DOCTOR WHO AND THE REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN

by Terrance Dicks

  A mysterious plague strikes Space Beacon Nerva, killing its victims within minutes. When DOCTOR WHO lands, only four humans remain alive. One of these seems to be in league with the nearby planet of gold, Voga... Or is he in fact working for the dreaded CYBERMEN, who are now determined to finally destroy their old enemies, the VOGANS?

  The Doctor, Sarah and Harry find themselves caught in the midst of a terrifying struggle to death - between the ruthless, power-hungry Cybermen and the desperate determined Vogans.

  ISBN 0 426 10997 X

  DOCTOR WHO AND

  THE REVENGE OF

  THE CYBERMEN

  * * *

  Based on the BBC television serial Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermenby Gerry Davis by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation

  * * *

  TERRANCE DICKS

  published by

  The Paperback Division of

  W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  The Creation of the Cybermen

  1 Return to Peril

  2 The Cybermat Strikes

  3 A Hot Spot for the Doctor

  4 A Visit to Voga

  5 Rebellion!

  6 Attack of the Cybermen

  7 The Living Bombs

  8 Journey into Peril

  9 Countdown on Voga

  10 Explosion!

  11 Skystriker!

  12 'The Biggest Bang in History'

  First published simultaneously in Great Britain by Tandem Publishing Ltd, and Allan Wingate (Publishers) Ltd, 1976

  Text of book copyright © Terrance Dicks and Gerry Davis, 1976

  'Doctor Who' series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1976

  Target books are published by Tandem Publishing Ltd.

  14 Gloucester Road, London SW7 4RD

  A Howard and Wyndham Company

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  ISBN 0 426 10997 X

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The Creation of the Cybermen

  Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far-distant Planet of Telos sought immortality. They perfected the art of cybernetics—the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb, with plastic and steel.

  Finally, even the human circulation and nervous system were re-created, and brains replaced by computers. The first Cybermen were born.

  Their metal limbs gave them the strength of ten men, and their in-built respiratory system allowed them to live in the airless vacuum of Space. They were immune to cold and heat, and immensely intelligent and resourceful. Their large, silver bodies became practically indestructible.

  Their main impediment was one that only flesh and blood men would have recognized: they had no heart, no emotions, no feelings. They lived by the inexorable laws of pure logic. Love, hate, anger, even fear, were eliminated from their lives when the last flesh was replaced by plastic.

  They achieved their immortality at a terrible price. They became dehumanized monsters. And, like human monsters down through all the ages of Earth, they became aware of the lack of love and feeling in their lives and substituted another goal—power!

  1

  Return to Peril

  In the silent blackness of deep space, the gleaming metal shape of Space Beacon Nerva hung like a giant gyroscope. There was no indication of life—it looked silent, somehow dead. Inside the huge space station, too, all seemed silent and empty. Control rooms, corridors, living quarters, everywhere was deserted.

  In an empty control room, the air seemed to shimmer and blur. Three people appeared out of nowhere; a slim, dark, pretty girl, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed young man and a very tall, thin man whose motley collection of vaguely Bohemian garments included an incredibly long scarf and a battered soft hat jammed on top of a mop of wildly curling brown hair. The girl was called Sarah Jane Smith, the young man Harry Sullivan. Both were companions of the third arrival, that mysterious traveler in Time and Space known only as the Doctor.

  Sarah shivered and looked around, glad to recognize familiar surroundings. 'Thank Heavens for that, we've made it.' But something seemed to puzzle her. The place was the same, yet subtly different. She looked hopefully at the Doctor. 'We have made it—haven't we?'

  The Doctor could never understand that Sarah sometimes found it hard to share his habitual cheery optimism. 'Of course we've made it, Sarah. Did you think we wouldn't?'

  Sarah nodded decisively. 'In these past few weeks, yes. Quite frequently.'

  Harry Sullivan grinned, thinking to himself that Sarah had excellent reasons for her recent doubts. He'd doubted his own chance of survival quite a few times since first meeting the Doctor.

