UNIT UK 22: The Bannock Burned & Lessons Learned

by ComsatAngel

What or who blew up a Soviet mineral refinery and killed over a thousand people? Because the agency responsible is loose on the North Yorkshire Moors.

UNIT UK 22

The Bannock burned and Lessons Learned

'I'm hit!' shrieked CSM Benton, clutching his chest and collapsing to the ground, writhing madly before finally laying still

'Don't be such a bloody ham,' said the Cyberman that had done the damage, strolling past the grinning CSM, confident that Benton couldn't do anything in return. CSM Benton's surviving section were all gunned down by the Cyberman, dropping dead in flower-beds and across the well-rolled lawn.

'Keep off the effing flowers!' shouted a voice – mine. The Brig would not be happy at bodies crushing his assorted peonies and asters. 'Die on the grass!'

More Cybermen came plodding across the lawns, having gotten within the perimeter fence. They were slowed down but not stopped by our final Fox armoured car, lurking behind the vehicle workshops. I knew there was a surviving Scorpion tank loose beyond the perimeter, but by now it had run out of main gun ammo and didn't want to risk getting picked off by the Cybermen's laser cannons. These were positioned over a mile away on the low ridge beyond the railway line and had rapidly destroyed two Scorpions and a Fox.

A group of Cybermen reached the centre of our drill square and plonked down their nuclear demolition weapon. With a loud bang, it went off, denoting that the Cybermen had succeeded, that UNIT HQ at Aylesbury had been destroyed and Planet Earth lay helpless beneath their metal and plastic heels. Yes, I exaggerate slightly but if we at UNIT, experienced and wily in the ways of aliens, couldn't stop the tin men, then nobody else had a cat in Hell's chance.

The Brig appeared on the drill square from his rooftop OP, accompanied by a gaggle of the panel from Geneva who were busy talking amongst themselves. From their body language, they seemed impressed. The Brig strode into the vast cloud of flour produced by the atomic bomb, rather unwisely. When he emerged on the far side he had a dusting of white that leant him a slightly comical air. His whistle didn't work for a second or so until he blew the flour out of it.

Three blasts, that was the signal. Everything went dark.

With a rattle, the film we were watching ended and went spinning and flipping over the sprockets.

'Very interesting,' commented Tad. 'So that was "Exercise Bannockburn".'

It certainly was. The brainchild of Lieutenants Nick Munroe and Eden.

'Were you filming?' asked Tad. 'I did not see you.'

In fact I was behind the camera, but as an umpire not a cameraman. That loud and unhappy voice yelling at "dead" troopers to get off the flower beds was me, deeming that the Brig wouldn't be happy to see his prized blooms getting squashed. Since he met a lady called "Doris" he'd been taking an interest in gardening, poor hen-pecked chap.

'No. I was an umpire, in radio comm with other umpires. We judged what casualties either side inflicted on the other.'

Nick had gone temporarily mad and worked hard on drawing up a set of wargaming rules for the exercise, once I had wheedled information out of the Doctor on Cyberman tactics and weapons.

'Here, you can have this. Everyone in Aylesbury got at least one copy from Nick.'

Tad flicked the pamphlet quickly. From memory I could recite what he read:

Movement Rates

Individual Cybermen move at walking pace, i.e. three miles per hour. They may not run or attempt to move any faster than the above.

Terrain

With a ground-loading in excess of three hundred pounds, Cybermen may not attempt to cross streams or rivers on foot (risk of bogging-down). They may only cross streams or rivers on stone or metal bridgeworks NOT wooden ones.

Very wet or boggy ground may not be crossed (risk of bogging-down).

Trees of less than 10 feet height, shrubbery or undergrowth do not stop Cybermen. Trees of less than 10 feet in height will reduce movement to 1 mph IF umpires determine they are planted thickly enough.

Only stone walls are impassable to Cybermen. Fences, hedges, palings or railings do not stop them.

Weather

Cybermen are deemed to have infra-red vision as standard; mist, fog or rain will not impair their vision.

Morale

Cybermen do not possess any emotions. Thus, they do not have morale per se. When given an order, they will carry it out until either successful or all destroyed.

Weapons

Individual Cybermen carry a high-energy ray weapon deemed effective at up to 300 yards. Anyone the umpires award a hit against is instantly a casualty.

Cybermen laser cannons are deemed to have range only limited by the curve of the horizon. Any vehicle the umpires award a hit against is automatically destroyed.

And so on, and so on.

My big contribution to the exercise was recommending that the NBC suits we had by the hundred were worn by troopers playing the Red force, with a rucksack worn over the front instead of the back, a riot helmet instead of the usual beret, and a torch sellotaped to the top of the helmet. A bit whimsical, that last one, but bettered by some troopers, who added those peculiar square "ears" Cybermen possess, improvised out of bits of plastic pipe.

The so-called "laser cannon" were two recoilless rifles borrowed from the Royal Anglians with a Barr and Stroud laser range-finder attached to the top of each. If the gun crew were quick enough to get a range, then the umpire with them declared the target destroyed, and radioed to the umpires with Blue forces to that effect. That's how the two tanks and armoured cars were lost so quickly, destroyed whilst out of cover. A couple of unwary concentrations of Blue force troopers also got fried when they wandered into the open.

'What was your Doomsday weapon?' asked Tad.

I got up and turned on the lights in the storeroom.

'Ah, a thunderflash in a bag of flour. Corporal Twiss is suspected of using up to four thunderflashes for effect. Oh, sorry – it's a small non-lethal explosive charge.'

Tad – or Kapitan Tadeusz Komorowski, to give him his full title – occasionally had problems with English slang or idiom.

'There you have it. Exercise Bannockburn. From learning just how vulnerable our AFVs were, we had reason to get hold of mortars and a nice big tracked tin can to stick them in.'

'Your personnel carriers with mortars,' nodded Tad. He'd been shown the modified FV432s we had on loan.

'Yes. We reckoned from experience a section using armour-piercing ammo could take care of an individual Cyberman.'

'But they will also be firing at you,' pointed out the logical Pole.

'Right!' I agreed, dismantling the projector and putting it back in the carrying case. 'Which is why we get paid extra when on an Operation.'

Completely true, the Ministry of Defence paid a stipend to UNIT in Geneva which got filtered back to personnel, usually months after they had been risking life and limb. At one pound and twenty five pence per day, it didn't amount to a lot, but probably kept some pen-pushers in employment.

I replaced the projector on a shelf in the storeroom and we left to catch dinner in the mess. Not many officers were in, and of those one was Major Crichton.

'See me afterwards, Captain Walmsley,' he casually announced, which didn't worry me. I'd been away for two weeks and there wasn't anything he could blame on me.

So, with a clear conscience, good digestion and sucking a mint to make up for the garlic served at dinner, I reported to his office, saluted smartly in front of him and was invited to sit down.

'I'm very interested in those Sontaran weapon systems you encountered, Captain. I'd like you to expand on each of them at length. Say, a thousand words on each.'

Whoah there! I thought, probably giving my inner dialogue away instantly. The Major is a chilly one, but perceptive.

'Problems?' he asked.

'A thousand words, sir? All I know of Sontaran "photonic missiles" is that they exist.'

'Two hundred words on that. And get along to the Medical Officer to have those ribs checked over.'

I'd suffered a whole collection of broken ribs whilst losing a fight with a Sontaran officer; this took up about half a sentence at the end of my report about the trip to Magellania, so Major Crichton had read the whole thing thoroughly if he picked up on that.

Being less than honest, I'd rather glossed over Clara. Who she? Ah, all will be revealed.

I took my place in sick bay behind three troopers who'd apparently fallen through the roof of one of the vehicle sheds.

'Three of you at the same time?' I queried, rapidly jumping to the conclusion that they'd been up to mischief on the roof.

'Oh no sir,' replied Private Pooley, with genuine candour. 'I went up to get the football back. Then the panel gave way underfoot and I fell - '

'Right on top of my Bedford's cab, sir, and right on top of me. I were welding a new rim to the roof hatch,' carried on Private Maplin.

'Then they both fell off and flattened me, sir, the bloody clumsy - ' began Private Brooks. 'I was only getting a new drill bit.'

Shaking my head in mock despair, I commented.

'If only the great British public could see you now! We can put a man on the Moon, we can defeat the Cybermen, but we can't get a football off a roof. Next time, use an arrow.'

Three pairs of eyes looked at me with interest.

'An arrow, sir?' asked Pooley, rubbing his ankles.

'Certainly. We've got a set of archery equipment in the gym stores. One of the arrow heads is a poll, a big soft wad of fibes. You use it to shoot upwards at targets above you. Then, if it comes right back down upon you, it doesn't spit you like a kebab skewer.'

Good reply, eh? The troopers were impressed, they huddled together and muttered for at least a minute. Doing that in front of an officer is a sure sign of doing something right.

Twenty minutes later Harry Sullivan called me in. He knew all about the broken ribs and gave me a thorough check, even ringing the hospital at Stoke Mandeville to book me in for X-rays.

'Impressive bruising,' he told me, inspecting the black, blue, yellow and green contusions that spread over my entire left side. 'And equally impressive setting. From a medical point of view, those ribs are in near-perfect condition.'

Good! They were my ribs, and I liked them in near-perfect condition.

I tapped the side of my nose and winked.

'Forty-second century medicine, Harry.'

Harry gave me his I'm-A-Doctor look, one which means his trained professionalism has overcome his innate politeness.

'In future, Captain Walmsley, I would normally recommend to my patient that he refrains from picking fights with people bigger than him. In your case, that doesn't leave many people. How on earth did you manage that injury!'

'In a fight. With a Sontaran.'

Harry's medical interest woke up.

'Did he have iron-shod boxing gloves? Or get his trained attack-elephant to kick you?'

I snorted in amused disdain.

'Sontarans, Harry, as any exographer knows, come from an extremely high-gravity world. They are squat, muscular and extremely powerful.'

Our resident doctor got a slight case of the stares then.

'Travelling with the Doctor, eh? I wonder, I wonder. The medicine of two thousand years in the future. Oh – sorry, was I talking to myself?'

'Don't worry,' I consoled him. 'Harvey didn't mind.'

He gave me what was probably intended to be a hard stare, but I could tell the mystery of zooming off into the far future had tweaked his sense of curiosity.

'Light duties only, Captain, until you return to see me in a week.'

In fact Harry and I came face-to-face in the mess at dinner, where he scoffed at news that the so-called "Cod War" had finished. We might have gotten more accurate information from the Brig, but he was off in Whitehall chewing the fat with politicoes.

'As if the Senior Service would go to all that trouble over a few fish-fingers-to-be! Mark my words, there's more afoot than a squabble about Icelandic fishing limits,' scoffed Harry.

UNIT is overwhelmingly drawn from the Army, and we maintain a deliberate ignorance about matters marine. Harry was treated with a collection of ah's and ooh's signifying our awe at his informed nautical opinion.

'Don't say I didn't give you the word,' he cautioned us, polishing off a serving of millefeuille. 'I say, this is rather nice, what is it?' and he waved the mess orderly for another helping.

All eyes turned to me.

'A recipe my girlfriend gave me, to pass on to the chef. French, you see.'

Cue exagerrated outbreak of faces and mock-horror expressions from the officers present.

'John! French? How – how could you?' gasped Captain March, revealing hitherto-unrevealed humour. Nick Munroe remained silent, grapsing his throat in thespian agony. The Boy Eden suspiciously poked his serving of dessert with a bayonet. Tad stared at all of us with a certain amount of worry and concern. I might have been able to explain how the British regard the French, given an hour or two.

'I'll have yours, then sir,' added Harry, pouring cream over his portion.

'Gentlemen!' boomed the Brig, striding into the mess in a very intense manner. Behind him, Sergeant Whittaker stood, stiff as a ram-rod, clearly in Business Character.

'Sir!' we chorused, attempting to rise.

