Harry blinked. 'What was it, Doctor? A metal rat?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'Not a rat—a cybermat,' he said, unconsciously dropping into rhyme. Refusing to say another word, he went on with his work.
Communications Technician Warner's head was nodding over his instrument console. He was nearing the end of his tour of duty, and could think only of the few hours of sleep he would be allowed before the remorseless schedule of Nerva Beacon summoned him back to duty. At least this last hour should be a quiet one. Unless there was an emergency, no more spaceships were due to approach the Beacon during this watch. But the silence made it all the harder to keep awake. Suppose there was an emergency, and it found him sleeping? Slipping imperceptibly into sleep, Warner began to dream that he'd slept through an emergency call and was being courtmartialed. In the confused jumble of his dream he heard a voice, and realized with a shock that the voice was real.
'I am calling Nerva Beacon. Can anyone hear me? I am calling Nerva Beacon...' The voice was thick, throaty, somehow alien, even beneath the distorting crackle of the static.
Warner jerked awake, shook his head to clear it and reached for his console. 'Hullo, this is Nerva Beacon. Do you read me?'
The harsh alien voice came through again. 'I hear you. Is that Nerva Beacon?' The voice was faint and crackling, almost inaudible.
Warner adjusted his controls to try and improve reception. 'I read you, but very faintly. Please return to one-two-seven point three-five and repeat your message.' He made further adjustments, listened, but heard only the crackle of static. A shadow fell across the console and Warner looked up. Kellman was standing behind him, his face curiously set and intent. Warner fiddled with his controls, got nothing but more static, and gave up. He glanced at Kellman. 'This new asteroid of yours, Professor, are you sure there's no life on it?'
'On Voga? Of course not. How can there be?'
Warner punched up a picture of the asteroid on his vision scanner. The asteroid hung in space, its scarred and pitted surface dark and mysterious. 'I just picked up a call—and that's the only place it could have come from.'
Kellman sneered. 'Hallucinations, Warner. You've been sitting here too long.'
Warner yawned and rubbed his eyes. He nodded toward the scanner screen. 'Where did that thing come from?'
'Nobody knows. It drifted into our system years ago. They detected it when it was captured by Jupiter.'
'So there could be life on it?' persisted Warner.
Kellman gave a snort of irritation. 'Impossible,' he said softly. 'An asteroid that size, drifting in the vacuum between star systems... nothing could have lived under those conditions.'
Warner was unshaken. 'Well, something did, because that's where that transmission came from.'
Kellman gave an impatient sigh. 'Warner, I'm the exologist, remember? I've been down on Voga. I've set up a transmat station. I've spent six months studying rock samples from Voga... what are you doing?'
Warner's hands were flickering over a small keyboard. Lettering appeared on a mini-screen in front of him. UNIDENTIFIED CALL FROM VOGA. 18.57 HOURS. DAY 3. WEEK 47. Warner replied, 'I'm putting the transmission in my log. Standard procedure.'
'You're mad,' snarled Kellman. 'I've said all along it was a mistake to keep this control room operative.'
Warner looked at him in astonishment, puzzled by the violence of Kellman's reaction. 'That's the Commander's decision. Nothing to do with you, is it?'
Kellman seemed to calm down a little. 'This place is away from the safe area. Every time you go down that perimeter corridor you risk spreading the plague. We should shut down completely.'
Warner looked hard at him. 'Then why are you here so often? Anyway, if the Commander says we stay operational, we stay operational.'
Kellman seemed about to speak, changed his mind, turned and stalked from the room. Warner shrugged and returned to his watch, checking the space-radar screen for activity. There was nothing. He yawned again. Not long to go now, and Lester would relieve him. Vaguely he wondered why Kellman had found the idea of transmissions from Voga so upsetting.