  It had all started with that terrifying business of the Giant Robot. Harry Sullivan, newly appointed medical officer to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce—UNIT for short—had been given the job of looking after that organization's Scientific Adviser, who was in fact the Doctor, recently recovered from some mysterious illness which had left him, it appeared, a changed man. The robot business had been bad enough, but at least it had all happened on Earth—an Earth which Harry sometimes wondered if he'd ever see again. Rashly following the Doctor and Sarah into what looked like an old-fashioned police call box, Harry had found himself whipped away from Earth and thrown into a series of horrifying adventures in Time and Space.

  They had just escaped, barely, from the most recent, an attempt by the Doctor to go back in Time and prevent the growing menace of the Daleks.[*] On this occasion they had traveled not in the police box, the Doctor's TARDIS, but by means of a Time bracelet provided by the Doctor's mysterious superiors, the Time Lords. Now that same bracelet had brought them back to the space station, scene of an earlier adventure, where they were supposed to pick up the TARDIS and go home. Harry looked around the empty control room. 'I say, Doctor, the TARDIS isn't here.'

  The Doctor sighed. 'I was wondering when you'd notice that.'

  Sarah stared at him accusingly. 'Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?'

  The Doctor held up his wrist, adorned with a heavy, elaboratedy decorated bracelet. 'There's really nothing that can go wrong with a Time bracelet...' He shook the bracelet, holding it close to his ear. 'Apart from a molecular short circuit,' he added sadly.

  'All right, Doctor,' said Sarah. 'Tell us the worst. Where is the TARDIS?'

  The Doctor rubbed his fingers through his tangled curls. 'Well,' he began hopefully, 'I think there's been a little temporal displacement, you see. We've arrived too early and the TARDIS just hasn't got here yet.' The Doctor beamed, as if this solved everything.

  Sarah wasn't satisfied. 'How early are we?'

  'Oh, about a thousand years or so.' The Doctor looked carefully at the equipment in the control room. 'In this era, the space station's doing the kind of job it was originally meant for—a beacon to guide and service space freighters.'

  'So we've got to hang about here for a thousand years or so, waiting for the TARDIS to turn up?'

  'No, of course not, Sarah. The TARDIS will be drifting toward us through Time—and as soon as the Time Lords realize what's happened, they'll hurry it up for us.' The Doctor slipped the Time bracelet from his wrist, shook it a
gain and tossed it casually onto a nearby control console.

  Harry looked at him in astonishment. 'Don't you want it any more?'

  'No. It's no more use to us now.'

  'Can I have it then—as a souvenir?'

  The Doctor chuckled. 'Certainly, Harry. But you'd better look after it very carefully.'

  'Oh, I shall. Thanks awfully!' Harry reached eagerly for the Time bracelet—just as it shimmered and vanished. He turned indignantly to the Doctor. 'You knew that was going to happen!'

  'Who, me?' asked the Doctor innocently. Before Harry could protest further, the Doctor went on, 'Let's take a look around to pass the time, shall we? Now, as I remember, this door leads to the perimeter corridor...' The Doctor slid open the connecting door. A stiff corpse fell out, landing almost on top of him.

  Instinctively the Doctor jumped back, and the falling body crashed to the floor. All three stared horrified at the corpse for a moment. It was the body of a man in his thirties, wearing the simple coverall-type uniform of a Space Technician. Harry knelt by the body and made a swift examination. 'He's dead all right, poor guy. Dead some time...'

  'How long?' snapped the Doctor.

  Harry shrugged. 'Hard to say. A week or two, could be longer. There's very little putrefaction, though.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'Sterile environment, you see. Cause of death?'

  'No sign of injury... I'd have to do a proper autopsy.'

  Sarah recovered from her horror-stricken silence. 'He must have been leaning against the other side of that door when he died. But they wouldn't have just left him there, not for two weeks, would they, Doctor?'

