Doctor Who: Earthshock (6 page)

'It would be nice to know exactly what you're up to, Doctor,' Adric remarked resentfully as he carried out the Doctor's instructions on the main console.

The Doctor pulled out a tangle of brightly coloured cables, frowned, shook his head and thrust it back again. 'The bomb is being armed by remote control...' he explained, pulling out another knot of wires and feverishly trying to untangle them.

'So you could jam it!' Adric suggested eagerly.

'Yes, once I know where its getting its orders from,' the Doctor said, making a few rapid reconnections.

At that moment Scott, Kyle and the troopers entered and stood in awed and astonished silence, staring round the spacious interior of the narrow, shabby old police box.

The Doctor jumped up and flicked a few switches on the console. 'That can't be right!' he frowned. 'Or can it?'

'How long does the arming procedure take?' Adric asked nervously while the Doctor dithered about, bobbing up and down from console to pedestal and back again, muttering secretly to himself.

'Not long,' he replied brightly, totally engrossed in his task.

'Well . . . can't I help at all?' Adric demanded. The Doctor did not reply. Adric glanced worriedly at Tegan and Nyssa.

'Shouldn't you move the TARDIS, Doctor?' Tegan asked timidly. 'Before that bomb thing goes off?'

After a few more seconds silence the Doctor jumped up and again checked some instruments on the console. 'We must hurry!' he cried, yanking a kind of drawer brimming with a strange assortment of tools out of the pedestal.

'You've managed to jam the signal?' Nyssa asked hopefully.

'Temporarily. If they increase power they can easily break through again...' the Doctor answered, striding to the door. 'Well, come along, Adric. Do try and make yourself useful for a change,' he shouted impatiently and strode outside, leaving the others gaping at each other in uneasy bewilderment while the Doctor's improvised jamming mechanism sparked and throbbed like a heap of multicoloured spaghetti on the console.

Once again the warning siren howled from the Cybermen's control module.

'What is it now?' the Leader demanded, cancelling the warning with a stab of the finger.

'Our control signal is being jammed, Leader,' the Deputy replied after rapidly scanning the array of instruments.

'Jammed?' the Leader boomed menacingly. 'Increase power.'

The Deputy obeyed. Immediately the warning sounded again, this time more urgently.

'What is the delay?'

'Overload hazard, Leader. There is resistance from somewhere.'

'Override it at once,' the Leader ordered. 'The primitive technology of the Earthlings cannot resist us.'

The Deputy hesitated. 'But if we drain too much power now...'

A savage hiss from the Leader's ventilator unit silenced the Deputy and he hurriedly made the necessary adjustments. 'Supplementary power engaged, Leader.'

'Excellent,' the Leader acknowledged. 'In thirty seconds' time the destruction of Earth will achieve for us the revenge we have sought for so long...'

When they returned to the bomb Adric and the Doctor found that it had stopped pulsating and flashing. Swiftly the Doctor set to work to disarm the eerily inert mechanism.

'Magnetic clamp,' he ordered.

Adric rummaged in the tool-box and handed him a device resembling a small pair of square dumb-bells. The Doctor carefully positioned it so that it linked the two cubic components at either end of the glass tube.

'How much damage could this bomb have done?' Adric asked, handing the Doctor a probe.

'Enough . . .' the Doctor replied enigmatically, poking cautiously about in a mass of small, flexible tubes.

'For what?'

'Enough to blow the entire planet apart if it were sited at the right spot,' the Doctor muttered. 'For example at a focus of geological fault lines... Laser cutter, please.'

Adric handed over a compact tool resembling a large fountain pen. 'It's totally bizarre,' he murmured, holding his breath as the Doctor sliced through a thick wire.

'Professor Kyle told me she'd been working down here almost a month before those androids attacked her team. Why did they wait so long?'

'No need to attack until the Professor's investigations brought her too close to their little secret here. Magnetic drone, please.' The Doctor started attaching the small coil Adric passed him to an exposed circuit. Suddenly he jumped back with a yelp of pain and dropped the drone. 'There was power in there,' he said with a puzzled frown,

'and there definitely shouldn't have been.'