'As you were,' carried on our OC. 'Meeting of all officers and senior NCOs in the gym, ten minutes. Oh, I say, is your dessert that nice pastry? Sarn't Whittaker – bag me some of that, will you?'

The gymnasium at Aylesbury serves as the largest room we have for briefings or Order groups, displays of photographs, presentations, practicing deployements and so on. A large pre-fab was being erected outside, next to the vehicle workshops, which would allow us to assemble en masse without having to endure the smell of liniment, sweat and floor polish.

Today, corkboards had been set up on easels to enable us to view the photographs pinned there, together with a map of the Central USSR, where, north-east of the Caspian Sea sat a small red star with the legend "Magnitogorsk".

The photographs had Russian stencilled labels, which some present tried to interpret, eventually deferring to me.

' "Artefact Seven, location five point two kilometres NE of MAGNITOGORSK, at ref. 53 6' 59 13' " thank you, gentlemen. That's the definitive version.' I checked out the other photographs. 'All the same legend. Artefacts from One to Seventeen.' The Brig levelled his gaze at me, implying that Captain Walmsley was on the borders of breaching modesty.

'They look like craters, sir,' remarked one NCO.

True enough, the photographs did. They seemed to be taken against a forest background, with tree trunks, pine needles and cones around the edges of the pictures. Squarely in the foreground were glistening metallic depressions, smeared with dirt, pine needles and bird droppings, rain water collecting at the bottom. A striped stick off to one side proved to be a metre measure for scale.

'They do, indeed. However, they aren't craters. What you are about to see next undoubtedly is. Sergeant!' instructed the Brig. Sergeant Whittaker wheeled over an easel covered with what had to be a table-cloth from the canteen, flicking it back and revealing a huge photograph.

This one was obviously an enlargement from an overhead picture, blown up to fuzziness, with attached labels in English. Or perhaps I ought to say, American.

"Site of Strategic Metals Complex Number Two, Magnetogorsk" it said, incorrect in the Russian spelling. The left-hand side of the photograph showed a complex intermix of roads, piping, buildings, irrigation channels and spoil heaps, all helpfully pointed out with small stencilled labels and arrows. The right-hand side showed an immense crater, with the overlaid outlines of structures from the left-hand side superimposed in white ink.

'The Russians estimate at least one and a half thousand dead in this plant explosion,' continued the Brig, at full volume and not happy at all. 'It was so large the Americans detected it from a satellite in orbit and brought the matter before the UN, accusing the Russians of above-ground nuclear testing.'

A set of foolscap papers copied from one of the ultra-secret Secure Intelligence Summary atlases were being passed around. I got a look whilst the Brig carried on.

"NOT FOR DISPERSAL

"DESTROY AFTER READING

"NOT FOR DISCLOSURE TO ANY OUTSIDE AGENCY

"SAKMARA Strategic Metals Complex, located N.E.E. of MAGNITOGORSK. Sister plant of the NEOPROZHOR Strategic Metals Complex located outside NOVOSIBIRSK.

"SAKMARA was established in 1941 to refine and smelt rare or precious mineral ores. It operates under very high levels of security, given the monetary value of the end product – silver, gold and platinum. Refined rhodium, vanadium, palladium, chromium and molybdenum are also produced.

"On-site work-force is given as fifteen hundred, of whom at least two hundred are MVD security personnel."

Who might want to blow up a factory that refined gold and silver? I switched my attention back to the Brig, who had moved on from the Russian's angry denial of any nuclear testing to where suspicions now stood.

'The Russians originally passed back to Geneva their suspicion that the complex had been infiltrated by the Master, since the security staff reported several occasions when workers behaved as if under the control of an external agency.'

Lethbridge-Stewart pointed his swagger stick at Tad, who became the focus of everyone's eyes.

'Kapitan Komorowski rather put the cat amongst the pigeons when he reported back to the USSR's branch of UNIT. Kapitan?'

Looking a little lost at "cat amongst the pigeons", Tad nodded.

'Ah – yes. I was originally sent to work with UNIT in Britain because of what happened in Magnitogorsk. As Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart states, the opinion amongst the Soviet UNIT mission was that a Time Lord renegade known as The Master was responsible for the destruction of Sakmara Refinery.'

Tad stopped and pursed his lips, scowling at the floor.

'However. I reported back to the USSR about the Master being present in Britain, where he kidnapped Miss Smith, attempting to decoy The Doctor into an ambush. Working backwards, the Soviets calculated that the Master could not have been present in the Soviet Union when Magnitogorsk was compromised.'

Oh great. So that goateed twod hadn't blown up the factory complex at Sakmara. Well, perhaps one of us here at Aylesbury might yet give him an injection of high-speed lead.

Sergeant Horrigan, an NCO of rare ability, commented.

'Well, sir, who can it be?'

The Brig tweaked a moustache in reply.

'Good question! We don't know.'

What had this briefing been held for, then? What did an exploded factory in Russia have to do with us here in the UK? The Brigadier motioned to Sergeant Whittaker again, and another easel got wheeled in. This particular specimen had another table-cloth slung over it, which got removed to reveal more photographs of the strange metallic craters. This time the written legends were unequivocally English. Only three craters this time, once again deserted and abandoned, rimed with wind-blown weeds, deep in rainwater, streaked with grime and bird droppings.

'These items were discovered two days ago in the North Yorkshire Dales, at Stake Fell. Identical to the versions discovered in the USSR. Yes, I thought that might get your attention!'

There was nothing of any special significance on the North Yorkshire moors that these craters might threaten as their Russian counterparts threatened Sakmara.

'Why not ask the Doctor what these things are?' asked Captain March.

'Because the confounded Doctor has gone haring off to Megabelis to hand back some wretched crystal he borrowed!' quietly fumed the Brig.

' "Metabelis", sir,' corrected a voice, to a glare from the Brigadier. It's not wise to correct an annoyed man, especially not when he's your OC.

'Yes, thank you! Now, the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire has requested, unofficially, that UNIT go and have a nosey out in the wilds. I have consulted with the Home Office and the MoD and they both agree to let us have first bite at the cherry.'

'Have they tested for isotopic ratios?' asked Major Crichton, to blank looks from the Brig and Sergeant Whittaker.

'No idea. Why d'you ask?' replied the Brig. Major Crichton shook his head.

'Don't want to prejudice the investigation, sir, but an assay ought to be carried out.'

Lethbridge-Stewart took us all in with a long, hard look.

'This is intended to be a low-profile reconaissance. I do not expect the Armoury to be emptied - ' this with a glance at Nick and myself ' – and I don't expect the locals to be scared witless by an invasion of UNIT soldiers. For that reason, you will be wearing your old regimental uniforms, Regular Army, and side-arms only.'

Another pause.

'Also, we don't want to alert whatever made these craters. It is highly probable that the agency responsible for creating them also killed fifteen hundred Russians. We don't know what that agency is, so for heaven's sake - be careful.'

Sergeant Whittaker had a list of officers, NCO's and troopers paired-off: Captains Beresford and March, Captain Walmsley and Lieutenant Munroe, Sergeants Whittaker and Horrigan, Corporals Twiss and Griskiewicz, Privates Ely and Pooley, Privates Greene and Browne. Corporal Higgins would be our driver and radio-link with HQ.

'Ely-Pooley,' mused Nick. 'Sounds like an anagram, or an Edward Lear rhyme.'

'Don't mock,' I warned him. 'Private Ely could navigate blindfold backwards in a blizzard without getting lost. Still, Sarn't Whittaker must have a sense of humour – I mean, "Greene and Browne".'

Tad got to the Brig, saluted smartly and began to ask a question. I knew how it would begin – "Would it be possible?" Polite chap, Tad, but what he really means is "I want to".

He returned to Nick and I, beaming slightly.

'I am attached to observe with you!' he declared. I'm so happy he was happy.

As all concerned will be equally happy to hear I managed to fit into my old Queen's Lancashire uniform. Marie's insistence on less drinking paid off, I suppose. The assembled search teams got back in the gym, to receive photocopies of the Yorkshire moors, marked off in a grid pattern. Search team "WMT" had a patch bordered by Deepdale, Walkden Head, Carperby and Butterset.

'Are these proper names?' asked Tad, looking at the map. ' "Stalling Busk, Thornton Rust, Wensleydale Cheese Visitor Centre"?'

'Oh aye,' agreed Nick, looking resplendent with his beret hackle. 'Quiet place, the North York moorland. A Cheese Centre is about as exciting as it gets.'

'Yorkshire,' I explained. 'A foreign breed up there. Alien and exotic. Long on brawn, short on brain.'

'Don't pay attention to the Captain,' commented Corporal Twiss in passing. 'He was born on the wrong side of the Pennines, and the KOYLI did the Queen's Lancs over recently.'

'I'll explain when there's more time,' I hastily told Tad. Trying to explain about the Yorkshire-Lancashire divide and antagonism, regimental pride, and rugby competition would need several hours.

Sergeant Whittaker called attention back to the Brigadier with a tremendous barking "Attention please!" that rolled around the gym.

'Gentlemen – you have your assigned patch to cover. You will communicate with Trap Two Alpha – Corporal Higgins - in the first instance. Avoid exessive contact with each other in the field, or you may compromise your status. Bluebottle have been notified and will acknowledge on the codeword "Avocet". I have been told that National Trust staff may be encountered in the search area, so refer them to Bluebottle. Any civilian hikers or ramblers ought to be avoided. I rely on your intelligence and creativity to come up with cover stories should you run into same.'

That was the outline briefing from the Brigadier, which allowed us a lot of latitude, unlike some officers who try to micromanage their subordinates to the most ridiculous degree.

We were trucked up to Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in an ancient UNIT Bedford. The truck would be our base for operations, Corporal Higgins being the driver and RTO whilst we were all off in the wilds. Hawes consisted of small, very picturesque stone cottages made of locally-quarried stone and slate, with lots of dry-stone walls. Tourist country, really, and we did espy Japanese and Spanish tourists there.

Each search team had a kit consisting of radio, camera, notebooks, hacksaw, specimen bags and magnifying glass. Otherwise, we carried tents, sleeping bags, portable stoves and rations for living out under the stars, along with what experience taught us to carry.

Captain Beresford suggested that we all proceed to the location of the craters, have a thorough inspection there and then disperse to our allocated search zone. Fine by me, WMK's search area began with the Stake Hill craters.

Our way there was easy, being led by the orienteer Private Ely, who made navigation over unfamiliar landscape seem no more difficult than walking to work. He took us along a single lane track, where we dodged into the flowering verges when rare cars passed us. The landscape beyond was all rolling hills covered with heather and bracken, split by lots of streams and gulleys, or dry-stone walls where there was farmland. Nice to look at, harder to cross on foot. We discovered that when we got to Countersett, a typical hamlet of a single street, where we saw nobody. Beyond the village our path lay over heathland, and it took an hour to cover the same distance that took us twenty minutes on the road. At several points one or more of the party walked into muddy ground.

'Watch out for that,' warned Ely. 'Any low-lying ground might well be boggy. Look for the bullrush or grass tussocks.'

Vaguely, I recalled that plants like that warned of swampy ground.

'Quite picturesque,' commented Nick. 'Nice and sunny, no wind. Are we really getting paid to go camping?'

'Just wait until you've been living off tins for a couple of days, sir, and digging your own latrine, and no soap or water,' warned Private Pooley. Ah yes, the joys of an outdoor existence!

He might have added "midges", too. The annoying little black flecks came swarming around us out of nowhere for minutes at a time. None of them bit me, but they milled around at head height and tried to kamikaze down your gullet if you weren't careful.

The inspection site hid itself in a small fold in the ground, where an utterly miserable and dejected constable from the North Yorkshire Constabulary sat in a small canvas tent, sipping hot coffee from a flask. He was guarding an enclosure of metal poles girded with red-and-yellow warning tape. Catching sight of us perked him up no end.

