by Gerry Davis
Polly quickly stepped between them. ‘Please, haven’t we enough trouble without you two fighting each other!’
‘You’re right.’ Jamie nodded. ‘I go.’ He said it with an air of finality that stopped the other two from further expostulation. He was obviously feeling better. The colour had returned to his cheeks, his eyes were clear. His tough, stocky body, trained to undergo feats of endurance and strength that the two youngsters from the twentieth century could only dimly guess at, was responding again. The Cyberman spark seemed to have helped clear the congested blood passages in his injured head!
Ben smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘O.K., mate, come on then.’ The three of them moved across the Medical Unit towards the door leading to the corridor. As he turned to go out, Ben noticed Polly standing behind him. ‘Not you, duchess,’ he said, ‘this is men’s work.’ He walked out followed by Jamie, leaving a very red-faced and furious Polly behind.
The Gravitron was now almost white-hot, throwing out an intense light that dazzled the watching humans outside in the Weather Control Room, although the three controlled men seemed unaffected by it. The deep rumble had grown to a great thumping roar that filled the entire base, shaking it to its foundations. The men, standing against the wall, facing the assembled Cybermen’s weapons, were beginning to be affected by it and were trying to shut it out with their hands over their ears. The only unaffected member of the party appeared to be the Doctor, who still crouched by the R/T set.
As the men watched, one of the controlled humans sagged and drooped away from his control panel. Hobson took his hands from his ears. ‘You’ll kill them,’ he shouted.
The leading Cyberman wheeled on him. ‘If you do not remain silent, you too will be given brain control.’ Hobson looked wildly around for a moment and then subsided. His hands returned to his ears.
The leading Cyberman nodded to the third Cyberman with the control box, who turned the knob. The controlled man gave a convulsive jerk, visibly uncoiled again, and sat up and resumed his work on the control panel. It was almost as if he were dragged by wires.
Outside in the main corridor of the moon base, Ben and Jamie, both holding heavy fire extinguishers, were crouched at the main intersection, listening for a sound. The sound, when it did, came from an unexpected source: behind them. They whipped around, pointing the extinguishers in sudden fright. Then their faces collapsed with relief as they saw it was only Polly.
‘Polly,’ Ben spoke in a loud whisper, ‘I thought we told you to stay behind?’
Polly was holding another extinguisher. ‘I managed to mix together another jar of cocktail Polly.’
‘Ye’ll maybe get hurt, lassie. Go back now,’ said Jamie.
Polly’s eyes flashed. ‘I’m coming with you. I feel a lot safer with you than I do down in that Medical Unit by myself.’
Ben shushed her impatiently. ‘Look, we haven’t got time to argue. Come on then if you’re coming.’ They crept along the corridor towards the door labelled ‘WEATHER CONTROL – NO UNAUTHORISED ADMISSION’, and looked up and down the long passageway. There was no sign of life. Ben looked up, peered through a small window in the door, and bobbed down again quickly. ‘There’s three of them now. Lucky thing you joined us, duchess.’ Despite the tension, Polly glowed. Ben went on. ‘When I open the door, we’ve only got one chance. Drop down as low as you can, aim these things at their chests, and squirt like hell! Right? Now get ready. I’ll give the signal.’
The second Cyberman stood facing the men, his weapon at the ready. Suddenly, he listened, as though he had heard something, clipped his weapon back in its rack, and adjusted a control on his chest unit. His head slowly turned, following the source of the signal.
‘Someone is there,’ he said to the first Cyberman, and pointed to the door.
The Doctor, watching intently, put his hands behind him and grasped the two control knobs. As the Cyberman unclipped his weapon again and moved towards the door, followed by the first Cyberman, he flung both controls right over, the tone rising to a shriek. The effect was instantaneous.
The three controlled men jerked violently and then froze into fixed positions, like statues. The third Cyberman, holding the control box, frantically tried to regain control but failed. He looked round the Control Room and saw the Doctor moving away from the R/T set. He pointed to the Doctor. ‘He has jammed the beam.’