At that moment the fluorescent tube began to pulse again intermittently. The Doctor gaped at it in dismay. 'The signal's breaking through again!' he cried as the erratic blue flashes grew quickly stronger and more regular. For a moment the Doctor looked completely defeated. Then he took a deep breath. 'Only one answer - abandon methodical procedure for sheer blind instinct . . .' he declared.

Seizing the laser cutter, the Doctor held it close to the exposed circuit which had given him the shock. He held up crossed fingers on his free hand and smiled at Adric. 'Here we go . . .' he whispered, and he firmly squeezed the trigger.

Inside the TARDIS, Nyssa had been leaning over the console desperately trying to boost the jamming signal being generated by the TARDIS's circuits, while Tegan and the others anxiously watched Adric and the Doctor on the viewer screen. The ominous blue flashes had grown stronger and stronger as the mysterious alien command-signal had increased in power, and Nyssa knew that the Doctor's hastily devised lash-up was approaching its maximum capacity. With sinking heart she realised that the jamming circuit could utilise only a tiny fraction of the TARDIS's enormous energy potential.

She glanced in despair at the two puny little figures crouching in front of the hatchway in the pulsating cavern on the viewer. She caught Tegan's eye and slowly shook her head.

'It's stopped...' The Professor's joyful cry made them look back at the viewer.

The flashing in the cavern had stopped. Nyssa stared down at the console displays.

'It's true,' she cried excitedly. 'They've stopped transmitting. The signal's vanished. The Doctor's done it!'

The Cyberleader strode round and round the control module while the Deputy made rapid adjustments to the holovisor disc mounted on top of it.

'The Earthlings cannot have deactivated the device themselves,' the Leader stormed, 'our technology is too advanced. Either they received help from some superior intelligence, or we have been betrayed. Whoever is responsible will be found and eliminated.'

The Deputy announced that the apparatus was now prepared. Seconds later a replay of the battle between the two androids and the troopers in the cavern began to glow in three-dimension under the projector tubes. The Cybermen watched closely.

'All the alien participants appear to be humans, Leader.'

The Leader raised his arm sharply for silence. On the disc Adric could be seen throwing the second rock at the male android and, just as the android turned to fire at him, the faint image of the TARDIS appeared fleetingly in the background.

'There...' the Leader rasped, stabbing a hold button and freezing the image. He then operated an intensifier adjustment and the TARDIS image was magnified and focused in the centre of the disc.

The Leader leaned forward expectantly, his ventilator hissing harshly. 'A TARDIS...' he grated.

'Time Lords are forbidden to interfere, Leader,' the Deputy objected.

'This one calls itself "the Doctor",' the Leader boomed, selecting a programme from the holovisor's memory and switching it on again. 'It has assumed a variety of regenerative forms and it does nothing
but
interfere...'

On the disc appeared the head of an old man with a narrow face, long hooked nose, flowing white hair and thin lips. He was saying something in an earnest, wavering voice: '...but have you no emotions . . . like love, pride, hate, fear...?'

The image faded and was succeeded by the head of a dark-skinned man with a fringe of straight black hair, heavy dark eyebrows, brown eyes and a smallish mouth who was leaning forward with a cynical smile which made deep furrows on each side of his nose and saying: '...I imagine that you have orders to destroy me...'

The Leader jabbed the hold control. 'In this regenerated form, the Doctor confined the Cybermen to their ice tomb on Telos,' he hissed.

The Leader released the control and the glowing image changed once more.

This time an enormous head of curly brown hair appeared, a huge face with staring blue eyes and a wide mouth curling with contempt. The image loomed over the disc as a deep, rich voice ranted mockingly: 'You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers scuttling about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship...'

The holovisor went dark.

'It was in that last regeneration that the Doctor defeated our attempts to destroy Voga,' the Leader concluded.

At the mention of the planet Voga the Deputy had clasped both hands protectively across his ventilator grille. 'The planet of
gold
...' he hissed convulsively.

For a few seconds both Cybermen uttered a curious gasping and choking sound before recovering their composure.

'Leader,' the Deputy objected eventually, 'none of those creatures appears in the cavern with the Earthlings.'