'Cor! Human beings!' he greeted us, giving Captain Marsh a polite salute in reply to "Avocet". Of course we wanted to know what he was doing here, and he promptly told us.

'Stopping Joe Public from having a trespass, sir. Oh, yes, you'd be surprised how many folks come round here. Ramblers and walkers, Park Rangers, the odd poacher or hunter, Eagle Scouts.'

I guess he noticed the plethora of regimental badges on display. With thirteen of us, there were eleven different badges, not to mention Tad's Polish Airborne one.

Constable Hill, Number 8119, came from Leyburn, miles and miles to the east. At nightfall he had to make his way back to Hawes, where he would ring the station at Leyburn, and their single Ford Anglia would come to collect him. He had to be back at the Stake Hill site by dawn the next day.

The constable's sheer misery at being stuck out in the middle of nowhere for fourteen hours a day, with an additional two hours travel time, on his own, with no communication, managed to twang the heartstrings of Captain Beresford.

'Listen, Fitz,' he whispered to Captain Marsh. 'If we tell Higgins to be at Countersett by nightfall, he can drive this chap to Leyburn. It'll mean the Bedford is away for no more than thirty minutes. Bluebottle get their chap back to base – oh, at least an hour and a half sooner.'

Captain Marsh – well aware that he'd been called "Fitz" in the presence of witnesses – made a face. To his credit, he worked out the bonus aspects.

'Civilian is off-station and out of the way all the sooner. Local Bluebottle resources in big goodwill deficit. I don't see why not.'

Whilst this heart-warming conversation went on, several of us ducked under the warning tape to get closer to our manifest goal, the three silver craters.

There they sat, their lips sunk into the ground a few inches, narrow but deep. Bright, shiny, metallic, alien and surprisingly untarnished by the elements. No visible features, either. The brackish rainwater lying in the bottom might conceal important detail, but I doubted it.

'World's biggest egg-cup?' ventured Sergeant Whittaker.

'Ready for the largest bird in the world,' continued Sergeant Horrigan.

'Roc and Roll!' replied Nick, then spoilt it by trying to explain how witty he'd been.

The Captains Beresford and Fitz – sorry, Marsh – came up and had a nosey alongside us.

'Well, John,' began Captain Beresford, his perfect Queen's English carrying a touch of malicious humour. 'Major Crichton wants those samples for analysing.'

Me? Yes, me. Biggest man there, so I got to dig out the edge of a crater and try to hacksaw a piece out of it. Five minutes and one blunted blade later, I'd made a nick of nearly a centimetre into the rim of the crater. It took us relays of sawers and almost an hour before we managed to break off a piece one inch square, and by that time the saw blades had gone blunt and were making hideous screeches on the metal.

'Can you not be a bit quieter?' asked Contable Hill, looking all around himself. The squealing metal-on-metal sounds seemed to un-nerve him.

A few muttered comments about Bluebottle went around us, before Captain Fitz diplomatically took the PC aside and asked him questions. When he returned we got an update on local legend. "Barghuest" was a huge black dog the size of a donkey, with burning scarlet eyes, that haunted the deserted roads and byways of the moorland, and he could be heard calling across the moors in a shrieking voice; to meet him was to be assured of imminent death. More prosaically, local people sometimes disappeared whilst out walking, as did the occasional walker or rambler on the moors. Half a dozen in the past ten years, with never a trace of a body to be found.

'Have you seen anything unusual up here?' asked Captain Beresford.

'No,' replied the PC. 'Not seen, no. Heard, yes. Weird screams in the night, when I were on me way back to Hawes.'He seemed to recollect himself, coughing in embarassment. 'Sorry! You must think me a right old woman.'

Not really. I knew from personal experience that some folk tales and legends had a sound basis in hard physical fact. Nick glanced at me, well aware of my insight. His current girlfriend, for example, is not actually human –

'Tell you what, Constable. You take this sample back to Corporal Higgins in Hawes, and he'll drive you to Leyburn. Okay?' asked Captain Beresford. 'We'll be up here until nightfall in your place.'

Not one to turn down a sensible offer, the policeman brightened up and left for Hawes, clutching a specimen bag containing the metal fragment. Tom Horrigan called up Corporal Higgins on the manpack radio and warned him what to expect.

'Lancaster University, Sarge!' complained Higgins, in a voice loud enough to be heard over the headphones. 'I've got to take it to Lancaster University!'

'Confirm, Trap Two Alpha,' carried on Tom. 'Unless you can advise of alternative arrangements superceding those of Major Crichton.'

A lower-pitched grumble came over the net.

'Confirm that, Trap Two Alpha,' continued Tom, avoiding the eye of any officer. 'Also caution you to avoid, repeat, avoid, any ambush by public house en route to destination or on return. Distance and times known to within five minutes.'

I think he fibbed about that last bit, but I can't be sure.

After the PC left, we split up into our search teams and began to search whilst it was still daylight. Captain Beresford left us with a parting speech not quite guaranteed to put starch into your backbone.

'Chaps, I've never known the Brig to – excuse me!- the Brigadier – to carry out a search like this. The last time a Chief Constable tipped the wink to UNIT, only two officers got sent. He must suspect a great deal of mischief afoot, and he did make a big thing of warning us to be careful. So – best foot forward, with care.'

Our comrades-in-arms went off to get settled in their respective parts of the search grid. Seeing an opportunity to skive constructively, Search Team WMK squeezed into the constable's tiny tent, dumping our kit outside.

'Okay, here we are, the Three Beauties. Nick, impress me with a bit of reasoned analysis about the Giant's Egg Cups.'

Nick produced a vacuum flask and poured a cupful of what looked like slightly-thinned treacle.

'Let me ponder awhile, Captain Walmsley. Ah, that's tasty! Okay. I put it to you that these metal sink-holes are unique, not previously seen in the UK. A novel phenomena. Fancy a swig?'

Knowing Nick's fondness for things alcoholic, I sipped carefully at first.

'Wow! That packs a punch.'

He winked at me, darting a glance at Tad.

'Yes, unique. Not only that, they haven't been discovered until now. Which is to say, they are very noticeable, very noticeable indeed. Except nobody has noticed them. Hey, don't hog the cup, offer our Polish compatriot a sip!'

I passed the plastic cup to Tad, who took a sip, screwed up his face in disgust and spat his mouthful out onto the ground.

'Ah! O, I am poisoned!' he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 'What in the name of the Holy Virgin was that!'

Nick sniffed in disdain.

'Bovril with sherry, actually. Well-known tonic and pick-me-up.'

Tad indicated his lack of interest in British army tonics by rinsing his mouth out with water. He looked at both Nick and I with wary amusement.

'Every time I think I know the British, they surprise me,' he commented. 'You drink that awful stuff and enjoy it?'

'Drink it, put it on sandwiches, cook with it,' affirmed Nick.

'That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,' I quoted. 'Cup of hot Bov, stale bread to dip, breakfast of champions.'

'Nietzsche,' replied Tad, which was pretty good recognition. 'I don't think he had your country in mind.'

'Nobody has said how impressed they are at my analysis,' huffed Nick.

'I am,' I replied. Then, doubling back on the topic of conversation. 'I remember at University one of the lecturers saying that if you took a person's arms and legs off with a chainsaw, then they weren't dead. They weren't any stronger, either.'

'You do not, perhaps, have the sherry on it's own?' asked Tad, forlornly.

Once we'd warmed up internally, search team WMK looked around the fenced-off site. One of the benefits about knocking around in UNIT was that I'd learnt to take an unconventional look at things.

'What can't you see?' I asked.

'Giant fluffy bunnies,' replied Nick.

'What is missing from this picture?' I ventured, rolling my eyes and tutting loudly.

'Naked women gambolling in a fountain?'

'Evidence of construction?'

I leave you to guess who made which suggestion.

'We have three holes in the ground, made recently, yet there is no sign of the spoil that would have been created by the ton. Where did it go? Not only that, digging a pit that deep means a lot of men, so where are their tracks or traces? Camp-sites, fires, empty baked-beans tins. There's nothing to indicate how the three pits were made. If they used a JCB, where is the track it took to get here and where did it go?'

'Those holes were camouflaged until recently, or every hiker and walker on these moors would have been going on about Giant Egg Cups,' pointed out Nick. 'Not that there'd be that much traffic up here. Nice and isolated, off the beaten track.'

'What it hidden by the water at the bottom?' asked Tad.

Nothing, probably. Probably isn't definitely, so we came up with a plan, which involved nicking one of the sturdy metal picket poles from the police tape cordon. I knocked it into the ground next to the lip of one glistening crater, and Nick tied a length of cord to it. Tad, the curious one of us, went down over the edge and into the pit.

'Very slippery,' he called up to us. 'Without a rope, I couldn't climb out of this.'

Having gotten to the bottom of the pit, with cold dirty water slopping around his knees, he carefully felt around the metal. Instead of the one second flat I anticipated, he took a good half minute feeling blindly under the accumulated rainwater before climbing labouriously out of the metal crater.

'There are holes in the bottom of the crater, which is flat. An area about half a square metre, with twenty small rectangular holes set into it.'

'Lieutenant Munroe, please take notes,' I grandly ordered.

'Great. Now he remembers he's the superior officer,' muttered Nick, locating his notebook and sketching in a diagram from Tad's description.

Mistakenly, I put aside the thought that what Tad described sounded like a giant plug socket and looked further afield. It might have led to a more rapid discovery of our hole-creating friends.

'Whatever hid in that hole is now out in the open. Together with it's friends from Holes Two and Three. We need to try and determine what hid there, and where it is now.'

Okay. What agency could turn human beings into mindless drones?

'The Sontarans?' ventured Tad.

'No,' I calculated. 'They're not subtle, the toadies. If they were responsible, we'd be knee-deep in them.'

'How about the Cybermen?' asked Nick, shading his eyes and sweeping the horizon for clues. 'They can cabbage people, can't they?'

'They were wiped out eight years ago,' I pointed out. 'And they've not been back since.'

We set off to sweep our search area, starting from Countersett. A small lake nearby was Semer Water, fed by streams at either end. As the light died, the open expanse of moorland took on a sinister aspect, not helped by the call of a curlew. Whilst nice in daytime, at night it felt bleak out here all alone, not to mention chilly when a breeze started.

We set up camp for the night just off the track, in the lee of an old dry-stone wall, stretching a groundsheet from the top of the wall and held up with sticks, before making a fire.

'The joys of a country life, eh?' cracked Nick, producing rashers of bacon, sausages and mushrooms from his backpack. He played mother, frying the food over our primus.

'Think there might be fish in that lake?' I asked, between mouthfuls of sausage. 'I've got hooks and line.'

'How would you cook a fish?' asked Tad.

'Coat it in clay, bake it in the fire, fillet it. Done well, it's top scoff,' I explained. He nodded slowly.

'Hey, any idiot can be uncomfortable,' added Nick. 'To keep your spirits up you need sustenance.'

We drank each other's health in coffee, listening to the fire crackle and slowly die down.

'It is very quiet out here,' observed Tad, listening carefully above the pop and hiss of firewood.

''S the country for you,' yawned Nick. 'Lack of bright lights. Helps you appreciate the city even more.'

Tad wasn't the sort to waste words on pointless comments. He didn't enlarge on his sentence, yet he seemed uneasy. He took first watch, poking me awake in the chilly small hours to pass on no news about anything.

I sat and gazed into the few embers left aglow, reflecting. Life is strange. A couple of years ago I'd have been doing this sort of thing on exercises, tracking down the Orange or Blue forces. Tonight the Orange or Blue force might very well be aliens, or monsters, or Barguests. Being senior in the team, I intended to return to Hawes next morning, and try to get a bit more background information.

Our morning trawl back over the moorland enabled me to cross off a swathe of grid portions on our chinagraph covered map, where we ended up back in Hawes by eleven. Part of the work had been done by farmers of centuries past, building dry-stone walls to enclose small fields, creating a ready-made grid pattern.