Almost with one action, the other two Cybermen turned from the door, raised their weapons, and pointed them at the Doctor, who braced himself to meet the shock.
The door from the corridor burst open. Ben and Jamie, backed up by Polly, leapt in, dropped to their knees, aimed their fire extinguishers, and squirted them at the three Cybermen. Jamie hit the third Cyberman in the chest unit and face, but the other two missed their targets and had to readjust their aim. The jets slashed across the room, doused the technicians and consoles in a blinding spray, and finally focused on the Cybermen’s chest units.
The first Cyberman to fall was the one who held the control box. His chest unit turned porridgey, appeared to grow bubbles, and then distorted out of shape. He fell backwards, crashing to the floor.
The other two Cybermen tried to level their weapons to fire at Ben and Polly. As they did so, their limbs began to jerk. They uttered spasmodic cries and began to pluck uselessly at their chest units which were inflating and distorting. Their movements grew feeble, and finally they crashed massively to the ground. Their struggles gradually ceased. The three silver giants were now still, burnt out shells.
The Doctor broke the short silence. He pointed towards the three men in the Gravitron control room. ‘Quick. Get those things off their heads.’
Quickly donning acoustic headgear, Ben, Polly and Jamie, led by Benoit and Hobson, rushed into the Gravitron control room. While the Doctor’s three companions dragged the men from their seats and gently prised off the shining metal headpieces, Hobson and Benoit took over the controls and started reducing the power output of the Gravitron.
The other technicians returned to their various tasks. The other Gravitron operators relieved Hobson and Benoit at the controls as the giant ring began to drone down to its normal level of operation.
Polly, Ben and Jamie, helped by the technicians, brought the men out from the Gravitron room and carried them down to the Medical Unit.
The shattered shells of the Cybermen were carried away to a store room on the basement floor. The Doctor picked up the Cyber-weapons and placed them carefully on the end of the console.
The three young space travellers accompanied the affected men through the control room. There was no time for formal thanks or congratulations from the technicians. The situation was still too tense. The Gravitron was not yet under control! All they could manage was a quick smile and a thumbs-up sign. But it was enough for the three youngsters.
Once they were outside in the corridor, Ben put it in his usual blunt style: ‘An hour ago they were ready to chuck us out. Now we’re heroes!’
*
Inside the Cyberman space ship, Tarn, the Cyberleader, was listening to another Cyberman, in charge of communications, speaking into the transmitter. ‘We are not receiving you, we are not receiving you.’ He paused, then turned back to the Leader. ‘There is no reply.’
‘Then they must have failed.’ The Cyberleader, besides being taller than his counterparts, had a noticeably deeper voice. ‘We must invade now. Prepare the weapons.’
He watched as the Cybermen prepared, like well-drilled machines, to invade the base.
The huge cylinder of the probe was now clanking back to its former tilt of twenty degrees. The men at the Weather Control console watched as the cursors inched back to their positions over the Atlantic. Hobson was standing, feet astride, his fatigue forgotten in the urgency of the moment. He directed operations with a word here and a word there; more gentle hints than shouted commands. The real leadership qualities of the man were now evident, thought the Doctor, watching him from the end of the room.
The base was in good hands. Despite his occasional bluster and irascibility, Hobson was a man in a thousand. It was doubtful if he would crack now.
Benoit, followed by Sam, came over to Hobson. ‘Sam’s just reminded me,’ said Benoit. ‘We still have no contact with those two men outside.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Even with the extra tanks, their air should have practically run out by now.’
‘Send someone else out,’ said Hobson.
‘I’ll go.’ Sam spoke urgently but Hobson shook his head. ‘No, I can’t spare you.’ Sam was the second oldest man on the base, and their main repair technician. He was known as the ‘nuts-and-bolts man’ of the base and was probably the only man in the crew who understood the workings of every piece of machinery on the moon surface. ‘We’ll have to find someone else,’ Hobson continued.
‘I’ll go myself,’ said Benoit. He looked around the room. ‘There’s no one else who can be spared and, anyway, it is a job for a very fit man.’
