'We could intercept and release the Professor, sir,' suggested Turner listening on the extension.
Isobel looked anxiously at the Brigadier.
He frowned. 'I don't like the idea, Jimmy,' he said after a pause.
'Oh come on! Please!' Isobel begged him, clutching his sleeve.
The Doctor cleared his throat noisily. 'Brigadier, the Professor might be able to help me solve this problem,' he said, waving the two monolithic circuits.
The Brigadier looked unhappy at the risk of further trouble before his mission to UNIT Command in Geneva.
'It could be a vital chance for a breakthrough,' the Doctor urged him.
Lethbridge-Stewart considered the two earnest faces. Finally he relented. 'All right. It's your show, Jimmy, but be careful,' he said reluctantly.
Isobel hugged him and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek.
'Tell Benton to stay with them. I'll contact him en route. I'm on my way, Sergeant,' rapped Turner into the receiver.
'Vaughn's lot know we mean business now,' the Brigadier warned him. 'They won't be playing games.'
'Neither will I, sir!' Turner promised and he dashed out with Isobel staring admiringly after him.
The Brigadier, still blushing from the kiss, reached across and handed the plate to Isobel. 'Care for a biscuit?' he asked gallantly.
An owl hooted somewhere in the nearby trees. Turner and three UNIT soldiers sat tensely in their jeep at the deserted crossroads, listening to Benton's regular reports on the radio giving the position of the International Electromatix company car carrying Gregory and Professor Watkins back to the factory complex. Thin trails of cloud scudded across the Moon, giving it a covert, lurking appearance high above them.
'About a kilometre from your position now, sir,' Benton suddenly blurted.
'Go!' snapped Turner to his driver. The jeep swept out of the side lane and drew across the narrow road, completely blocking it.
The driver cut the engine and the lights and the four men whipped out their pistols and jumped into the surrounding hedgerows.
Twenty seconds later, a set of powerful headlights sliced the darkness, followed by another, some distance behind but gaining rapidly. The International Electromatix car screamed to a halt a few metres from the jeep. As one of Vaughn's men got out to investigate, the UNIT force emerged with levelled pistols and challenged him.
The man yelled something and the limousine started reversing, but Benton's Jaguar roared up behindand cut off its retreat. Another man jumped out and they both opened fire on Turner's squad. While the UNIT squad fired back, Professor Watkins opened the rear door of the limousine and scuttled towards the undergrowth along the lane.
Gregory leaped out after him and raised a revolver at his back.
Before he could shoot the Professor, Benton fired from his car and Gregory fell dead on the grass verge. At the same instant, Turner's advancing force killed one of the Professor's escort and the other one fled into the woods and got away.
Turner ushered the shocked and dazed Professor gently into the Jaguar and he and Benton drove him swiftly back to London with the rest of the squad escorting them in the jeep.
In Vaughn's darkened office Packer was smacking his bony fists together with impotent rage.
'It was a UNIT group again,' he fumed, his mean eyes glittering malevolently at his master. 'I warned you, but you ignored me.'
'Still sceptical, Packer?' Vaughn inquired calmly, reclining in his chair with his eyes closed.
'Well, what can we do now?' Packer whined. 'We've only got one machine. Now they've got Watkins back and Gregory's dead we can't manufacture any more, can we?'
If Tobias Vaughn was at all worried by the recent kidnapping he betrayed no sign of disquiet. 'Once Cyber Control is transmitting the coercion signal the Doctor and his friends will be utterly helpless,' he reminded Packer. 'You'll be able to pick them up and enjoy your revenge. Can I trust you to accomplish that?'
Packer stared at Vaughn's shadowy figure with gnawing hatred. 'Of course!' he snapped petulantly.
'Good.' Vaughn glanced at his luminous digital watch. 'Now, I suggest that you get some rest,' he murmured. 'There remain just five and one half hours until the invasion begins...'
8
Professor Watkins gratefully drank several cups of tea, clutching his niece's hand with affectionate relief. Then he nibbled at a biscuit and gazed in bewilderment at the ringof faces around him.
'I know nothing,' he admitted regretfully, 'nothing at all.'
The Doctor sighed dejectedly. 'You've no idea what these micromonolithic circuits are for, Professor?' he asked for the third or fourth time.
'I'm sorry, Doctor,' Watkins smiled feebly. 'I don't even know why Vaughn wanted me to adapt my machine.'
'You say he intends to mass produce them?' mused the Doctor.
