'Not yet awhile,' he said thoughtfully. 'No. But you and Jamie can go back to the Tardis if you wish.'

'I'll stay with you.' Victoria hardly needed asking.

'Jamie?' said the Doctor.

'I'll no gae without you and the la.s.sie,' he said.

'Thank you.' The Doctor seemed to rouse himself suddenly from his thoughtful mood. 'I think the time has come to help Mr Klieg,' he said briskly.

'I want no help,' cut in Klieg.

The Doctor smiled and walked jauntily over to him. The shadow of a great hand pa.s.sed over him and stopped against his chest.

'You! Stay!' said Toberman's deep voice.

Jamie jumped up spoiling for action, even ready to take on the giant. 'Let the Doctor pa.s.s,' said Jamie, bristling, 'or I'll have to-' He stepped in front of Toberman, his shoulders braced, his right hand near his dirk.

'It's all right, Jamie,' said the Doctor lightly. He looked at Toberman who still stood there unmoving.

'Your colleague has very strong hands, I notice,' he said conversationally to Kaftan.

'He is a strong man, like all my people,' answered Kaftan, smiling at him a little contemptuously.

'Enough to cause a great deal of damage,' went on the Doctor, 'if let loose in the right places.'

She stopped smiling and for an instant they stared at each other with cold eyes. Kaftan was the first to look away. She nodded to Toberman, who shuffled , aside.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor. He stepped up to the console and stood by Klieg, immediately absorbed into the 'scientist's problems.

After a moment's hesitation, Klieg let the Doctor glance over his shoulder at his notes.

Now that the immediate crisis was over, they settled down to their various expedition tasks: Klieg and the Doctor at the console, Viner and Parry working out a hypothetical plan of Telos and the underground workings and Kaftan' sorting out the clothes and food left by Hopper. Only Victoria and Jamie had nothing to do. They stood isolated in the vault of the metal room, looking up at the Cyberman figures still marching in relentless stillness across the walls. They shivered and 'drew closer together..

'There's no doubt about it,' they heard Professor Parry say, his voice now calm and academic again. 'The major workings lie below.

There are metal caverns down there, all interconnected. If only we can get down to them...'

'That's it!' exclaimed Klieg, standing back from the console.

'I've got it! A complete sequence linked by one stokastic manoeuvre.

Finally a Boolean function of symbolic logic!'

'Logical, yes, but...' began the Doctor.

'Everything yields to logic,' cut in Kaftan, her underlying sharpness showing, 'our basic a.s.sumption, Doctor.'

'Really?' murmured the Doctor sarcastically. 'Who are "we"?'

But Kaftan had turned back to the rucksacks. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking on thoughtfully. Klieg feverishly worked the indicator and levers, '6 cap B4 if, and only if'-he muttered-'C is cap function of 2A.'

He pressed the lever and stood back, glowing with triumph.

'Your logic couldn't have got a bit thin, could it?' asked the Doctor gently, as a whistling arose from conflicting electronic circuits. 'What a pity,' said the Doctor, sadly.

'I must have made a mistake,' Klieg rapped out. 'I'll run it again-more carefully.'

'Of course,' murmured the Doctor. He moved closer, scanned the numbers over Klieg's square shoulder, and without the other seeing, clicked a 1 to an 0 in the sequence, then moved back as Klieg put down his calculations and looked back at the controls.

This time the numbers on the dials made sense to him. He started to reset the controls. '6 cap B, 4, if and only if, C is cap function of... ah, that's it... 2F not 2A!'

Klieg reached out his hand and grasped the main lever with confident antic.i.p.ation.

'Now!' he said triumphantly.

CRASH!.

The lights flickered, and from below came a slow grinding roar-as if something in the depths of the earth had been disturbed and was moving relentlessly upwards. The floor trembled.

'The hatch!' exclaimed Victoria.

It was moving, the metal barrier to the tombs, the gate to the secrets of the Cybermen! With a grind of heavy, long-disused gears, the hatch cover inched slowly up, and a blast of freezing stale air from the unknown depths. .h.i.t the little group of people.

Victoria shivered and drew her anorak closer round her.

Slowly the heavy metal cover creaked to an upright position and stopped. The rumble of the gears died.

Cautiously the humans moved forward to look. They felt a death-like chill of ice which took away their breath. A steam of condensation seethed above the opening as the warmer air above met the chill tomb air. On the underside of the lid huge stalact.i.tes of ice spiked out like bayonets, and a brilliant rime sparkled on the metal ladder leading down to the black subterranean depths.

Klieg was the first to straighten up and step back. He couldn't resist a triumphant glance at Kaftan.

'You see! I did it!' he said, sounding for a moment more like the compet.i.tive schoolboy than the professional scientist.

'My congratulations,' smiled the Doctor.

'But, Doctor,' Jamie whispered, 'I saw you... you were the one...'

The Doctor put his finger to his lips.

'Excellent,'.said Parry to Klieg. 'Now to work. It will be extremely cold down there. We shall all need to put on some warm clothing. Viner, will you get the anoraks out of the rucksacks.'