'Plan is, get local colour and knowledge, see what the natives think. Anything odd or unusual.'

My comrades nodded solemnly, probably looking to find a bench or picnic table to sit at; our boots were all filthy and sodden after trying to hop over wide stretches of damp ground at the bottom of gullies.

Surprise surprise, there was Sergeant Horrigan in the village already, killing a bacon butty with extreme prejudice, standing outside a small newsagents and reading a paper. He had his excuse readymade.

'Local paper, Captain Walmsley. "The Dales Advertiser". I thought it might list anything odd or suspicious going on locally.'

'And does it?'

He frowned.

'Not sure, sir. Lots of people's dogs or cats gone missing of late. One letter says there's a pack of feral dogs on the loose.'

'There are not!' stated Tad with emphasis. 'Wild dogs, you would know about very swiftly.'

I shrugged. Hardly the stuff of nightmares, Fido or Tiddles gone missing.

'Is there a Tourist Information Centre in the village?'

'Yes, sir. A little shop down by the memorial. Oh – one other thing, sir.' He rolled his eyes upwards.

I looked upwards at the clouds. Nothing sinister up there.

'There's an awful lot of contrails up there, sir. However, this part of the world isn't on the approach path of any airport.'

Sergeant Whittaker came out of the newsagents with a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. Plainly startled at seeing his UNIT officers hanging around the village square, he still managed a speedy salute, before sidling over to me.

'Sir, I've been trying to eavesdrop on locals for the past half hour.'

'How prescient, Sergeant. Did you discover anything?'

'More like what's not wrong, sir. Nobody missing from the village, nobody behaving strangely, no strangers knocking around apart from us. Some weird noises at night, and a few pets going missing. That's it.'

Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence – we'd not found any entity that might have made those craters. There were still areas to search.

'The Info Centre?' asked Nick. 'Info Centre it is, then.'

Sergeant Horrigan came doubling back to us, handing me the local paper.

'Sir, I just remembered. Captain Fitz and Beresford have already been to the Info Centre, asking about the Wensleydale Cheese Visitor's Centre, and so have Browne and Greene. I think the old bird there is on to us by now.'

The three of us had nearly reached the Information Centre when I realised what Tom had said – "Fitz", instead of "March". I foresaw trouble.

'Okay. I don' think enquiries about how tasty Wensleydale cheese happens to be are going to get us very far with the Information Centre. Nick – I want you on high-wattage Charm. Tad – you can be the Mysterious Middle-European gentleman. I shall lurk at the back looking - '

'Grim and sinister?' interrupted Nick. 'Okay, sir, cranking up the charm as I speak.'

'The memorial is there,' pointed Tad, at a small, triangular island in what might be the geographical centre of Hawes, with a small obelisk in the middle.

"LEST WE FORGET" announced the lettering on the stone, one side for the 1914 – 1918 war, the other for 1939 – 1945. It was surprising to see a list of war dead here in a small village in the back of beyond.

'Come on, there's the tourist trap itself,' declared Nick. The Tourist Information Centre makes it seem far more impressive than it really was – a very small shop, brightly-lit, packed with racks and carousels of leaflets about Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Dales, the Pennines, Local Legends, etcetera. The sole proprietor was a middle-aged lady in tweedy twinset and pearls, hornrim glasses and elaborately coiffed hair.

'My, my, my!' she exclaimed drily, seeing us three officers troop into her shop. 'More brawny defenders of the realm. An irresistible desire to see the Wensleydale Cheese Visitor's Centre, again, perhaps?'

I give Nick full credit for not being disheartened at all.

'Good morning, ma'am!' he breezed, displaying a smile brighter than the sun. 'No fooling you, is there?'

'You can try …' she said, crossing her arms and smiling slightly.

'We happened to be tabbing across the moors, you see, when we came across a very dejected policeman, guarding what appear to be giant metal egg-cups. He couldn't explain what they were, and none of us had ever seen anything similar.'

Nick paused to indicate Tad and I, who filling up the rest of the shop. Okay, I was mostly filling up the rest of the shop. I was also trying not to bump into any of the chintzy articles for sale.

'Excuse me, what is "tabbing"?' asked the lady.

'Oh, I beg your pardon. Army slang – from the acronym "Tactical Advance to Battle". Walking in a cautious and examplary manner. To avoid stumbling into anything unpleasant. Now, we decided to try and find out whether such metal craters are a common feature of the North Yorkshire moors, or whether there are other such strange phenomena that we might encounter.'

There was definitely a twinkle in the lady's eye when she replied.

'We do have a leaflet over there – there, behind your large friend – about Myths and Legends of Yorkshire.'

'I was thinking perhaps of more – er - contemporary information,' said Nick. 'Up to date. On the minute. Hot off the press.'

The severe features of our proprietress creased in a frown.

'You aren't hacks from some ghastly tabloid, are you? Out to fabricate utter tosh about the Dales to sell papers?'

'Madam!' protested Nick. 'We are British officers and gentlemen!'

An accusatory finger pointed at Tad.

'That – that is a Polish badge!'

Yes it was. 6th Pomeranian Airlanding Division, Tad's old unit before he became UNIT, surmounting the Polish national colours.

Oh dear me. I think smarm and charm had gone as far as possible. I opened the shop door, indicating that Tad and Nick should leave.

'Get me an envelope,' I hissed at Nick, who glared behind me at the tweedy twinset.

'What?' he asked, crossly.

'An envelope, you twod!'

He and Tad scurried off. I strode back into the shop, under the penetrating stare of the lady now convinced we were Up To No Good. We had to get her on-side, because in a small community like this, if she spread word that we were imposters or jolly bad sorts, we'd never get any co-operation or information. We badly needed that info, because the locals were guaranteed to have seen more than they realised, not being able to think themselves into the position of dealing with alien invaders. Or monsters. Or Barguests.

'Madam - '

'Don't call me that! This is not a bordello!' she replied, with verve, and an air of relish, as if she enjoyed a confrontation.

'Very well. Your name is?'

'Abigail,' she replied, which floored me temporarily. I expected a formal announcement of her title, rank, civilian medals and badges won and her family tree.

'Abigail. I am Captain John Walmsley. How many names are there on the war memorial outside?' That, in turn, floored her temporarily. She'd seen the obelisk countless times a day for uncounted years. 'Don't try guessing, I can tell you exactly: twenty-three on the First War side, nine on the Second War side. Thirty two total.'

Okay, I had her attention, focussed all the sharper by a probable attack of guilt at not knowing the answer to my question.

'The last place to have an outbreak of giant metal egg cups had a war memorial outside it, too. Fifty names on their war memorial. When the whole thing was over, they had enough names to fit on thirty war memorials.'

I fiddled the maths a bit, for convenience, even if the approximation was correct. Sakmara, being in the Soviet Union, doubtless did have a war memorial in the locale. Abigail began to look less sure of herself and remained silent.

'So, you see, we really are sincere about finding out what unusual things have been happening locally, if at all.'

Ding! went the bell over the door as Nick came back in, clutching an A5 envelope. Taking it from him, I did a short spot of paperwork with my back to Abigail.

'Save the Children, Oxfam, Saint Luke's Hospice – d'you have a preferred charity?' I asked over my shoulder.

'A pref – yes; yes I do,' she replied, slowly and suspiciously.

'Cheerio!' I called over my shoulder, pushing Nick before me.

'What was that about?' he asked, put out that his patented Big Smile hadn't put the lady in an accomodating swoon. 'Have you developed lady-killing skills?'

By noon the three of us sat around a wooden table in the Green Man, regarding curly-edged cheese sandwiches, tired lettuce and pints of lemonade.

'Lemonade. Sparkly gnat's pee,' scoffed Nick. 'Are you certain - '

'Yes!' I jumped in. 'If Fitz or Beresford – March and Beresford – if they come in here, the only pub in about ten square miles, and see us consuming alcohol, then we're for the high jump. Not only that, my Byzantine planning will come to fruition here.'

Tad leaned back and crossed his arms, a knowing smile on his baby-face.

'Should you not finish that with the laugh of a mad scientist?'

'Byzantine!' snorted Nick. 'You say that as if you know what it is!'

I sneered at his sneering. Yes I did know. And, hey presto, Abigail strode into the pub, like the conquering hero. Sorry, heroine. She spoke to the barman with quiet insistency.

'It's your gray-haired girlfriend,' sniggered Nick. 'Come for her daily sherry dip.'

I narrowed my eyes at him.

'Lieutenant Munroe, we need the goodwill and help of locals here in Hawes to find out what's been going on. If Abigail doesn't help us she can hinder us.'

Nick's expression altered from scorn to surprise.

'John – she must be about sixty years old!'

'What?' I replied, taken aback.

'That's how you start talking about women when Cupid intervenes. Ugh, John, she's old enough to be – she could be – mind you, she might have daughters - ' he finished ruminatively, rubbing his chin.

'Oh do be quiet, you letch!' I wearily replied. 'I just came back from a place where I learnt not to judge by appearances.'

'She is looking this way,' whispered Tad. Nick looked over in alarm.

'No she's not!' he replied, hotly. I checked.

Oh yes she was, by looking in the mirror behind the bar. Canny!

'Okay, I am going to try and get her on-side. You two stay here.'

Ambling – which does not come naturally to me – ambling to the bar, I nodded in acknowledgement to Abigail. She looked at me frostily through her hornrims.

'If there had been fifty war memorials-worth of dead people, I would have heard about it,' she began.

'I didn't say the event took place in the UK,' I replied, mildly. Abigail's eyes darted to Tad, making a not-unnatural assumption.

'Oh - ah. Yes. Hmm.'

'Besides which, I would like to get the local land-owning aristocracy on my side. Access to local gossip, better digs, warning signs – all flow from local knowledge.'

The middle-aged lady's eyes darted back to me.

'Your nails,' I said, before she could ask any questions. 'Long and pristine. Not the nails of anyone who carries out manual labour. Your hands, too. Pale, clean and un-lined. Not a person doing physical work. Your hair-do. Very elaborate, and not the sort of perm to be found in Hawes.'

Involuntarily, her eyes went to check out the hairdo in the mirror behind the bar.

'Your pearl necklace. Your accent. Your age – a lady whose offspring have left home, allowing her time to indulge in her interests. Also, the barman seemed very deferential.'

This could have gone either way, her annoyed at being sussed-out, or impressed at my sheer perspicacity.

'We don't own much in the way of land, Captain. You do have sharp eyes.'

'Everybody does, actually. It's a case of seeing, not just looking. Plus, in my line of work I have to make snap decisions about people on what I observe.'

Abigail looked me up and down.

'My judgement, Captain, is that you look rather grubby and creased. See me in the Information Centre after two.'

I gave a polite nod and got a cool parting shot from her.

'Oh - can you tell your toothy friend I am fifty-two, not sixty? Thanks ever so.'

Did I jump at that? Certainly! How the hell did she know what Nick was saying? She'd been far too distant to hear him. I got back to the table and my now-missing stale sandwich.

'It was still food,' I complained.

'Got a date?'

'Watch your tongue – she heard your crack about being sixty.'

A little healthy fearful respect showed on Nick's face.

'We go back to the Info Center after two.'

For the next hour we hiked to the edge of Hawes, politely nodded to passing tourists, hung around and wondered what we were chasing up here on the moors.

'What lived in those holes is hidden again,' began Tad.

'Hiding? I suppose so. None of the search teams have found anything.'

'Let us sum up,' I summed-up. 'We don't know how many of the Hole Dwellers there are. We don't know how big they are, or how small they are. We don't know where they are. We don't know what they are.'

'They are intelligent and capable,' added Tad. 'Or we would have found them, or traces of them.'

Nick moodily threw stones into the stream below our vantage point, a stone bridge, thinking dark thoughts.

