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The Doctor briefly looked up from his work on the wires under the control panel. 'This plant clearly has to produce more power than it has ever done before. I'm trying to make sure that that is possible.'

K'to didn't seem satisfied. 'Power is not increased by interference with the circuits of the controls,' he said.

'I am trying to adapt the controls,' said the Doctor. 'Look, do you really want to stop this whole delicate operation for me to explain in detail how I am trying to help you?'

Morka stepped in between K'to and the Doctor. 'The ape is showing obedience.' He looked down at the Doctor. 'More power, immediately!'

'Certainly,' said the Doctor. 'Liz, lower in number three rod now.'

Liz moved the third control in the row on the console. The hum of power was now ear-splitting and the control dials were nearing the word 'DANGER'. One of the technicians stood up to protest. 'You're making more power than an atomic bomb, Doctor!

You'll kill us all..

Morka swung round to the technician, his third eye ablaze with redness. The technician gasped, then fell across his desk. Morka looked at the other humans. 'No more talk!' Then he turned back to the Doctor. 'More power, immediately!'

The Doctor said, 'Liz, lower in number four rod.' Liz moved the 'four' control.

'Now five and six together,' the Doctor said, straightening up from his work on the circuits under the console.

Liz moved the final two controls. The fifth and sixth uranium rods slowly sank into their respective holes. The fingers of all the dials held steady at a point well beyond the word 'DANGER'.

Miss Travis had finished her work exposing the wires of the destructor unit's cable. 'I'm ready to connect,' she told the Doctor.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor. 'I shall take over now.' He took the destructor's cable, crossed to a wall terminal point, checked that it was turned to 'Off', then connected the two bared wires of the cable.

Then he pulled a switch beside the terminal point to its 'On' position.

He crossed back to the control console, put his hand on the lever that would make the final connection of power between the generator and the wall terminal point. 'Let us see how well your destructor works,'

he said.

As the Doctor started to move the lever, K'to sprang forward hissing. 'It's a trick! I know it is a trick!'

But the Doctor had already pulled the lever. The destructor hummed with power for a few seconds; then a huge crack appeared along one side of it and smoke belched from the crack.

K'to turned to Morka. 'Kill him! He has destroyed the destructor!'

Morka turned to the Doctor, but his third eye did not yet glow its fatal red colour. 'Stop everything! Turn off the generator!'

'I can't,' said the Doctor. 'I've destroyed the circuits of the control console. The reactor is at this moment turning into an atomic bomb. In a few moments it will explode. You will die with us. The radiation will leak into your own shelter, destroying all those of you not killed instantly by the explosion. I can only advise you to get back to your shelter as quickly as possible and seal yourselves up.

Then you may be safe.'

Morka asked K'to, 'Can this be true?'

K'to didn't answer. He was staring at the destructor as it slowly melted with heat. A watery tear ran down the scales of his cheek.

'With the destructor we could have returned our planet to what it was when we were the masters.'

Morka's third eye flashed red at K'to, and K'to winced in pain.

'Can this be true?' he repeated.

'It is all true,' said K'to. 'We must return to our shelter or die.'

He looked again at the destructor. It was now a mound of shapeless metal on the floor.

Morka looked round the room at the humans. 'I do not understand,' he said. 'You have sacrificed yourselves so that other apes may live. My people would not have behaved like that.'

'Perhaps,' said the Doctor, 'that is why the apes—the humans—

are such a successful species. They do not only think of themselves.'

'Well, apes,' said Morka, 'you can all die together in the explosion.' He signalled to K'to