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tunnel, was in no mood to play games when, at last, Alastair Fergus stopped talking and Harry waved a cueing hand at him. 'Oh, my turn at last is it, young man,' he growled at Harry and turned to speak to the camera. 'Let's face it, you've had enough blether from t'other fellow. You want to see for yourself. Well, I'll tell you what you're going to see. A stone wall.' His trowel chinked on something hard. The professor began to scrape away the earth, to reveal some large stones, obviously set in place in the long distant past. 'What did I tell you? I'm not so daft...'

All showmanship forgotten, the Professor of Archaeology started to dear the edges of the largest stone as gently and as lovingly as a craftsman of old working on his masterpiece.

The Doctor's old car came racketing and bumping up the steep track at an impossible speed.

'What's the time?' he shouted above the din of the engine.

Jo struggled to focus her eyes on her wristwatch. 'About two minutes to midnight , I think.'

Bessie seemed to leap forward as the Doctor, abandoning all caution, put his foot hard down.

There was no need now to ask where the dig was. The enormous lamps lit the Devil's Hump as if it were a film set—and the trucks and the cameras made a barrier impossible to get through.

The car shuddered to a halt, the Doctor jumped out and ran at top speed towards the barrow, shouting, 'Stop him! You must stop him!' And as he ran the church clock started to chime...

In the Cavern, as the chanting grew louder and louder, the mighty figure in scarlet raised the smoking incense high in the air, and cried in a kind of ecstasy:

'By the power of earth,

By the power of air,

By the power of fire eternal,

And the waters of the deep,

I conjure thee and charge thee:

ARISE, ARISE, AT MY COMMAND,

AZAL, AZAL!'

More by luck than design, the Professor finished clearing the wall, just as the clock finished its preliminary chimes, and as the first stroke of twelve echoed across the valley, he gripped the largest stone, quite oblivious of his audience and of the commotion behind him in the tunnel, and gave it a great wrench.

By sheer speed the Doctor had made his way past Harry and the cameras, foiling every attempt to stop him. But all in vain, for as he arrived at the end of the tunnel, the stone came out like a decayed tooth from its socket.

From the hole came a blast of icy wind. An unearthly screaming filled the air and the earth itself began to shake.

Outside the barrow, the sudden high wind and the quaking of the ground threw monster lights and cameras to the ground, tumbling them over and over like leaves in a gale. As Alastair Fergus and the technicians struggled to protect themselves from the terrible sound and the falling equipment, Jo fought her way against the freezing wind towards the barrow. 'Doctor! Doctor!' she sobbed.

As she reached the entrance to the tunnel, the wind suddenly stopped, the noise died away and all was still, the silence broken only by the low moaning of an injured man.

'Doctor, are you all right?' she desperately called out as she stumbled down the tunnel. But the Doctor could not reply. All that could be seen of him, emerging from a great pile of earth and rubble, was his hand, the hand with his beloved silver Roman ring.

4 The Appearance of the Beast

It had been a very dull evening at UNIT Headquarters, a rumour from Hampshire of a monster which turned out to be a Jersey cow on a spree; the usual crop of UFO sightings just after closing time; a report of little green men in Tooting ('Why are they always green?' said Benton. 'These hoaxers haven't got any imagination!') In fact the only item of any interest was the TV report of the Rugby International at Twickenham— England v Wales . Captain Yates and the Sergeant spent a jolly hour watching the cream of English manhood being beaten into the ground by their Celtic cousins.

'Thirteen nil!' grumbled Mike.

'Lucky it wasn't a hundred and thirteen nil,' said Sergeant Benton. 'Useless lot.'

Mike Yates yawned hugely and idly looked at his watch. 'Hey, it's just