'Which is why we need the ears and eyes of such as Abigail. Local information that the locals wouldn't share with outsiders like us.'

The Information Centre had a "Closed" sign up in the door, much to my consternation. However, as soon as the trio of shop-worn officers drew close, Abigail promptly opened the door, ushered us in and shut up shop again.

She eyed me with a gimlet glare, then plainly and simply said "Avocet".

'Er – mascot of the RSPB?' I tried, to a shake of the head. Nick whistled in genuine surprise. Tad cocked an eyebrow. No wonder she'd delayed meeting again, probably beetling off to pull strings with the Chief Constable. If she, a civilian, could wheedle the police password out of them at such short notice, she had clout. Either she could help us or make things very awkward. We were still very much in the dark about what made those craters, and we needed every bit of help available.

'What I tell you must not go any further,' was my first, stern warning. 'For reasons of security, to protect the public and to prevent us being compromised.' She got a condensed version of events outside Magnitogorsk, then the discovery of the craters out on Stake Fell.

'We still don't know what made them. But – whatever agency is responsible is hostile and dangerous. That's why we aren't in our official uniforms. Less chance of tipping them off.'

So there it was, not-quite admitting we were UNIT.

Abigail crossed her arms and looked at us with a calculating gaze. Finally she reached a decision.

'So – the Army haven't been up here already, on exercises or manouevres?' she asked, still looking keenly at us.

'No,' we all replied in unison.

'Certainly not,' I continued. 'If they had our job would be a lot easier. All we'd need is a debrief of the personnel involved, instead of having to clamber over walls and through bogs. What made you ask that?'

She sucked her bottom lip.

'Rumours about men in uniform on the moors.'

Could this be a type of Cold War infiltration, a practice mission gone wrong? Signalling Nick, I got our radio and hailed Corporal Higgins.

'Trap Two Alpha, this is Trap Two Delta Actual. Forward to Trap One and Greyhound request as follows: query; have any Lichen been operating in search zone previously. If so detail formation, duration and reason soonest. Out.'

Yes, "Lichen", the new code-word for Regular Army. Because it's green, not because they stand still in one place and have no intelligence.

The reply came back in minutes.

'Trap Two Delta Actual, Greyhound confirms no, repeat no, Lichen in search zone. No presence there since date one nine four five. Out'

'No army, then,' commented Abigail. She saw me scribbling in my notebook. 'It's nothing definite, you know. There's no evidence, just the odd person saying they saw something.'

'There are missing dogs, too,' added Tad.

'Could a gang be stealing dogs?' asked Nick. I frowned at him. Dognapping! Surprisingly, neither Abigail nor Tad were dismissive.

'A good sheep dog can take eight months to train,' said Abigail.

'Valuable asset on a farm,' added Tad.

Okay, not so silly. Walmsley the City Boy took notice.

'If you call at Langstrothdale Farm, ask Ted Bickersdyke about dogs going missing. He lost three only a couple of days ago.'

Checking on our map, I saw the farm, in the lower bottom right of our search grid.

'What about cats?' I asked, remembering Tom Horrigan's review of the local paper.

Abigail wrinkled her nose.

'That I can't explain. Why would anyone steal a domestic pet when it's far easier to buy one?'

Good question. That old joke about Indian restaurants using Mister Tiddles as the meat course came back to me; if you've ever tried to catch a cat that didn't want to be caught, you can appreciate how difficult it is.

'Oh, one other thing,' added Abigail before we left. 'Foxes. There seems to be a dearth of foxes locally. The West Riding Hunt haven't got any to hunt, and the local farmers are happy that their hens aren't being decapitated.'

The three of us hiked back overland towards the pitched canvas we'd set up in the shelter of derelict dry-stone walls, me getting the benefit of Nick's experience en route.

'Disgraceful!' he muttered. 'Old enough to be your mother,' was another.

'Lady immune to your charms?' I ventured.

'Lady in contact with Chief Constable,' said Tad, trumping us both.

'Yon Polish chap speaketh the truth. She didn't deny being a local sprig of the aristocracy,' pointed out Nick.

My musing was internal, concentrating on those rumoured figures in uniform. Military uniforms weren't exactly off-the-peg kit for your average civilian. Poachers, however, might well use such dress to stalk their prey and avoid being seen. A poacher encountering a sheep-dog might kill it to prevent the farm animal from giving him away, scattering his targets or attacking him. Why they'd kill local cats puzzled me.

On our route this afternoon we cut across the stream that fed into the northern part of Semer Water, and as usual, I had problems with the soft and boggy ground alongside the stream. Anticipating trouble, I'd picked up a big flat rock that I used to drop into the centre of the stream, hopping from land to rock to land. Except that the second part, landing on the land, meant I sank up to my ankles in slush. Tad and Nick were forced to help pull me out again, sucking footstep by sucking footstep.

'How much do you weigh?' asked Nick, glancing backwards whilst I muttered curses about Yorkshire bogs.

'Eh? Hey, if this is crack about my weight, then recall that I am your senior officer - '

My sarcasm died off when I witnessed a wary Nick, pistol drawn, scouting back along my recent footprints.

'Nineteen stone. At least twenty with all this extra,' I answered, watching Nick, who looked down at the ground. Off to our left, Tad sank down and drew his pistol.

'Of course, there's no possible risk out here,' I declaimed at high volume to the world at large, trying to squat on my haunches and simultaneously drawing my .45.

Nick waved us both closer, to inspect a small, brackish puddle. He pointed at my clumsy footprints in the muddy ground nearby.

'John – your footprints over there are three or four inches deep. Well, this one is at least six inches deep.'

Yes, except was it really a footprint?

'There is another,' pointed Tad. Once you spotted one the others were easy to pick out.

'Get a few sticks and mark these prints,' I ordered. All told, we found a dozen of the small puddled depressions, marching in a straight line across the soft ground on either side of the stream.

'Look at the length of this guy's stride!' I wondered. 'He must be enormous.'

'And weigh thirty stone,' added Nick.

'A poacher carrying a deer?' suggested Tad. As a theory it might fit the facts.

'That's a good theory,' commented Nick, standing up slowly and turning to all points of the compass. 'I like that theory. There's only one thing wrong with it.'

'No deer around here?' I guessed. Nick nodded.

'Not in Yorkshire. Nearest place would be Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire.'

'Okay, a poacher with a pig. A sheep. A cow! Anything large,' I continued.

'Your aged girlfriend didn't mention any cattle going missing, did she? So you can scratch that.'

Once we returned to our humble tent, I made an executive decision. Nick and I would venture south east, over to Langstrothdale Farm, and have a word with Mister Bickerdyke. Tad would guard our kit, keep a beady eye out and get tea ready for our return.

Before leaving I checked in by radio with Corporal Higgins, who informed me that Sergeant Whittaker had seen a snake, Captain Beresford had fallen into a bed of nettles, and Private Ely had finished searching his grid. Otherwise, nothing to report, bar a sense of unease.

Oh well, you can't declare Condition Red thanks to a hunch and a hint. Nick took off ahead of me with the compass and map, and we both made good time unencumbered by the weight of camping kit.

Normally an excursion like this, out in the open air, without higher command breathing down your neck, would have been highly enjoyable. Today I kept a wary watch over my shoulder, looking for giants in camo gear, hauling the carcasses of dead cows around their necks.

On reaching the top of Stake Fell, we stopped for a breather and water. Heather, bracken, gorse and grasses fell away from our position on all sides. Bleak, whilst still being attractive. Lonely, too; we were the only human beings moving up here.

'Thanks for being unusually tactful about Clara,' I mentioned to Nick, clearly taking him unawares. Clara is a Rutan who – er, fancies me, not to be coy about it. Tad and I had escorted the Doctor in taking her to the ends of the galaxy.

'Can't really comment, can I?' he replied drily. True enough. His partner Moyra looks human. Looks incredibly attractive, in fact, apart from the fact that she isn't actually human. A "para-human semi-aquatic entity", as we decided. 'What did Marie make of your green alien girlfriend?'

Ah yes. Marie, my current partner. French, a higher IQ than any three professors put together, and a worrying combination of jealousy and laissez faire.

'She was more bothered about the Amazing Planet of Women Without Any Men. When I explained about Clara she laughed until she cried.'

"John finds a planet of women and can only find a green alien to love him!" was her comment. Marie didn't worry about my indiscretion, it was two thousand years into the future and ten thousand light years distant.

Having rested for ten minutes, we got to our feet and headed down the gently-rolling hills, me managing to keep my feet out of mud today. One obstacle to cross was Bishopdale Beck, running alongside the B6160, a road that ran from north east to south-west. Dry weather had shrunk the stream to easily-fordable width, and both of us scaled the stone wall next to the road easily, if a little alarmingly to a saloon that went whizzing north east in front of us, the driver and his passenger darting quick glances at us.

Using the road, we traversed it for a mile, then took a narrow track leading off eastwards, having been warned of our imminent destination by a rusty, battered roadsign. The tubular steel gate there had been kept in the open position by decades of weeds; an aged tin sign wired to it warned "Trespasers will be prosicuted".

'Good job I look honest and honourable,' said Nick, nodding at the sign.

'Implying what!' I retorted. He didn't bother turning round.

'John, you normally exhibit all the expressiveness of a breeze-block. Your smile looks sinister, on the infrequent occasions when you do smile. When you scowl, it seems you are plotting to blow up an orphanage, or rip out a few throats with your teeth.'

'That's character,' I replied, deeply hurt. 'Still waters and all that.'

The dry, beaten path, with deep ruts showing where tractors routinely travelled in wetter weather, led us up to the farm proper. A long, low stone house butted up against whitewashed outbuildings, barns and concrete-floored pens. Two tractors stood outside the farmhouse, by a battered Landrover. The pungent scent of manure hung everywhere, lifting only a fraction when the breeze increased.

'Hello!' called Nick, causing curtains in the house to twitch and a large, red-faced Yorkshireman to erupt from the doorway.

'You agin!' he shouted, in full dialect. 'How dare you come back agin after killing our dogs deed!'

A broken shotgun hung from the crook of his right arm. If he tried to heft that, I decided, then he'd get a sudden introduction to Mister .45 and his eight friends.

'Don't just stand there you bluddy fools!' continued the farmer. 'Get out of it! Clear off!'

'What a nasty cross shouty man!' commented Nick, as ingenuously as possible. Mister Bickersdyke might have coped with shouting or insults, but the studied calm of Nick Munroe's bland criticism stopped him short.

'I – you what?' he blustered.

'I don't think I like the nasty cross shouty man,' I added, with as much menace as I could.

'No! He's not very polite. Abigail ought to have warned us,' continued Nick, enjoying himself hugely.

At the word "Abigail", Mister Bickersdyke stopped being so bullish.

'What! You're the two that Lady – well, why didn't you say so!' he carried on, almost collapsing in a complete change of character. 'She rang to say you'd be coming. Come on inside.'

Once inside we met Mrs Bickersdyke, a strapping Yorkshire lady who plied us unceasingly with tea and cake. Ted apologised for being so rude. His three sheepdogs had gone, after barking and whimpering madly outide the house two nights ago. Whatever took them, half a dozen strong, could be seen in the far distance heading north over the moors to Thornton Rust when he came down with his night-glasses. Men in camouflage uniforms, barely visible against the moorland and only really detectable because of the bright moonlight.

'I didn't go after them,' he confided to us when his wife was out of the room. 'Something wrong about them. Can't put me finger on it, but them weren't reet.'

'There haven't been soldiers up on these moors for thirty years,' I told him. 'Whatever you saw, it wasn't Army. Have you seen anything else odd in the recent past?'

His big, ruddy face looked back at me with a shrewd suspicion.

'All to do with them craters they found, ain't it? There were no trouble before that. Odd? Odd?' He scratched his head. 'There don't seem to be creatures around like there used to be. Nor foxes. Mind, I don't bother over not having foxes.'