Back in the perimeter corridor, the Doctor had at last managed to remove a panel in the door that barred their way. He reached through and groped for the controls on the other side. 'If one of you would hold the door so it doesn't open too suddenly...' Obligingly Harry Sullivan leaned his weight against the door. The Doctor touched the unseen control panel. 'That's the idea, Harry. I'm very attached to my humerus, and I'd hate to lose it.' Harry felt the door start to slide back. Hastily the Doctor pulled his arm out of the panel, nodded to Harry who stood back, and the door slid open. Sarah looked down the corridor ahead, vastly relieved that there seemed to be no more corpses. They all stepped past the door and the Doctor operated the controls to close it behind them. Cautiously they moved on their way.
In his control room, Warner jerked awake once more, as one of the dials in front of him began to flicker. He leaned forward and spoke into the intercom. 'Hullo, Commander? Listen, sir, somebody has just operated the shutter in the aft perimeter corridor. I know it's impossible, but it's happened. The information's right here on the electronic register.'
The Commander's voice came back through the speaker. 'All right, Warner, we'll check it out.'
In the crewroom Lester and Stevenson looked blankly at each other. Lester shook his head in puzzlement. 'Everybody in that aft section had the plague, Commander. There can't be anyone still alive.'
Stevenson nodded. 'I sealed the connecting doors myself. Well, we'd better check the corridor.' He went to a wall locker, took out two hand-blasters and gave one to Lester. 'Just in case.' They both went out.
In the control room, Warner stared at his dials and wondered what was going on. Forgotten on the screen, the asteroid Voga hung mysteriously in Space.
Although he didn't know it, Warner had been right about the transmission. It had come from Voga. In a control room deep inside that planet, the alien operator who had made it was slumped dead over his instruments. Blaster in hand, another alien creature, obviously some kind of security guard, stood watching over the body of the fellow-Vogan he had just killed.
Two more Vogans strode into the room. Like the guard and the dead radio operator, they were humanoid in form, with high-domed foreheads and dark-furred faces. Their eyes were large and luminous, like those of creatures accustomed to the dark, and the lighting in the room would have been uncomfortably dim for human eyes. Unlike the overalled radio operator and the grimly uniformed guard, the two new arrivals wore the clothes of high-ranking officials, with elaborate robes and high-collared ceremonial cloaks. Their boots, their belt clasps, their chains of office and insignia, all had the dull yellow gleam of solid gold.
Vorus, the bigger and more senior of the two Vogans, prodded the body of the radio operator with the tip of one golden boot. It slumped to the floor like a rag-filled sack. His bulging, luminous eyes swung round onto the guard, who stood rigidly to attention. 'You did well. You will be suitably rewarded. Now take this thing away and bury it. Bury it deep.'
As the guard dragged the body away, Magrik, Vorus's assistant, came deferentially forward, recoiling from his leader's angry glare. 'Why?' growled Vorus. 'Why did he do it?'
Timidly Magrik said, 'Perhaps your plan frightened him, Vorus. Indeed, it often frightens me.'
'But you would not have warned the humans. You feel no kinship with them?'
Hastily Magrik said, 'Oh no, no indeed. It is just that so many things may go wrong...'
Vorus mastered his impatience. Magrik was a timid fool, even for a Vogan, but he was also a scientific genius, and Vorus needed him. The big Vogan put a powerful arm round Magrik's thin shoulders.
'Never fear, Magrik. The plan is a great one and it will work. You and I will make it work. When the time is right, Nerva Beacon will be shattered into drifting Space-dust.'
'But can we trust our agent?'
'We can trust his greed,' growled Vorus contemptuo
usly. He tapped the huge buckle on his cloak. 'Gold buys humans, Magrik, and we have more gold here on Voga than in the rest of the galaxy.'
'If our agent is trustworthy, why has he not communicated?' persisted Magrik timidly.
'It is better that he should not. By now the Cybermen may be monitoring our radio link.'
Magrik shuddered. 'The very mention of Cybermen fills me with unspeakable dread.'
Vorus's voice was unexpectedly kind. 'You feel fear because you have lived too long in darkness. When I lead our people into the light, all these ancient fears will drop away. We shall destroy the Cybermen.'
Magrik nodded eagerly. 'You are right, Vorus, I know it. If only I did not feel so afraid...'
Warner's head nodded as he struggled desperately to stay awake. His relief was overdue now. Wryly he told himself that it was his own fault. If he hadn't sent Lester and the commander off on some wild goose chase.... He wondered how they were getting on, if they'd found anything.
