[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
and Adric rushed to the Doctor’s side.
‘I thought a booby-trap had gone off...’ Tegan
murmured, helping the Doctor to a sitting position.
‘Are you all right, Doctor?’ Nyssa asked anxiously.
Adric stared into the pulsating, humming compartment.
‘What is it, Doctor?’ he exclaimed, frowning at the two
large cubes of flickering circuitry connected by a section of
fluorescent tubing which was emitting the harsh strobing
flashes.
The Doctor struggled onto his knees. ‘That is a
colossally powerful bomb,’ he replied shakily. ‘My
interference appears to have triggered its arming sequence,
I regret to say.’ The Doctor shook himself vigorously to
clear his dazed head, then he turned to Scott. ‘You’d better
warn your people on the surface,’ he advised him.
Scott flicked on his communicator. ‘How long have we
got?’ he demanded.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps only minutes,’ he
snapped. He turned urgently to Tegan and Nyssa. ‘Get
everyone into the TARDIS immediately!’ he shouted,
crawling painfully back over to the hatchway.
Tegan and Nyssa hesitated for a moment. Then, yelling
to the troopers to follow them, they set off hurriedly
towards the tunnel.
Adric grabbed the Doctor’s shoulder and tried to drag
him away. ‘Come on, Doctor. You can’t stay here,’ he
insisted.
The Doctor shook himself free. ‘It was my own
stupidity that set this thing going, Adric,’ he retorted, ‘and
the least I can do is try to stop it.’ The Doctor poked
frantically about inside the compartment, while Adric
looked on in mounting horror.
Scott had been vainly trying to contact Trooper Walters,
but his radio produced nothing but a weird oscillating
whine. Suddenly the Doctor whipped round and listened
for a second or two. Then he thumped himself on the
forehead with his fist. ‘Of course!’ he cried, leaping to his
feet and seizing Adric by the arm. ‘Come on you two!’ and
he ran off at breakneck speed towards the TARDIS.
The Cyberleader emitted a vicious, stabbing hiss as a shrill
warning siren began to howl from the control module. The
Deputy examined the instruments blinking in the gloom.
‘The Earthlings have succeeded. They have penetrated
the bomb cell, Leader.’
The towering figure waved his arm dismissively. The
Earthlings are too late. Priming sequence has been
initiated?’
‘Affirmative, Leader.’
‘Then how much longer until detonation?’
‘Sixty seconds, Leader. Neutron exchange approaching
optimum,’ the Deputy reported.
‘Excellent,’ the Leader replied with a soft, gaseous hiss.
He removed a kind of key from his belt and inserted it into
a socket on the module. Then with a rasp of satisfaction
from his ventilator grille he twisted the key sharply back
and forth several times. ‘Master detonator released.
Proceed to detonation.’
‘Affimative. In fifty-five seconds from now, Leader.’
In its cell deep underground the bomb buzzed and flashed
with increasing power in obedience to the signals pulsing
across the solar system...
‘Set all co-ordinates to zero!’ the Doctor yelled to Adric
who was close on his heels as he rushed into the TARDIS
control chamber. Then he ducked under the central
console, snatched open a small panel set into the pedestal
and rummaged about inside.
‘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
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]