Foxes are extremely cunning predators, apparently, and will kill for the sheer heck of it. A foxless farmer is a happy chappy, by all accounts.

'By the way,' I asked, since we were on a farm. 'Could we purchase some crops? Our campfire cooking is lacking a few staple items.'

Aswill with tea and bulging with cake, Nick and I worked the calories off in our homeward trek, dusk falling by the time we got back to the pitched canvas. It felt bloody eerie out alone on the slowly darkening moorland, with only the sad lost call of curlews for company.

Tad's cheerful fire banished most gloomy thoughts, helped by the solid and comforting dinner of sausage, beans and wads, washed down with tea. I needed to slacken my belt after that.

'Lieutenant Munroe, kindly bring our comrade up to date,' I ordered, coalescing around my stomach to help digestion. Nick described the long trek back home, dwelling on the emptiness and loneliness, skating lightly over the farmhouse cake and drink.

'Foxes are clever creatures,' mused Tad. 'They avoid being hunted if possible.'

Coming faintly on the evening air, a crunching sound came from path lying on the other side of our sheltering dry-stone wall. All three of us were instantly silent, equally instantly drawing pistols.

With my back to the wall, I pulled out my boot knife and held it up, using it as a crude mirror that protruded over the wall. Only two figures approaching, and human at that.

'Hello chaps!' I greeted them, standing up abruptly as they drew closer. One of them jumped in fright, the other froze on the spot. They were a couple of lads in their late teens or early twenties, wearing stout boots, denims, rucksacks and with one of them carrying a .410 single-barrel shotgun.

After a few seconds of frightened swearing, they calmed down.

'Been up to anything you shouldn't?' I asked, eyeing the rucksacks. 'Oh, don't worry, I'm not the police, I've got more important things to chase than you two.'

Nick and Tad stood up, flanking me at thirty yards distance.

'Bloody hell!' exclaimed one of the men. 'How many of you are there!'

'A whole lot of us sweeping the moors. Have you two seen anything unusual today?'

They shared a glance, reaching an unspoken agreement.

'Not seen anything – oh, apart from that run.'

'That's right. All the birds were dead. Looks like they hadn't been fed or watered.'

A "run", I found out later from Nick the Mighty White Hunter, was a large wired enclosure where baby game birds were reared before being let out into the wilds for hunting.

The pair were up from Leeds, looking for rabbits, principally. Normally they left the moors mid-afternoon with anything up to a dozen carcasses. Today, only two coneys, after a whole day of hunting. Both were spooked by the lack of wildlife, and the run full of dead pheasants, which implied deliberate neglect if not actual foul play.

'I'd recommend you stay off the moors for a while,' I told them, not trying to play the heavy.

'Too true!' replied the elder. 'There's a feeling in the air up here. We're not coming back in a hurry.'

I radioed Corporal Higgins and asked him to drive up to Countersett, to pick up the unsuccessful poachers and drive them back to Hawes, where they'd left their car. They both brightened up when they heard this, even to the extent of donating a skinned rabbit to our moorland mess.

'Trap Two Delta Actual, that old bird from the tourist place collared me, sir,' he finished, not keeping to proper RT procedure. 'Asked if you could look in on Bishopdale Farm. Worried about single resident male farmer. No contact for days. Not replying to phone calls. Out.'

'Confirm, Trap Two Alpha, will investigate at first light. Out.'

My two compatriots might have quibbled at that, had we not enjoyed a very tasty supper of jugged rabbit, together with boiled baby new potatoes bought from the Bickersdyke farm. Possibly the chance of getting more farm food persuaded them.

Neither of them were happy when I decided on three-hour watches during the night. I took the first stag, until after two in the morning.

Darkness, solitude and silence all concentrate the mind wonderfully. Overhead the skies were clear and spangled with stars; every so often one would flash red or green wing lights, denoting an aircraft cruising in the upper atmosphere.

The first question, as in all UNIT operations, must be – what were we dealing with?

My mind kept skipping back to Nick's throwaway suggestion that the Cybermen were behind this business. Ridiculous, of course – the tin men had been destroyed completely at the fag-end of the Sixties, wiped out utterly. Their space fleet had been annihilated, and their foot-sloggers on Planet Earth succumbed to greater numbers and greater firepower. So completely had they been vanquished, in fact, that they were more completely forgotten than the Incredible Vanishing Dinosaur Invasion of London. Less of a footnote than the Great Intelligence and the Yeti, which had forced the evacuation of London and the abandonment of the Underground.

An eight-foot tall Cyberman weighing thirty stone would make footsteps in the soggy moorland exactly like those we had stumbled across, however. They were able to control human beings by means of mind-bending technology, similar to phenomena the Russians described.

'But they can't hide for eight years in a rambler's thoroughfare,' I warned Me.

They can, if their metallic craters are camouflaged properly, Me replied.

'And why tip your hand by killing off local farm dogs!' I scoffed at me.

Because such animals could detect or track down inhuman monsters, Me replied.

'Except Mister Tiddles and Duchess can't, so why kill them off?' I sneered at me.

Cats have a cerebral cortex. That can be utilised in a Cybermat, riposted Me.

'And the Cybermen stand out like spacemen in silver suits,' I challenged.

Which is why they've camouflaged themselves, declared Me.

'Wake up, John!' said Clara, tickling me under the chin, her green eyes glinting with mischief.

Birdsweat! I'd fallen asleep and been dreaming, my head gradually nodding forward until my chin rested on my watch.

I recalled the weird two-way conversation with myself about – whoah! about how the Cybermen might be responsible for what was going on out here. My watch still showed quarter to two, so I tested the logic of what I'd dreamt.

Worryingly, it made sense. I woke Nick up, early, and waited for him to ascend through the layers of consciousness until he reached Grumpy And Wakeful.

'Try this on for size,' I said, giving him my reasoned argument.

'Cybermen?' he mumbled. 'Long gone. Way of dodo and passenger pigeon. Extinct. My turn on watch?'

Tad ensured our morale was sustained with a hot breakfast, slices of sausage, mushrooms and bacon cooked over the primus, plus cups of hot tea.

'You have potential, young Kapitan,' declared Nick, having polished off a pint of tea made with eight sugars and half a tin of condensed milk. 'That was nearly passable.'

'I – I try my best,' replied Tad, all mock-humility. 'John said to add milk and sugar until the spoon stood upright.'

'Come on, let's get our kit together,' I ordered. 'We're off to Bishopdale Farm. I shall regale you en route with my fantastic unconscious insight of last night.'

'You were unconscious, sir?' asked Nick, shaking his head in feigned worry.

'As in the Sigmund Freud definition, Lieutenant,' I replied.

'Do you mean, perhaps, "subconscious"?' asked Tad.

' "Sub-conscious". The feeling an Royal Navy frigate crew gets when at sea!' chortled Nick, setting out at a brisk pace. 'Ah, Harry Sullivan eat yer heart out.'

I gave my explanation, which impressed Tad. Nick, now his mental gears were functioning, thought twice about his dismissal of the possible enemy.

'If you're right – if you're right we'll need anti-tank missiles. A pistol won't do much good.'

I radioed in to Corporal Higgins, who reported that Captain Beresford was also angling towards the tin men as potential suspects. He had a sounder reason than us: that "snake" seen by Sergeant Whittaker turned out to be more similar in appearance to a trilobite than a snake, with a metallic sheen to it, once the sergeant had been quizzed.

A Cybermat, had to be. Great. The Cybermats are the Cybermen's Little Helpers, akin to a remote sentry or guard dog, in cyborg form. Between the whole search team, all fourteen of us, we had a single Emergency Response Kit, with a single magazine of gold bullets.

The three of us speculated at length as to why the Cybermen might emerge from hiding now, at this moment. Hot weather, end of the Cod War, boredom, nothing really sensible.

Bishopdale Farm lay at the end of a long, steep approach from the B6160. Being cautious, I had us stop and look carefully at the low stone buildings from the road, under cover of the mortared wall there. Nothing moving. No smoke from the chimmney, no animals moving, and when we got closer nobody taking care of the smashed front door either, which had been kicked in half, falling inside in a collection of planks and splinters.

Tad looked at a muddy Ford Cortina parked under a shabby plastic carport, testing the bonnet with his palm. Nick pointed silently at a dirty metal bowl lying upturned by a snapped leash, the leash torn from a retaining ring set into the outside farmhouse wall.

Instead of walking in over the smashed door and, for all I knew, contaminating forensic evidence, Nick and I stooged around the back of the house. The back door wasn't locked, merely on a catch, so we tiptoed into the kitchen.

The farm's interior was shabby and unkempt, typical of how a batchelor farmer might been living for ten years. A search upstairs and downstairs, in the musty, smelly cellar, then outside in the barns failed to reveal anyone. A few curious or hungry cows stood around looking dim in the field outside the farmhouse.

What did interest me was the collection of distorted lead shot all over the upper landing, and the double-barrelled twelve bore abandoned in our resident male's bath. The bathroom door exhibited signs similar to the front door, smashed inwards.

I radioed into Corporal Higgins, who passed on our information, and that Captain Beresford wanted everyone to RV back in Hawes at the Bedford.

'Another long slog,' complained Nick.

'Time to contemplate,' I argued. 'Let's think Cybermen.'

Not that I wanted to, the metal men are creepy enough as part of a forgotten invasion.

'Are we sure they are here?' asked Tad.

'Ohyes. You weren't at Leek Wootton. I was, and I went scouting through forest looking for Autons. All the wildlife there had disappeared.'

'They don't like aliens, eh?' mused Nick.

We jumped the wall that concealed the B6160, then the other side and crossed the Bishopdale Beck.

'Observe how silent it is out here,' observed Tad.

'There's still birds.'

'In flight, from one place to another. Not roosting on the ground.'

We were the last team in, getting a lift from Corporal Higgins from Countersett.

'Things are hotting-up, sir,' he told me. 'And that bint from the Tourist Office can't half stir it. Wooden Spoon award, that's what she needs.'

'Mind your immoderate language, Corporal, you're talking about the woman Captain Walmsley loves,' jibed Nick. Corporal Higgins darted me a look of utter astonishment in the rear-view mirror before realising his leg was being pulled. Just wait, Lieutenant, I shall have my revenge.

There were other surprises in store once we got back to Hawes. The Green Man had been emptied of locals and tourists, and now served as a de facto HQ for our search effort, having now accomodated under it's roof a selection of people from Whitehall, in addition to a twitchy and nervous Major Crichton. These latter parties had been Windmilled in from the south earlier that evening. Abigail stood prominently over in a corner, discussing items from a clipboard with Sergeant Whittaker and a civil servant in a suit. A tall, portly and self-assured civilian stood with Fitz, Beresford and a policeman at the bar, in a posture that meant he was telling, not asking. Piles of our kit were propped or laid out in various corners of the bar, the lounge and the snug.

'Sir!' said Tom Horrigan, darting up to me, saluting and winking. 'Your kit needs to go over here, sir.' He led the three of us off to a corner, then began to whisper whilst helping to secure our kit. 'That's Sir William Walker, up from Whitehall. Some kind of political hatchet-man. Wanted to know where the Doctor was, seemed happy he wasn't here.'

Major Crichton buttonholed us immediately.

'Bad news, John. It is the Cybermen, most definitely.'

He explained that the metal sample Lancaster University eventually got round to analysing had significant amounts of 60Fe, an iron isotope very rare in steels and alloys used by humans, but which is a fingerprint for the Cyberman metals.

Mister Walker came over to speak to us late arrivals, all bonhomie and cheer, underneath which lay a steely resolve.

'Glad you made it back intact!' he beamed. 'Care for a cup of tea? Landlord, three teas for these sterling chaps. Any chance of a sandwich or two? Splendid, splendid!'

'Is there any reason for you to be up here, Sir William?' I asked. He commandeered a cup of tea before replying.