  'Not unless there was something very badly wrong here.' The Doctor stepped past the body and went through the door. Then he stopped, as if frozen in horror. Harry and Sarah came up behind, looking past him into the corridor. They too stopped, frozen in the same horrified disbelief.

  The long perimeter corridor stretched ahead, curving out of sight in the distance as it followed the outer contours of the space station. The corridor was full of dead bodies. Corpse after corpse, a long line of them stretching ahead, twisted and contorted in the stiff, ungainly attitudes of sudden death. Sarah buried her face in the Doctor's shoulder. 'They're all dead. Everyone on this space station must be dead...'

  But Sarah was wrong. Not everyone on Nerva Beacon was dead. Not yet. In a small control room on the far side of the base, a Communications Technician named Warner was slumped over his control panel, face gray with fatigue. He jerked into life as a sharp, pinging signal sound filled the room. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his space-radar screen, and flipped a switch. 'This is Nerva Beacon calling Pluto—Earth flight one-five. Are you reading me?'

  A voice crackled out of the speaker. 'We read you clear, Nerva Beacon. Our dropover time estimated at thirteen-twenty.'

  'Your dropover is canceled, repeat, canceled. This beacon is now a quarantined zone, due to an outbreak of space-plague. Your dropover is transferred to Ganymede Beacon, one-nine-six-zero-seven-zero-two. Shall I repeat?'

  'Thank you, Nerva Beacon, we have co-ordinates.' There was a moment's pause, then the voice from the speaker said awkwardly, 'How bad is it? If there's anything we can do...'

  Warner grinned wryly, and tried to force some cheerfulness into his voice. 'Thanks for the offer, but our medical team is getting things under control.'

  There was another pause and then the voice said, 'We have a query, Nerva Beacon. Our First Officer has a brother doing a tour with you—Crewmaster Colville. He'd like to know if he's O.K., or...'

  Warner gave a wince of pain, but he carefully kept his voice matter-of-fact. 'Hold contact, I'll check for you.' He flipped his internal communications switch, closing the space relay so the pilot couldn't hear him. 'Commander Stevenson...'

  In a nearby crewroom, Commander Stevenson rolled wearily from his bunk as he heard his name. He stumbled to the control console. 'Stevenson here.'

  Warner's voice came over the intercom. 'I'm in contact with the Pluto—Earth flight, sir. One of the crew wants news of his brother, Crew-master Colville. What do I tell him?'

  Stevenson rubbed a hand across his aching red-rimmed eyes. Colville was dead of course. Everyone was dead except for Warner, Stevenson himself and the two other men in the room with him. Four survivors, from a crew of over forty. Grimly Stevenson said, 'Tell him Colville's fine, and the epidemic's almost over. Just that and nothing else.' He switched off the intercom and stood leaning wearily against the console for a moment. One of the men on the bunks, a civilian named Kellman, propped himself up on an elbow. Since he had no duties, nothing to do but eat and sleep, he looked plump and rested, unlike the gray-haired Stevenson, whose face was drawn with exhaustion.

  With his habitual sneer Kellman said, 'Why don't you tell them the truth, Commander?'

  Stevenson was too tired even to be angry. 'I am following the orders of Earth Central Control.'

  'Operating the Beacon to the last man?'

  'If necessary, yes.' There was a tinge of contempt in Stevenson's voice. 'You're a civilian, Professor Kellman. You wouldn't understand.'

  Kellman yawned and stretched luxuriously. 'How much longer can you go on—three of you trying to do the work of forty-three?'

  The third man in the room was awake by now, a tough, burly crew member called Lester, fiercely loyal to his Commander. He got slowly off his bunk and moved menacingly toward Kellman.

  'Don't worry, Professor. We've managed for two weeks, we'll manage for another one.'

  'And another—and another? This Beacon's finished, Lester...'

  Stevenson spoke with weary patience, 'Nerva Beacon has to remain operative until every space-freighter has the new asteroid on its star-chart. Until then, there's a constant danger of space collision...'