Watkins nodded wearily and hugged Isobel again.
The Brigadier was baffled. 'Why should Vaughn need such a weapon if he's already got the Cybermen?'
The Doctor suddenly perked up. 'Professor, you say you adapted your device to induce excessive emotional responses...?'
Watkins nodded and hung his head in shame.
The Doctor stood up and walked round and round the cluttered bench. 'Emotion is alien to Cyber neurosystems,' he reflected.
'Perhaps it could be used to incapacitate or even destroy them... Yes, Vaughn obviously plans to use the machine against the Cybermen once he has no further use for them.' He gazed at his silent audience excitedly, then he hurried to the bench and picked up the circuits from the Hercules computer and from Jamie's radio. 'Of course.
Emotional Induction. How could I have been so stupid? No wonder the circuits aren't logical!'
Professor Watkins jumped up as if infused with new life and joined the Doctor at the bench. The two of them started muttering together and examining the circuits through magnifying glasses, totally oblivious of everyone else.
The Brigadier consulted his watch. 'Heavens, I must get back to the Hercules,' he exclaimed. 'I'm leaving at dawn for Geneva.
Contact me at once it the Doctor comes up with anything, Jimmy,' he ordered and strode briskly out.
Zoe and Jamie glanced across at the bench. The Doctor and Watkins were deep in animated discussion over the oscilloscope.
Jamie yawned cavernously and settled himself back in the armchair.
'Wake me if anything happens, Zoe,' he mumbled and closed his eyes.
Zoe gaped at him in disgust. 'You're incredible,' she exclaimed.
'You'd sleep through anything. For all we know, the Cybermen might be lurking beneath us at this very moment!'
Frantically Jamie struggled to shake himself free as the repulsive creature began to devour his foot. He woke with a start to find that Zoe was tugging his arm.
'Quick, Jamie, the Doctor's discovered something!' she cried.
On the wall the Doctor had sketched a large diagram showing the Earth ringed by a number of satellites and the Moon with the Cyber mother-craft on its hidden side. Professor Watkins, Isobel, Zoe, Jamie and Captain Turner gathered round as he explained his theory with mounting excitement. He drew a dotted line from the Cyber craft round the Moon to the side facing the Earth.
'Now, they'll move round and their transmitters will hunt for the frequencies used by these satellites,' the Doctor told them. 'The satellites will then boost their signals and relay them to Earth...'
'And the signals will activate these micromonolithic circuits,'
put in the Professor, holding one up.
'Exactly,' resumed the Doctor. 'These circuits are artificial nerve networks and once activated by the Cyber signals they will no doubt induce the hypnotic force being used to control the humans already in their power.' The Doctor held up the back of Jamie's radio.
'There must be hundreds of thousands of these circuits in International Electromatix components all over the world,' he concluded gravely.
'So everyone will come under their control,' Zoe murmured.
There was a shocked silence.
'Is there nothing we can do?' Turner asked earnestly. Zoe clicked her fingers. 'The depolariser, Doctor!' she cried.
The Doctor beamed at her. 'Exactly, Zoe. What a good memory you've got.' He turned to the others. 'Fixed to the back of the neck, the depolariser can jam the control signals,' he explained.
'Neuristors!' cried Professor Watkins, turning to a large cardboard box filled with oddments. 'I think I've got a few here somewhere..
'Splendid!' cried the Doctor, rubbing his hands together and springing to life again. 'Zoe, you help the Professor to make us some depolarisers. We'd better arm ourselves with immunity immediately.'
He turned to the Captain. 'What time is it?' he demanded.
'Four in the morning, sir.'
'Please call the Brigadier on the radio. I'd better talk to him at once. The invasion could begin at any time!'
Within a few seconds the basement had been transformed into a hive of activity as the Doctor and his friends began the race to stop Vaughn and his alien allies from conquering the Earth.
The only sound in Vaughn's dimly-lit office was his calm rhythmic breathing as he lay tilted hack in his chair, his lazy eye half open in macabre vigilance, the other peacefully shut. Suddenly a strident bleeping brought him instantly awake. He took up his fountain pen and twisted the cap. The wall obediently parted, exposing the wide-awake Cyber Module whirring and prickling with intense light in the alcove.
'All is prepared?' it demanded.
'Of course,' answered Vaughn from the shadows.
'Invasion Zero will be one Earth hour from now. Countdown will commence now.'