From a floor-level grating the metallic, rat-like shape of a Cybermat slid silently into the room. It swiveled round as if scanning, and its electronic eyes glowed red as it fixed on Warner. It glided closer, reared up and launched itself like a rocket at Warner's throat. Warner was briefly aware of a silvery flashing through the air, then something cold and metallic struck him in the throat, and he felt agonizing twin stabs of pain in his neck. Reeling, he flung the thing away from him. The Cybermat crashed against the wall, slid to the floor, then, apparently unharmed, scurried back into its grating.
Warner felt a burning fever spread through his veins. His blood seemed to be on fire, and there was a roaring in his ears. He lurched toward the alarm switch, but before he could reach it the roaring blackness swallowed him up and he slumped to the floor.
Kellman appeared in the doorway. He looked down at Warner's body but made no attempt to help him. With a smile of quiet satisfaction, he crossed to the control console, opened a panel, took out the day's log tape cassette and dropped it into his pocket. Without giving Warner a second glance, he walked quickly from the room.
Lester and Commander Stevenson stood looking in puzzlement at the connecting door that the Doctor had opened some time earlier. Stevenson examined the area around the missing panel. 'The rivets have been taken out from the other side.'
Lester seemed confused. 'But how, sir? They're blind-headed, nothing to give any purchase.'
'Then they must have been loosened with a sonic-vibrator!'
'That's pretty sophisticated technology, sir. We've nothing like that on the Beacon.'
'Exactly. So Warner was right. Somebody did come through.' Stevenson hefted his blaster pistol thoughtfully. 'Come on. We'll just have to check section by section. And move quietly.'
The Doctor, Sarah and Harry stood looking round a deserted control room. Sarah shook her head. 'We're going around in circles. I'm sure we've been here before.'
The Doctor patted her on the shoulder. 'That was the aft control—this is the forward area.'
Harry sounded glum. 'Well, wherever it is, still no TARDIS.'
The Doctor grinned reassuringly. 'Don't worry; it'll turn up soon.'
Harry said sceptically, 'It'll just, what d'you call it—materialize, will it?'
'That's right. Only we'll have to be around when it does. It won't wait for us, you see, we've got to catch it when it's in our Time co-ordinate, or it'll drift on past.'
Sarah had a picture of a phantom TARDIS, forever bobbing on ahead of them, always just out of reach. 'Worse than trying to catch a London bus,' she grumbled.
Two men carrying ugly-looking blasters leaped through the doorway, aiming the weapons straight at them. The Doctor ignored the interruption. 'Anyway, when it does arrive...'
The older of the two men snapped, 'Get your hands up!'
'Certainly,' said the Doctor amiably, raising his hands to shoulder height. 'As I was saying, Harry, when the TARDIS does arrive...'
Obviously taken aback at being totally ignored, the younger man shouted, 'Who are you? How did you get here?'
The Doctor performed introductions, with all the aplomb of a vicar at a garden party. 'This is Miss Sarah Jane Smith, this young man is Harry Sullivan and I'm the Doctor. And you are?'
'My name's Lester. This is Commander Stevenson. I want to know...'
A third man appeared in the doorway. Stevenson didn't seem pleased to see him. 'What do you want, Professor Kellman? We're a little busy at the moment.'
Kellman looked curiously at the three new arrivals and said, 'You'd better come to the sub-control room, Commander. There's an emergency.'
Stevenson hesitated, then waved his blaster at the captives. 'All right, you three, move. You're coming with us.'
A few minutes later they were all standing in a smaller control room, where the body of a man lay slumped on the floor. Stevenson gasped, 'Warner!' Gently he turned the body over. A network of spidery black lines ran up from the man's throat, covering one side of his face almost to the temple.
The Commander stood up, his face grim and set. He gave Lester an agonized look. Lester said, 'You want me to do it, sir?'
Stevenson shook his head. 'No. It's my job.' He slid back the bolt of his blaster and took careful aim at Warner's head.