'Ooh, I should say so! Cybermen, you know, cut my teeth on them in the late Sixties.' Loud inelegant slurping of tea followed. 'Dealing with International Electromatics after Tobias Vaughn was killed, incarcerating all his staff who'd been partially Converted, lots of jolly difficult stuff like that. Ah, cheese and pickle, splendid!'

He devoured half the plate of sandwiches, before turning back to us.

'We have a cover story in place, a foot-and-mouth outbreak. That'll keep people away whilst we hunt these tin-pot tin men down, eh?'

' "Hunt"?' I queried. 'That's not going to be easy.'

'No,' he agreed. Major Crichton chimed in with more information.

'RAF Tangmere have had two PRU Phantoms overhead since we got here. Definite evidence of a formation moving across the moors, but the picture quality is low.'

"PRU" – Photographic Reconaissance Unit. Aircraft that spy from the sky. Weeks later, I discovered the Brig had hinted at his desire to keep the Dales under an eagle electronic eye, and the RAF, bless 'em, came up with the goods. Tom Horrigan's shrewd observation had been correct.

'When you find them, how do you deal with them?' I asked, honestly curious.

'Ah, latest technology!' beamed Sir William. 'Gazelle helicopters armed with anti-tank missiles. They'll be here in the morning, arriving once the Assault Platoon arrives to beef-up the cordon. Now, I need to go see Lady Forbes-Masson.'

Nick stared after the departing back of Sir William, chewing the inside of his cheek.

'I know him. William Walker, OBE. Awarded for "services rendered unto the nation".'

I paid little attention, knocking off one sandwich after another, lubricating them with sips of tea.

'Which, as brother Donal informed me, amounted to approving that the Royal Navy drop nuclear depth charges on top of an underwater colony of the Marine Silurians.'

That stopped me in mid-chew.

'Eh? Blimey, that Walker? The one the Doctor ran into – oh, no wonder he wanted to know where our Special Scientific Adviser is.'

Sir William appears to be a political trouble-shooter, sent to deal with emergencies that threaten the nation. I watched him, aware that his jolly-hockey-sticks persona concealed a man who had to be prepared to give the word to actions that might very well kill a great many people.

'Captain Walmsley!' came a piercing female voice. Abigail.

'Watch it, she's a bit old and frail,' warned Nick, mockingly. 'Don't send her heart beating too fast.'

I pointed a death-ray finger at him in warning, before joining Abigail and Sergeant Whittaker.

'Captain, I've been working out a search pattern with your non-com here. These points on his map are solitary houses, where individuals live, whom I haven't been able to reach by phone.'

Before she said another word I saw where this was leading.

'And you want us to go and check whether these people are still alive?'

'I most certainly do!' she said, practically spitting sparks. 'These are single people, living alone, without anyone else to bother about them. William considered them to be most at risk.'

"William", eh? Plainly, this lady of the bucolic shires could rub shoulders with the best of the Whitehall elite.

'Uh – Abigail - ' I started, which made Sergeant Whittaker's jaw drop. 'Why pick on - ' and I nearly said "UNIT" ' – us to do a job that the local police can manage?'

She looked over my shoulder and caught the eye of our resident police officer, beckoning him over.

'Also, Captain, I have ridden to hounds. Hardly frail!' she whispered, before the policeman arrived.

'Chief Inspector, Captain Walmsley. The Captain wondered why your men aren't doing a search right now.'

I never got the Chief Inspector's last name. He had a long, narrow face, with a sad, droopy moustache in the middle.

'Regulations, Captain. In the case of potential contact with Woodcutter, all non-military personnel are to retire to minimum safe distance and wait until the All Clear is declared.' He shrugged in apology. 'Inspired by the Met. They lost a lot of men back in sixty-nine, trying to stop this lot first time around.'

Yes, "Woodcutter", Wizard of Oz. No doubt a fat padded civil servant got a laugh and a knighthood out of that codename.

Abigail and Sergeant Whittaker between them had worked out a drop-off schedule for Corporal Higgins in the Beford, taking our search teams to drop off along the road to Thornton Rust, move in to examine individual properties – small cottages, one-man cattle-rearing operations, delapidated old farmhouses – and see if their occupants were still alive. If they were, evacuate back to Hawes. The North Yorks constabulary were printing signs and handbills about movement restriction thanks to Foot and Mouth disease, and Project Broom were alert to quash any mention in the press of anything odd or peculiar in the national park.

'What about PC Hill?' I asked, recalling the unfortunate constable on his lonely vigil. The Chief Inspector looked blank at that, going off to a secluded corner to radio in to Leyburn . He came back with a frown.

'Still there, as far as anyone knows. As far as anyone knows! It's a reception black spot, that place.'

Maybe that's one reason the Cybermen chose it, no way we could eavesdrop on and triangulate their transmissions – and then I made a deductive leap worthy of the Doctor. Maybe. Well, since he wasn't there to take credit, I shall.

'Sir William,' I said, slowly working this through in my mind. He looked up from signing a batch of papers being shuffled by the anonymous civil servant. 'You know lots about the Cybermen, correct?'

'Plenty, my boy, plenty. Still doesn't amount to a lot. Why d'you ask, hm, hey?'

'Ruthlessly logical, unswayed by emotion. Yes? I recall the Doctor saying that "they never get tired and they never give up".'

Walker jibbed a fraction at mention of the Doctor. He nodded again.

'So if they travel anywhere on foot, they go in a straight line. It's the quickest way to travel, the shortest route between two points.'

He stroked his chin with one hand, cradling his elbow in his other hand, thinking for a minute.

'Do you know, I think you're correct there. What conclusion are you drawing here, Captain?'

'Thinking aloud, sir. If you were to plot their movements, I believe it would give you a set of geodesics centred on their base. Hide, bunker, whatever they use. If you take witness statements, you could extrapolate a set of points and see where they intersect.'

He nodded his head approvingly, pursing his lips, not saying anything but looking impressed.

Apparently this theory was put forward in the official report as all Sir William's own idea. I can't complain, since it had a lot more clout coming from him than a brevet captain.

Abigail, throwing a frosty look at Nick, put a matronly hand on my shoulder.

'Captain Walmsley - '

'John,' I interrupted. 'If you don't use your title, you can miss mine out.'

'John, then. What's going to happen to Eddie? Constable Hill?'

Shrug from me. He'd be stuck out there on the moors in his little tent, drinking coffee and doing the Daily Mirror crossword.

'I know his mother, you see. Really, isn't there anything you can do?'

'Short of going out there, not really. His police radio doesn't pick up our broadcasts, and he can't get his own people.' She got an idea then, which I tried to quash. 'Hey, don't try that on! It was you who drew up a search plan with Sergeant Whittaker and sold it to Captain Beresford – quite how you mananged that worries me – and I'll be needed to check all your North Yorkie hermits and shepherds.'

If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, fate cannot resist a woman determined. Abigail had a quiet word with Captain Beresford, who nodded and beckoned me over.

'Lady Forbes-Masson quite rightly points out that we have a spare person on the search teams. That being so, can you tab over to the metal craters and get PC Hill, bring him back here soonest?'

Abigail rested her hand on her heart and intoned, just this side of sarcastically:

'I'd be so grateful!'

That was me outmanouevred. I threw up my hands and surrendered.

Our UNIT Bedford left late afternoon, once the number of people arriving in and around the park started to fall. The plan for me was to accompany the truck down the A684, until it passed Bainbridge. From there a minor road ran south, enabling me to cut across the moors and get to the crater site in about half an hour.

Nick poked around in his rucksack whilst we left Hawes, coming out with a magazine of bullets for a .45 pistol. He tossed them to me.

'Here, go on. Armour-piercing. I was going to scalp you for them, but your need seems to be greater than mine.'

Fitz – no, no, Captain March, Captain March! – opened up the truck's sole Emergency Response Kit. He passed me the single-shot pistol and five gold bullets for it.

'That's a months wages there,' he tried. 'Don't waste it.'

'Oxnop Cottage,' declared Corporal Higgins from the cab, slowing down slightly. 'First team out!'

Privates Ely and Pooley dropped off the back of the Bedford, sneaking into cover of the roadside wall. Oxnop's elderly resident hadn't been seen for a day or two, but she was frail and quite legitimately likely to stay inside for days at a time. Our intrepid two would check.

Next destination was Cragdale, a farm that had seen better days. Privates Browne and Green got that one. I didn't envy them, the approach ran for two miles uphill on a rutted track. Nick and Tad got dropped at Huxhaven, another small cottage, and by then it was time for me to leave the truck.

'RV back at Hawes,' said Captain Beresford. 'With PC Hill. Hit him over the head if you have to, but get him back there. Or that bloody woman will create a blue ruction!'

'Right you are, sir,' I said, wondering what a "blue ruction" might be, but in no doubt who "that bloody woman" was.

The precious-metal pistol went into a pocket, whilst I swapped magazines on the .45 while still walking, gradually becoming aware of a pair of hikers who had stopped dead in the middle of the track. Granted, you don't often encounter armed soldiers checking weapons and ammunition when having a quiet stroll in the dales.

'The foot-and-mouth virus,' I lied, hugely. 'Sends them mad. I have to shoot them dead to prevent cattle running amuck.'

Nodding, pale-faced, the two hikers headed towards Hawes at speed. They cast occasional glances over their shoulders until a turn in the road hid them from view.

Now I really was alone. No company in the shape of taciturn Pole or wheedling Scot, this afternoon all I had for company were my own thoughts. Once again the silence of the rolling moorland came home, not even the sound of insects to break the leaden air. Even the curlews had gone home.

"Woodcutter" might well be out on the moors right now, have me in their sights and be closing in. Would I even know? Yes, if they stood upright. There simply wasn't enough cover for a seven foot cyborg to hide amongst.

After a rapid, three-hundred-and-sixty degree sweep, I gladly acknowledged that I was alone. Almost alone – the radio put me in touch with the bigger version in our Bedford. What had they found in the run-down farms and cottages along the main road?

I tried to call in, thumbing the transmit switch, only to get a solid wall of static. Giving it five minutes to get out of the black-spot, I tried again, only to get more static.

The Chief Inspector mentioned that this was a reception black-spot, but we'd not had any problems before. My curiosity about the other searchers must wait, then.

A nasty surprise awaited me at the taped-off craters: no PC Hill. His little canvas tent was still there, with yesterday's copy of the Daily Mirror, and an empty flask of coffee. There was no sign of any struggle, no blood, nothing in the dry ground to indicate a scuffle. Still, there was no sign of the constable, either.

Before I realised consciously, I had drawn my pistol and crouched down, sweeping the moor and nearby stunted pines and gorse through the gunsight – and focussing on PC Hill, emerging from behind a gorse bush and doing up his zip.

'Don't shoot!' he bleated. 'I was only having a pee!'

'You bag of sand!' I scolded, straightening up. 'I've been sent to get you back to Hawes.'

Immediately his face brightened.

'Brilliant! Is the emergency over, then?'

'No! It isn't over, it's only just begun. We're dealing with the Cybermen here.'

Abruptly his face got serious.

'Are you certain? They were wiped out, you know.'

I pointed at the metal craters.

'Not the ones hiding in there. Come on, we're leaving.'

Before leaving, PC Hill got his paper; he'd not finished the crossword. That done, we got back up the slight slope of the area where the craters were, all set to head west.

'Your friends have come to back you up,' pointed PC Hill.

Taking a long, careful look, I stretched out my arm and pressed him slowly downwards by the shoulder, until he crouched painfully and awkwardly next to me, staring in puzzlement.

'Shh!' I pantomimed, silently. Moving slowly, I looked over the sloping rim of the depression we were in.

What looked at first glimpse like a skirmish line of soldiers was out there, moving towards us. Not quickly. That spoilt the image of a squad advancing. This lot strode, at exactly the same pace, and all at the same time. Ten in the first line, ten in the second. Moving like a lot of machines. They were draped with camouflage netting, breaking up their outlines, but the hint of big square "ears" standing out from their heads gave me all the confirmation I needed. They appeared to have adopted a green-brown-black camouflage paint scheme. At a distance, or in poor light, they could be mistaken for soldiers.