'The reason for that is obvious,' the Leader declared. 'Our enemy, the Doctor, has regenerated once again...'

On his triumphant return to the TARDIS, the Doctor modestly brushed aside the barrage of congratulations awaiting him and immediately concentrated on dismantling the lash-up still littering the console and on preparations for departure. Scott and the Professor tried hard to persuade him to remain on Earth just a little longer.

'But you have done so much, Doctor. We want to express our gratitude,'

pleaded Professor Kyle.

'Thank you, but we must leave,' the Doctor insisted. 'There is still a great deal to do.'

'Haven't you done quite enough for one day, Doctor?' Tegan teased him, though she was feeling fairly shaken underneath.

Adric threatened to grow argumentative. 'We could surely spare a few hours, Doctor?' he objected.

But the Doctor shook his head firmly and busied himself with adjusting the navigational instruments. 'There just isn't time,' he told them.

'So. Where are we hurrying off to now?' Nyssa demanded with a challenging air, as if to catch the Doctor out.

'Sector Sixteen.'

'Oh beaut! Sounds great fun!' Tegan scoffed.

'The Doctor is anxious to meet the creators of the androids,' Adric announced.

'So you know who they are!' Scott exclaimed in surprise.

The Doctor looked up sharply. 'No. I only know where their transmissions originated.'

The Lieutenant gestured to Professor Kyle and the handful of surviving troopers. 'Then you must take us with you, Doctor.'

The Doctor shook his head emphatically and fussed over the console.

'Well, we can't fight androids all by ourselves, Doctor,' Nyssa pointed out acidly.

'I hope that will not be necessary, Nyssa,' the Doctor retorted. He straightened up and turned to the Lieutenant. 'I'm afraid I shall have to ask you and your friends to leave now,' he said politely.

Scott planted himself firmly in front of the Doctor and folded his arms. 'Look here, if our planet's being threatened we insist on doing everything we can to defend it,' he snapped.

The Doctor opened his mouth as if to deliver an ultimatum and promptly shut it again. He glanced round at the determined faces assembled before him. 'All right,'

he said leaning across and flicking the exterior door lever, 'but you'd better hold on tight. We'll be away in no time at all...'

The newcomers stared at each other with a mixture of amusement and amazement as the TARDIS shuddered violently and started to make a noise like a cross between trumpeting elephants and tearing metal. The floor bucked and reared like an unbroken steer, before steadying into a gentle swinging motion.

'Please make yourselves at home,' the Doctor urged reassuringly. 'Nyssa and Tegan will show you where everything is.'

As the strangers were being ushered out, the Doctor buttonholed Adric. 'Do you have a moment?' he asked with a smile.

'Well, I am rather hungry,' Adric mumbled, reluctantly closing the internal door.

The Doctor cleared his throat awkwardly, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and paced up and down uncomfortably. 'Adric, I'm . . . I'm very grateful for all your help . . . with the bomb and with that android...' he muttered almost inaudibly.

'That's quite all right. All in a day's work,' Adric shrugged.

The Doctor stopped in front of him. 'Look . . . I've been thinking about your wish to return home...' he began.

'And?'

'And . . . well if we could work out a satisfactory course I just might . . . I just might . . . well, give it a try.'

'Oh I've already done that,' Adric said off-handedly. 'It's there on the pad.'

The Doctor looked very disconcerted. 'Really?' he laughed, picking up the pad from the console and flicking through it, his eyebrows rising higher and higher as he did so.

'As you'll see I've managed to compute the position of the CVE...'

'Oh you've done remarkably well,' the Doctor said admiringly.

'Thank you,' Adric replied politely, opening the door.

The Doctor fluttered the pages of the notepad again. 'Look Adric, I'm really sorry about our little disagreement earlier on,' he managed to mumble, blushing with embarrassment.

'I over-reacted,' Adric said graciously.

'Do you really want to go home?'

Adric grinned broadly. 'No, of course not, Doctor. There's nothing for me there now,' he admitted.

'You mean you did all this work for nothing?' the Doctor cried incredulously, waving the notebook.