated this whole crisis!'
Packer opened his mouth to object, but then closed it again and his resentment seeped away to collect like poisonous pus in a festering boil.
6
There was a tense hush in the Operations Room inside the Hercules while Captain Turner and Sergeant Walters tried to contact the Brigadier at the Ministry. To their dismay they learned that he had already left some time ago and that Major-General Routledge himself was no longer in the building.
'We're too late, Doctor, the Brig's already seen Routledge,'
Turner reported despondently.
The Doctor shrugged. 'If I'm right and Routledge is under Vaughn's control the Brigadier will have had a wasted journey, I'm afraid.'
At that moment, Lethbridge-Stewart's voice surprised them. 'I loathe helicopters,' he boomed from the doorway. 'Utter waste of time, Doctor,' he announced, striding in and throwing his cap, baton and gloves onto his desk. 'The man's totally incompetent.'
The Doctor poured him a mug of strong tea from the vast pot, sat him down and quickly told him of his suspicions concerning Vaughn's real activities.
When he had finished, the Brigadier drank the sugarless tea in one prodigious gulp. 'This is incredible, Doctor,' he cried.
'Cybermen? Are you quite sure?'
'No more incredible than the Yeti,' srniled the Doctor.
'They seem to control some pretty important people,' Zoe remarked.
The Brigadier nodded. 'I wonder who else they have besides poor Billy Routledge. Doesn't give us much of a chance does it, Doctor?'
'Unless we can upset their plans before they invade,' the Doctor speculated. 'But there are so many unknown factors..
'Like where they're hiding all the Cybermen,' Jamie butted in.
'That's obvious,' Zoe told him. 'In Vaughn's London headquarters.'
'Not enough room,' Jamie objected. 'He's probably got an underground store or something.'
Zoe laughed mockingly. 'Oh, really, Jamie...'
The Doctor had been pouring himself some fresh tea. Suddenly he banged the heavy pot down. 'Jamie's quite right,' he exclaimed to everyone's surprise. 'Brigadier, would you by any chance have a map of the London sewerage system?'
At a resigned nod from his commander, Turner jumped up and soon returned with a large plastic sheet.
The Doctor eagerly swept aside the cluttered tray and examined the map. 'Ahal' he cried triumphantly. 'You see? There's a main flood relief channel running right underneath Vaughn's warehouse. Now, isn't that a coincidence!'
The Brigadier looked doubtful. 'What about the ah... the water down there: wouldn't that affect them?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'Anyway, such a tunnel would probably be mostly dry except after heavy rainfall,' he declared.
Isobel giggled. 'So what do we do? Pray for a cloudburst?'
The Brigadier glanced at her witheringly. 'Please, Miss Watkins, the future of the world may be at stake,' he scolded.
'I'm sorry, but it's just such a crazy idea to swallow,' she chuckled, nudging Zoe.
'So was the attack by the Yeti, miss. Nevertheless it happened.'
Captain Turner intervened tactfully. 'With respect, sir, she's right. If you go to Geneva with this story they'll think you've gone bananas.'
Lethbridge-Stewart sighed. 'Yes, Jimmy. We need some concrete evidence.'
The Doctor looked up from the map. 'What we need is some idea of the plan of attack,' he decided. 'Jamie, have you still got that ghastly little toy Mr Vaughn gave you?'
Jamie took the miniature radio from his waistcoat pocket and handed it over reluctantly. The Doctor opened the back and studied the monolithic circuitry again, muttering to himself in a strange technical jargon as he fiddled about. Eventually he turned to the Brigadier, his nostrils dilating as if he was beginning to pick up the scent of a fruitful investigation.