Viner was glad to have something to do" at last. He turned towards the entrance but Kaftan had already unpacked them and laid them out.

'One moment,' Klieg's voice cut in. 'Are we all to descend?'

'There is safety in numbers,' said the Professor. 'But the women?' asked Klieg arrogantly.

'Ah, yes,' said the Professor. 'They will, of course, stay up here.'

He turned to Kaftan and Victoria.

'In case of trouble,' he said somewhat loftily, 'contact the orbiter.'

Victoria turned eagerly to Kaftan. Surely a woman of her calibre wouldn't put up with this male arrogance; but Kaftan was looking all silky and submissive. Victoria held her fury in while the others put on their anoraks-then burst out: 'I'm coming down with you.'

'Now, my dear young lady,' demurred the Professor in an abstracted voice, not taking her seriously.

'You heard me, Professor,' said Victoria staunchly. She felt a touch on her arm and turned.

'Victoria,' said the Doctor quietly, 'you will be much safer up here.'

Victoria bridled even more at this. Was the Doctor no different from the others?

'... And much more use to us,' added the Doctor under his breath, his green eyes full of meaning.

'I don't see-' Victoria began.

'By keeping an eye on things up here,' the Doctor continued, 'now, please...'

Victoria looked at him. Was he making excuses or did he mean it? But she knew that the Doctor was never anything less than fair and came from a time when no one believed women incapable of doing even the toughest and most hazardous jobs.

'I see,' she said. 'All right.'

'If we are all ready,' came the Professor's dry voice, 'I shall lead the descent. Be ready to go back the instant I give the signal.' He climbed a little gingerly over the edge of the hatch and set his foot on the rapidly thawing rungs of the ladder. Wrapped up in the anoraks, the others began to follow him. As Klieg was about to go down, he stepped aside and whispered to Kaftan.

'You know what to do?'

'The hatch?' Kaftan scarcely moved her lips.

Klieg nodded.

'Yes,' she murmured.

Professor Parry, Viner, quaking a little but bullied into it by the Professor, and Jamie were already in the icy black shaft, holding on to the slippery rungs.

'Now, Mr Toberman,' said the Doctor smoothly to Kaftan, standing aside politely to let the giant pa.s.s.

'He stays with me.'

'Then I shall stay up here, too,' smiled the Doctor. He folded his arms lazily and sat on one of the stools with all the time in the world ahead of him.

Kaftan gazed at him with her dark eyes for a moment, then smiled. 'I am being selfish,' she said softly, 'of course he must go with you. His strength will be useful, Go down, Toberman.'

Toberman hesitated for an instant, then grunted, nodded and walked towards the hatch. He turned and looked at the Doctor suspiciously, then, as Kaftan nodded him on, shrugging to himself, swung down the hatch in one simple movement.

The Doctor stood up to follow him.

'Remember!' he said quietly to Victoria. He squeezed her arm gently. 'And watch out,' he said, 'for yourself as well as us.'

He turned to the hatch and in a moment had disappeared down the cold black hole after the others. Victoria shivered.

'It seems we are to be left alone-to wait,' said Kaftan in her warm liquid voice, and sat down, smiling at her.

Victoria admired Kaftan, but she was in awe of her. Now they were alone together she couldn't think of anything to say. Kaftan was always so pleasant and poised, it inhibited the younger woman. She nodded awkwardly, like a little girl, and clutched her bag for comfort. She felt inside it the hard weight of that peculiar silver animal thing she had picked up.

The Cybermat! She must take it out some time soon; that was a silly thing to do, picking it up just to defy the Doctor. But her bag contained her whole world right now. She'd brought it with her from her Victorian home, and its rough feel made her think longingly of the old drawing room and her father reading in front of a crackling log fire.

'Captain Hopper brought us some food from the orbiter,' went on Kaftan, trying to put Victoria at her ease. 'I'm sure you are ready for some.'

'Oh! I'm ravenous!' said Victoria, forgetting her nervousness.

She put down her bag-and the lump in it moved a fraction of an inch-neither Victoria nor Kaftan saw it. They were opening the aluminium rectangular box the Captain had left, and taking out the small, transparent plastic food containers. At least, Kaftan was taking them out and Victoria was turning them over in puzzlement, wondering where the food was.

'Roast Veal?' asked Kaftan. 'Roast Beef? Chicken?'

'Oh, chicken, please,' said Victoria visualising a plate weighed down with an enormous drumstick, tasty white meat and stuffing, onion sauce, brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. Kaftan handed her one of the small transparent packages.

'What on earth is this?' asked Victoria.

'What you have asked for-chicken, of course,' said Kaftan sharply. Was the girl stupider than she had supposed?

Sure enough, there was a label on it saying 'Roast Chicken'.

Not wanting to appear silly, she copied what Kaftan did, opening the end of the package and inserting a squirt of water from the water bottle, then ma.s.saging it until the dehydrated food swelled up.