Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [26]
The scratching outside McBride's office had continued for a while, but now it had gone suspiciously quiet. The Doctor was about to go and have a look when the glass panel in the door shattered as something small and silver hurtled through it.
The Doctor stared as the small, metallic ball uncurled on the floor.
'Ah, yes,' said the Doctor, nodding with grim satisfaction.
Metallic cilia writhed and skittered on the carpet as the thing scanned the room. Glossblack eyes fixed on the Doctor and, with a highpitched, tinny scream, it launched itself at him.
Ace backed away as one of the figures bore down, towering over her. McBride launched himself across the workbench, pulling Ace out of the way. He levelled his gun, but the gangster swiped it out of his hands, sending it clattering into the shadows on the far side of the lab. McBride dodged as the huge arm swung back at his lead, stepping in closer to his assailant. He'd been quite a good boxer back in the States, and was sure that his agility was more than a match for this lumbering thug.
He swung his best right hook, a perfect punch that should have sent the guy sprawling. It was as though he had punched a mailbox. Pain exploded inside his head and he collapsed to the floor, clutching his hand in agony.
McBride's collapse saved his life as the huge arm swung back again, sending glass and equipment flying from a shell Ace watched in horror as the giant figure tore off its hat and scarf, and the collar of its trench coat settled back on to massive shoulders.
Twin handles, glinting in the cold light, slid from either side of the
monstrous head. It turned its face towards Ace.
It was a face she knew.
It was a face of a cyberman.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 7
For the moment President Roosevelt was keeping America out of the war. For the moment. Still, I always knew America was quite capable of dealing with Germans. I had been in New York when Joe Louis met the challenger to his world heavyweight title, Max Schmeling. After two minutes of the first round Schmeling was on the canvas and the Brown Bomber was champion of the world again. Two years later and I was stuck in a topsecret limey research factory, with a teenage girl from God knows where, hoping to make the Bomber proud of me by taking down another German thug with my best shot. Problem was that the meathead had turned out to be a tinhead and I damn near broke my wrist.'
Ace watched as the Cyberman towered over the oblivious McBride. After the initial shock of seeing the creature, she realised now that it was different from the Cybermen that she had encountered before, cruder somehow, its features less defined. But it looked just as powerful. The face was totally blank, a cruel parody of a human face, but the eyes had two indentations below them, like teardrops. It reminded Ace of a clown's mask, and she hated clowns. Beneath the trench coat, its huge frame was covered in a fine tracery of filaments and cables, coiling their way to the mass of controls that clung to its chest. Lights flickered on complex regulatory devices and there was a mechanical wheezing, like the breathing of some great leviathan. The other Cyberman was still swathed in its gangster disguise. It seemed unaware of Ace and McBride, more concerned with making a series of adjustments to a control panel inside the sphere.
McBride let out a groan of pain and the Cyberman that was looming over him turned its blank stare to the crumpled figure at its feet. It raised a huge silver arm. Ace looked round for a weapon, painfully aware that there was nothing here that would be effective against the remorseless silver giants.
A length of gas barrel lurked in the mess of materials on a workbench. Ace gripped it with both hands and screamed over at the poised Cyberman.
'Oi! Jugears! Pick on someone your own size!' She pivoted on the balls of her feet, sweeping