Hobson, Sam and the Doctor looked at the tall Frenchman. Benoit made almost a fetish of his superb physical condition. All the men were required to do a stipulated amount of exercise during the week, but only Benoit had the capacity for a daily physical work-out, in addition to his usual duties.
Hobson looked as if he was going to argue with the man for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Keep in close R/T contact and be as quick as you can.’
‘And be careful,’ the Doctor cut in. ‘You don’t know what you’re going to find out there.’
‘Yes,’ the Frenchman nodded at the Doctor, turned and left the Weather Control Room.
‘Nils,’ Hobson looked over at the man, now back at the R/T control, ‘lock your control on to the base channel. Channel fifteen, isn’t it? Then go up to the look-out point and keep an eye on Jules Benoit while he’s outside.’
Nils switched over the channel to the one used by members of the base when they were reporting back from the moon surface. He stood, walked across to a corner of the room, and pressed a button set in the wall. As the Doctor watched, fascinated, a hatch swung open and a long steel ladder unfolded until it touched the control room floor beside Nils. He started climbing up to a platform high above the Weather Control and Gravitron rooms, set in the apex of the dome.
This had been built for two purposes: to effect repairs to the top of the telescope-like probe which could be reached from the platform, and to provide a look-out point for the surrounding lunar landscape.
The ladder led up to a circular catwalk just above the Weather Control Room and Nils took out a pair of polarised sun-goggles, standard equipment for everybody on the base, and put them on before continuing his climb up to the small platform, high above the base.
Benoit enjoyed going outside the base on the moon surface, as did all the crew. There was a magnificent feeling of release from the cramped quarters inside, with the long lunar slopes stretching away in every direction. Once freed from the base’s artificial Earth-like gravity, it was like having springs in your boots.
The athletic Frenchman soon established a long loping stride that quickly carried him through the soft crunchy sand over the moat and up towards the bluff where the broken antennae were located. He climbed the slope, looked down and saw the two figures. What he did not notice was a movement from behind the rock where the Cybermen had lain in ambush.
In three strides, Benoit was standing above the two crumpled figures. He looked down but all he could see were flattened space suits, their helmets lying beside them. There was no sign of the men. He reached his hand up and clicked on the intercommunication transmitter. ‘Hello base, hello base. I’ve found them, or at least, I’ve found their space suits. There is no sign of the two men.’
Hobson’s voice sounded small and squeaky through the globe phone. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do at the moment. Get back inside as quick as you can.’
‘Right. Over.’
Just at that moment a new voice broke in over the linked inter-space R/T system. It was the voice of the Dane, Nils, from the look-out post. ‘Jules, there’s one of those things out there. He’s after you. I can see him.’
Benoit quickly swivelled around.
‘Did you hear that?’ Hobson’s voice came through urgently.
‘I did,’ the Frenchman replied grimly. There, confronting him some twenty yards away, was a Cyberman unclipping his Cyber-weapon.
Benoit looked desperately around for cover, but he was in the middle of a slight plateau on the mountain slopes. The nearest cover was the rocks on the far side of the Cyberman. He tensed his muscles to bound sideways, just as the Cyberman levelled his weapon and pressed the button.
The weapon didn’t work. The Cyberman shook it slightly, aimed at Benoit again, and pressed the button. Again it failed to work.
Benoit, who had been bracing himself against the shock, his arm protecting his face, dropped his arm in amazement. He called into the mike inside his globe. ‘Can you see that from up there? Their weapons don’t work in this vacuum!’
The Cyberman now replaced his weapon in the clips under his chest unit, and started advancing in huge lunging strides. Benoit turned and made for the base as fast as he could.
To Nils, watching from the top of the dome, it became apparent that it was a race which the human would lose. Although the Frenchman was in top physical condition, the Cyberman seemed able to move faster in this low gravity, slow-motion chase. The scene had an almost nightmare quality as the man, straining every muscle and nerve in his body, found himself unable to draw away from the heavy, powerful robot behind him.
Inside Weather Control, Nils’ voice was keeping up a running commentary on the desperate situation below. Ben, Jamie and Polly had rejoined the others. Ben was frantically undoing one of the extinguishers and withdrawing the glass bottle, still half full of solvent.