Sarah rushed forward. 'What are you doing? You mustn't!'
'This man has contracted space plague. There's only one way to deal with it.'
'But he's ill—he needs treatment.'
'There is no treatment. All we can do is stop the plague spreading further. I must shoot him.'
3
A Hot Spot for the Doctor
Calmly the Doctor stepped forward, placing himself between Stevenson's blaster and the body on the floor. 'I'm sorry,' he said gently, 'I can't possibly allow you to do that.' Such was the authority in the Doctor's voice, that Stevenson found himself lowering his blaster, without quite realizing why.
'You can't allow it,' he said slowly. 'And just who might you be?'
'I happen to be a doctor. So is my colleague here. Miss Smith is our assistant.'
Suddenly Kellman broke in, 'You'd better kill all three of them, Commander. They've carried the plague into this section.'
The Doctor gave him a look of some distaste, then turned back to Stevenson. 'Commander, who is this homicidal maniac?'
Stevenson ignored the question, staring at the Doctor with sudden hope. 'You say you're doctors? Did Earth Center send you?'
'We're from Earth, yes,' said the Doctor, feeling he could be excused a little evasiveness in the circumstances. 'The important thing is that we've come to help you.' He knelt by Warner's body.
Again Kellman interrupted. 'Help us? Do you realize you've carried the infection from the aft section into here?'
Sarah was no scientist, but even she could see the fallacy in this. 'Use your common sense. If we carried the infection, how come this poor man's ill—and we aren't? He was here before us.'
Harry added his support. 'Maybe the virus hopped off us and dashed in here ahead, eh?'
The Doctor got slowly to his feet. 'Whatever's attacking this man, and all the others—it isn't plague, Commander.'
Stevenson rubbed a hand over his forehead, fighting off a sudden wave of fatigue. 'Well, according to our medical team it is.'
'Did they manage to identify the virus?' asked the Doctor.
Lester shook his head. 'They didn't get much chance. All the medical people went down with plague first.'
'Did they now? Don't you find that rather significant?'
'We reckoned maybe it started in their labs. Some virus mutating in a test tube.'
'I very much doubt it,' said the Doctor briskly. 'Well, now you've got a new medical team. Dr. Sullivan, will you see to the patient? I wish to continue my investigations.'
Commander Stevenson felt that everything was being taken out of his hands. Whoever this odd-looking stranger was, he didn't lack assurance. Half-resentful, half-relieved he said, 'All right, I'll allow you to
examine him. It'll have to be in the crewroom though. This control room must be kept operational.'
This produced another outburst from Kellman. 'Oh yes—we must keep operational at all costs!' Aware that everyone was staring at him, he turned and strode from the room.
Stevenson slid into Warner's seat behind the console. 'Lester, you look after the doctors. I'll take over the console, you relieve me when you can.'
Lester, Harry and Sarah carried the unconscious Warner out of the room. Mechanically, Stevenson started checking over his instrument panel. The Doctor wandered around the room, as if he didn't quite know what he was looking for, stooping to examine some tiny scratches on wall and floor.
In his tiny metal-walled room, Kellman sat hunched over a listening device. It had been a simple matter to 'bug' the control room, and now he wanted to know what this too-knowing stranger was up to. The voices of the Doctor and Stevenson came through quite clearly.
The Doctor found yet another tiny scratch on the edge of the instrument console. 'Have you noticed these rather strange scratches, Commander? They seem to crop up all over your base.'
'I can't say I have. Is it important?'
The Doctor smiled. 'Everything's important, Commander, in its own way.' Leaning over Stevenson's shoulder he flicked open the access panel to the log-recording section. He looked at the row of cassettes—with their obvious gaps. 'Well, well, well... do you know, Commander, I've already made three interesting discoveries about this plague virus of yours?'
Stevenson looked up. 'Three discoveries?'
The Doctor nodded solemnly. 'One, it can scratch metal. Two, it attacks so suddenly that the victims can't reach an alarm just a few feet away. Three, it steals tape cassettes from log books. An acquisitive and literate little virus, wouldn't you say?'
DOCTOR WHO AND THE REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN Page 2