'How melodramatic...' Vaughn smiled to himself as a regular electronic pulse started marking the seconds off one by one.
'We are moving into position to transmit the coercion signal.
Transmission will commence in thirty minutes.'
'Yes, yes, yes, I'm well aware of the schedule,' Vaughn muttered sarcastically to himself, closing his eyes again.
Just then, Packer slipped noiselessly into the room from the private elevator. Vaughn swivelled in his chair. 'A few minutes, Packer... A few minutes and I shall control the entire planet,' he whispered, gazing out over the lights of the capital.
Packer glanced at the pulsing luminescent machine. 'You?' he murmured doubtfully. 'Are you sure of that?'
Vaughn's chair spun round to face him. 'Quite certain, Packer,'
he snapped. 'Quite certain.'
The Doctor had done his best to explain to the Brigadier on the radiotelephone the exact procedure for constructing the vital depolariser jamming device.
'You must get them fitted immediately,' he repeated. 'If your technicians need any more advice just contact us here.'
'I'll get all my boffins on to it at once,' Lethbridge-Stewart assured him. 'Over and out.'
'Over and... and all that,' the Doctor muttered. He hurried back to the bench where Zoe and the Professor were hard at work making masses of fiddly connections. 'How many have you managed to knock together?' he inquried anxiously.
'Only five so far,' Zoe admitted. 'We can't find enough of those neuristor things.'
The Doctor looked worried. 'There must be some more among all this junk... er, this equipment,' he said, starting to rummage frantically in the boxes littering the bench and piled underneath it.
'We've got to make enough for everyone here at least.'
Upstairs in the makeshift studio, Isobel had opened the blinds and was looking at the pale rose sky heralding the sunrise over the city.
'Penny for them,' whispered Jimmy Turner, appearing at her side.
She smiled wistfully. 'It's great. It all looks so peaceful.'
Turner agreed. 'Perhaps the Doctor's wrong about the invasion after all,' he suggested unconvincingly.
Isobel looked doubtful as she fingered the small cluster of transistors and wires taped to the back of her neck. 'He's been dead right so far,' she reminded him.
They watched a milkman making his deliveries to the houses opposite and a paperboy whistling as he cycled along the street. Then all at once they glanced uneasily at one another and Turner instinctively put his arm round Isobel's shoulder. The air seemed suddenly dry and brittle. A feeling of nausea swept over them and they felt a dull pain behind the eyes. A sudden crash outside made them look out again. Several milkbottles had shattered on the pavement and the roundsman was clutching his head and staring up into the sky. The paperboy took his hands off the handlebars and clapped them to his ears. Wobbling drunkenly, he careered across the street and crashed into the milk float. They heard a cry and heavy thump from the basement and then Zoe screamed.
They dashed out and down the steps under the stairs.
The Doctor was staggering round and round the basement in smaller and smaller circles with Jamie clinging to his arms in an attempt to prevent him injuring himself. At the bench, Professor Watkins was feverishly connecting some tiny wires with a soldering-iron.
Zoe glanced up as Isobel and the Captain rushed in. 'The Doctor hasn't been fitted with his depolariser yet,' she cried anxiously.
The Doctor groaned with pain and collapsed in Jamie and the Captain's arms. They lowered him gently to the floor where he lay deathly still, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.
'Hurry up, Professor... please hurry...' Zoe pleaded.
Watkins bustled over to them with the depolariser. They turned the Doctor over and Zoe carefully taped the lash-up to the back of his neck. Abruptly the Doctor went rigid with a spasmodic shudder.
'Doctor... Doctor, are you all right...?' Zoe cried, loosening his collar.
The Doctor lay prostrate, his breathing snatched and rapid and his eyes glazed over. They watched anxiously for some sign of revival. A tremendous crash from the street sent Isobel running back up to the studio.
A bus with a few writhing, goggle-eyed early morning passengers aboard had crashed into the milk float and steam was hissing from its ruptured radiator in a white jet. Then Isobel saw something that chilled her to the marrow. A heavy manhole cover in the middle of the street was suddenly flung into the air and it rolled clanging into the gutter. A gleaming silver figure clambered out of the sewer and stood with legs apart, swinging its masklike face to and fro in search of victims. It was followed by several more Cybermen and the group of malevolent giants strode off like figures in a nightmare, their blank eyes gaping and their slit mouths giving their faces a sinister, frozen smile as their thick, stubby fingers grabbed viciously at the air.