‘Why can’t you just squirt it like we did just now?’ asked Polly.
The Doctor, assisting Ben, answered her. ‘It would vaporise in the vacuum before it hit them.’
Ben got the bottle loose and sprinted from the room, closely followed by Sam and the Doctor.
Outside the chase was still going on, but the Cyberman had narrowed the gap to a mere five yards. Benoit’s heart was pounding, his lungs almost bursting as he gulped in the oxygen. His breathing made a harsh grating sound over the intercom system.
Inside the port, Sam helped Ben to get into the space suit. He dropped the globe and screwed it tight, then touched Ben on the shoulder and stepped back out of the compression chamber. The door closed and Ben pressed the button for the moon port to open. There was the usual roaring hiss as the air exhausted into the vacuum. Without waiting to follow the usual safety checks written in large red letters on the wall, Ben leapt outside.
Benoit had leapt down into the moat and was now almost up to the door, stumbling with exhaustion. Behind him the Cyberman, almost on top of the fleeing man, had raised one long arm ready for the terrible Cyberman chop that could break a man’s neck with one downward slice. Ben leapt over, pushed the exhausted man aside and flung the bottle at point-blank range against the Cyberman’s chest unit.
It travelled like a bullet in the low gravity and burst on the Cyberman’s chest. As it burst a tremendous cloud of steam-like vapour shot out from the chest unit. The Cyberman stopped and staggered, clawing at his sagging unit, his mouth jerking in completely soundless screams. Ben grabbed the falling Jules Benoit by the shoulder and backed away with him towards the open entry port. The Cyberman took one more step forward, then folded and collapsed in the lunar dust.
Aided by Ben, the Frenchman dragged himself into the compression airlock. Ben pressed the controls. The port door dropped down. The air started hissing back into the room and Ben turned and started to unscrew the head globe of Benoit’s space suit.
In the Weather Control Room the voice of Nils echoed through the loudspeakers. ‘They’re both in, chief. They seem to have destroyed one of the Cybermen.’
The men inside
visibly relaxed and smiled at each other. Nils’ commentary had been as exciting as that of a cup final. Hobson turned to the others. ‘Now listen, everybody. I don’t know how many more of these Cybermen there are, but from our point of view, we’re under siege. I reckon they’ll be back in a bit. Nils will keep trying to get through to I.S.C. Earth until he gets contact. The rest of you lower the armoured doors at all exits.’
He turned to the Doctor, Jamie and Polly. ‘And you’d better make up as much of that lethal mixture as you can find. We may be needing it.’
The door opened and Ben came in, half supporting Benoit, who was still out of breath and a bit weak. Polly, Jamie and the Doctor went to their aid. Both men were still in space suits. Hobson helped Benoit out of his suit while Ben, aided by Polly, scrambled out of his.
Behind them Nils clambered down the last rungs of the ladder and went back to his R/T set.
‘Ground radar?’
Sam walked over to the, as yet unused, ground radar set in the corner. This was a small installation, mainly used to monitor incoming space shuttle flights from Earth. He pulled the cover off and switched it on. Hobson walked over to join him. ‘Can you get a fix on the Cybermen’s spaceship?’
The dark screen began to light up as the scanner revolved. The white line left little pulsating dots as it swept round. Sam stabbed with his finger towards the screen. ‘We’re getting a strong pulse from fifty-four degrees north at about three kilometres.’
‘That makes it just over the rim,’ Hobson exclaimed. Sam nodded.
The Doctor was at Hobson’s elbow. ‘How far can you tilt the probe down?’ questioned the Doctor. He pointed upwards at the tall cylinder of the probe.
Hobson looked up. ‘About another twenty degrees, I should say.’
‘Pity,’ the Doctor frowned. ‘That’s no use.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Hobson.
‘Isn’t there any other part of it that can be moved around?’ pursued the Doctor.
‘Well,’ Hobson thought, ‘the main coil lenses could be shifted without too much trouble, but why do you…’