  Rudely Kellman interrupted, 'You deserve a medal, all of you. Self-sacrifice beyond the call of stupidity...'

  Lester moved quickly toward him, a brawny clenched fist drawn back, but Kellman, fresh and alert after plenty of sleep, dodged quickly past the exhausted crewman and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Lester slumped back onto his bunk. Stevenson gave a sympathetic grin. 'I know. I've lost most of my crew these last few weeks, good friends among them. Yet a miserable creature like that is still alive.'

  Lester stretched out. 'Shut himself away in his office, didn't he, sir, soon as the plague started. Now it seems to be over, he's poking his nose out of his rathole.' Lester's voice slurred, his head nodded and he drifted back into sleep.

  Stevenson went to his desk and started shuffling through his duty rosters. Three men to do the work of forty. Kellman was right—it was ridiculous. It was only possible because all three worked to a killing schedule—long hours of duty with the bare minimum of sleep. Kellman had refused to even attempt to help, claiming that he lacked the necessary skills. This despite the fact that he was a trained exographer, a planetary surveyor sent to investigate the new asteroid that had so mysteriously appeared in the orbit of Jupiter. But Kellman's job had been finished before the space-plague struck. Now he was just a useless passenger, an irritant to the nerves of the other survivors. Wondering why the space-plague had seen fit to spare someone who was not only unnecessary but nasty with it, Stevenson carried on with his impossible task.

  For the rest of her life Sarah Jane Smith was to be haunted by the memory of that nightmarish stumble down the long curved corridor filled with corpses. She closed her eyes for most of it, clutching the Doctor's sleeve and trying not to think about the stiff, pathetic figures as she edged blindly past them. Once a corpse, disturbed by the Doctor's passing, fell suddenly toward her with claw-like hands that seemed to be reaching out. Sarah choked off her scream and moved grimly on.

  Suddenly she became aware that the Doctor had stopped. She opened her eyes. A steel door stretched across the corridor, barring the way ahead of them. The Doctor operated the control panel set in the corridor wall. Nothing happened. 'Seems to be jammed,' he muttered. 'T
he controls are locked.'

  Harry looked grim. 'So we can't get any further?' He glanced quickly at Sarah, wondering if she would be able to bear it if they had to retrace their steps.

  The Doctor nodded toward the line of bodies stretching away behind them. 'These poor chaps couldn't get any further, either,' he said thoughtfully. 'They were sealed off in this aft-section, left here to die. So whatever did it must be on the other side of this door.' He produced his sonic-screwdriver and began to dismantle the door control panel.

  Harry said dubiously, 'Are you sure you want that door open, Doctor?'

  The Doctor nodded. 'It's always better to know what you're up against, Harry. Besides, if the co-ordinates slip, the TARDIS could pop up almost anywhere on this Beacon. We've got to be able to move around and find it...'

  The Doctor went on working. Harry gave Sarah a consoling hug. 'Don't worry, old girl, we'll soon be out of here.' Sarah managed a rather feeble smile.

  As they watched the Doctor plunge into a tangle of electronic circuitry with his usual cheerful confidence, something moved along the corridor behind them. It scurried between the corpses, triangular in shape, metallic body scaled like a silverfish, large red electronic eyes glowing on top of its head. It was like a giant metal rat. As Sarah and Harry watched the Doctor work, the strange metal beast slid closer and closer to them. When it was just a few feet from Sarah's back, it stopped, as if poised to spring...

  2

  The Cybermat Strikes

  Sarah's life was saved by her exceptionally good peripheral vision. The metal creature moved a little to one side of her, as if to get a clear spring at her throat. Sarah caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye, spun round and reacted in true feminine style; she let out a loud, hearty scream. The Doctor whirled around, and the sonic-screwdriver in his hand was pointed straight at the creature. Its 'eyes' glowed an angry red as the sonic vibrations reached it; it reversed with bewildering speed and shot off down the corridor, disappearing into an open grating like a mouse into its hole.