PC Hill opened his mouth to ask a question, only to have me glare furiously at him and drag him back into the depression.

'Duck down, get to the far side, and crawl up the edge. Head north-east and stay down until I tell you.'

Our progress might have been quicker if I hadn't spotted movement at ground level off to the south of the craters and made an inelegant duck-walk over there.

'What's that?' asked PC Hill, astonished at the rearing, metallic, articulated object. 'A snake?'

Sighting along the .45 barrel, I put a round straight into the thing's iron guts, not stopping to see what the damage was.

'That was a Cybermat.'

He was behind me, but I could tell his expression would be one of puzzlement.

'Combination scout and sentry, and occasional killer, too. If it spotted us, then the Cybermen know we're here.'

I went at the terrain like a terrier, and the constable followed me. We crawled at least a hundred yards, down in the heather and grass, scaring the insects, before I waved at him.

'Move at a crouch, fast as you can, heading north,' I whispered.

Sweaty, dirty and looking worried, he followed me for at least five minutes before I stopped to scan the landscape.

We were higher than the crater site, even if not by much. The rolling moorland had risen by a few dozen yards, allowing us to look down on the twenty Things milling around the three metallic craters.

'Are those Cybermen!' asked PC Hill, disbelief apparent in his voice. Without binoculars I couldn't say with absolute certainty, but what I'd witnessed meant I knew already.

'Yes. We need to get distance between us fast. Come on, follow me.'

He followed and I led, heading as directly north as I could manage, holding a picture of the landscape in my mind. We got half a mile ahead of our pursuers before they spotted us and began to move out again, the twin line of the group swinging around to face northwards. I tried to call in on my radio, only to get static.

'Hold on, I'm knackered,' wheezed the policeman. He glanced back at our pursuit. 'And they're bloody slow.'

Leaning forwards with hands on knees, I got a good thirty seconds rest as well.

'Three miles per hour, we reckon. Not fast, not on this ground, but they can keep going at that pace for twenty four hours a day, all week long if need be.'

We set off again, and he kept asking questions. If it kept him moving, I was happy to keep replying.

'So they can't run? Useless clapped-out robots!'

Clearly he didn't know much about Cybermen, except that they existed. I panted out an explanation while running.

'On ground like this - turf and sod - they'd sink knee-deep if they started to run. They can manage a jog on city streets, not out here. And – they're not robots.'

'Couldn't you – just shoot them?' asked PC Hill, between gasps. 'Or are they armour-plated?'

'Ha!' I snorted, in amused contempt. 'Don't know much about firearms, do you?'

'That's what the Tactical Aid Group is for,' he grumbled. 'I had a shotgun when I were a teenager.'

'This pistol is accurate to about twenty five yards. The Cybermen can shoot me at about three hundred yards. Do your sums. Plus, I've only got seven armour-piercing rounds left.'

PC Hill nodded in silent acknowledgement, being slightly out of breath.

'You can't take them on, hand to hand, like?' he asked, rubbing under one rib and suffering from a stitch. 'Being a big lad and all.'

'Don't be bloody stupid! If I were to punch one of them in the face, I'd break my hand. If they punched me in the face, they'd shatter my skull.'

What I wanted came into view, the wall that ran either side of the A684 road to Leyburn. I pointed, and led the way. By the time we got there neither of us were moving very rapidly. I dumped my Bergen on the road side of the wall, after taking out the spare magazine for the Colt. PC Hill got the single-shot pistol and the gold bullets. Another try on the radio produced only static again.

'A quick rest,' I warned him. 'Then over the other wall.'

'Have you got a plan? 'Cos if you have I'd like to know it,' he said, wiping his brow. 'I'm not in shape to keep running all day.'

Looking both ways along the road revealed exactly no traffic at all. That figured. The road cordon wouldn't be letting anyone in, and anyone leaving by road wouldn't be allowed back. I told the constable about the "foot and mouth" alert, the cordon established beyond and the helicopters due to arrive next day. His mouth sagged in dismay when I mentioned "morning".

'I can't keep running all night!'

'Assault Platoon will be up here before then. Mind you, I expect Willy Walker will quite happily sacrifice us two rather than risk an improvised battle at night.'

Over the other wall we slithered, down a dip and into what I wanted to see, Slaithwaite Burn.

'Get in the middle and stay in the stream,' I warned PC Hill.

'It's bloody freezing!' he complained, slipping on the stones in the stream bed.

'Oh shut up you snivelling Yorkie pug!' I snapped back at him. 'This way those tin horrors can't track us.'

'I'm not in the army,' he replied hotly. 'And I don't have to take orders from you! Fat Lanky sod,' he ended, muttering.

'That's the spirit!' I told him, as positively as possible. 'Emotions. Adrenaline. That's what we want.' Things that upset the tin men's calculations about our endurance or speed.

Shaking his head and tutting, he splashed along behind me.

'Where are we going? And you still haven't explained your wonderful plan, if you have one.'

Almost going head-over-heels on smooth stream pebbles, I pointed north.

'We keep going this way, away from population. That's why we're not heading back to Hawes. My plan is to keep well ahead of the clockwork cowboys, and away from any hapless civilian bystanders.'

Stay mobile, that was my raison d'etre. The beautiful, empty countryside didn't help very much; there was no dense cover to conceal us, no arduous terrain to slow the pursuit, nothing that might provide materials for any defence. I tried the radio and got mush. That was it – this wasn't a reception black-spot, we were being deliberately jammed.

After splashing along the burn for at least a mile and enduring feet that gradually lost feeling, I decided on a whimsical gambit.

'Okay – time for you to get a piggy-back, Constable.'

He stopped and stared at me.

'Sorry, Captain, I don't think I know you that well.'

He got a three-second dose of the Killer Eyeball Mark One.

'Don't fart around. We need to reduce our trail to a single set of footprints.'

Gradually, carefully, and with great pains taken to not strangle me, Eddie – less of the formalities thanks to piggy-backing – climbed on my back.

'Good God!' I choked. 'Who ate all the pies!'

Slowly, and achingly, I walked backwards out of the stream, heading for the track that ran between Woodhall and Carperby, lying to the north of the Slaithwaite Burn. Not far on the map, yet it felt like a journey of weeks to me. Fortunately the track didn't have a protective wall, merely an grassy earthern bank.

'Done!' announced Eddie, dropping lightly to his feet on the barely-metalled road.

My back protested, as did my ribs.

'Let's head north again. If I remember correctly, there's another stream north of us.'

We struck northwards again, me in the lead and having to slow down and wait for the constable. The going was still uphill.

'Less of the beer and fags in future,' I warned him.

'If we have a future,' he wheezed. An empty barn sat in front of us, standing next to a derelict stone building fallen to bits. Once behind this shelter, we stopped for a breather and to see what the clockwork pursuit were doing.

'Still on the far side of the Leyburn road,' reported Eddie, wiping sweat out of his eyes. 'Damn it, what would they do if they caught us? I'm knackered.' He eyed me. 'You're still fresh as a daisy.'

I tapped my pistol.

'Before I let them take me alive, I'd shoot myself. You too.'

'Bloody hell! Some mate you turned out to be!' he snapped. 'Thanks a lot!'

'They're monsters,' I said, simply. 'Even the Doctor hates them, and you have to be completely evil for him to actively hate you.'

The stone wall didn't bother the Cybermen, they simply blew a series of big holes in it and plodded down onto the road, then bang, through the other wall. At this point they must have lost our trail in the burn and began to spread out, which gained us a little more time.

'They're not bothering about being covert any more,' I wondered aloud. 'They may suspect we're onto them.'

Northwards again, and into a shallow stream that led off towards the east. Our feet weren't quite so cold in this stream.

'If they aren't robots, what are they?' asked Eddie. 'I reckon we've got nearly a mile ahead of them.'

In other words, he wanted a breather.

'Thirty seconds,' I warned, sluicing water over my face and neck. 'The technical term for them is "cybernetic organism". Combination of living creature and machine.'

I tried to recall the details of what the Doctor had told me about the "Conversion" involved in creating a Cyberman, and the relevant appendix in the Bestiary.

'What – you mean that's like armour-plating over them?' asked Eddie.

'Not entirely. Come on, keep behind me and I'll tell you. First, they don't kill unless they have to, because they turn human beings into Cybermen, and killing removes your supply of tin men.'

Over the curve of the rolling hills ahead a huge stone structure came slowly into view, battered and forlorn. What the hell was it?

'Bolton Castle,' announced Eddie. 'The National Trust are renovating it. Go on with what you were saying.'

'It's not pleasant! First, they paralyse you, then they remove the top of your skull - ' at which Eddie made a noise of disgust. ' – and then they cut out bits of your brain, burn other parts out with electricity and chemicals, then stick a computer in there that turns you into an obedient little Cyber-slave.'

Various sounds of expressed dislike came from my comrade-in-peril.

'That's just the start. Then they chop your arms and legs off, and replace them with cybernetic replacements. "Prosthetics", that's the jargon. By that time you're an unfeeling mindless drone, and then they take out your eyes and replace them with optical sensors. Oh, they cut off your face, and the whole front of your skull, if I remember properly. They take off your lower jaw and wire your voicebox up to a mechanical gadget that does the speaking for you.'

'I feel ill,' complained Eddie.

'Not done yet! They remove your lungs and heart and replace them with a power unit, with a set of external controls. That's what's vulnerable to gold – get them in the chest unit with a bit of gold and they froth to death like a salted slug.'

Eddie spat in the stream.

'No effing wonder you said you'd die – I see your point.'

From what the Doctor said, I think the tin men stuck a few more gadgets inside their latest victim, pumped the rest of your innards full of a plastic solvent and let it dissolve what was left that they didn't need.

We sloshed slowly closer to Castle Bolton, and I made the mistake of thinking over what had happened up here on the moorland since those craters were made. I say "mistake" because I should have been paying closer attention to the surroundings.

Those craters would hold up to perhaps twenty Cybermen. Maybe ten to start with – nine Cybersquaddies and a Cybersergeant, with room to spare. They worked in decimals, Cybermen, so ten would be a useful number to hide away. That would still leave lots of room for other kit in their hidey-pit. Kit like a Conversion unit; the Doctor had mentioned this once or twice when I'd been wheedling Exercise Bannockburn info out of him, but I didn't know what it looked like or how big it was. Luckily no laser cannon, or they could have comfortably fried both of us ten times over before we even got to the Leyburn road.

Lots of room for other hapless victims for Conversion, too. A walker or hiker who stumbled across the pits say once a year, snaffled up and turned into a human robot, brain filleted and insides turned outside, or into plastic slag. That would explain why there were now twenty of them.

The stream led us closer to the crumbling stone castle, a big square-buttressed structure with a fence around it, DANGER! KEEP OUT signs in profusion.

'Dangerous, liable to have bits fall off,' explained my local guide. 'The National Trust have been renovating it for ages. Plan to turn it into a tourist attraction.'

Good for them, they had a long way to go.

'No staff around today?' I asked. Eddie didn't know for certain but thought that volunteers came to work at specific times.

Tools and collections of stones lay around outside the massive stone pile, evidence of work in progress. A solitary person stood in front of the south-facing wall.

There are subtle cues that you pick up from other people's non-verbal communication, posture, movement, reactions and so on, which as an observer you might not always be conscious of. Within a second of seeing the man in a Barbour jacket, I dragged Eddie even lower in the shallow brook.

'What!' he crossly spat. 'That's Mattie Deakin. I recognise him.'

'Well I don't like the look of Mattie Deakin. Who is he?'

'A Park Ranger,' replied Eddie, now down on his hands and knees, soaked with sweat and stream water, not sounding happy at the silly paranoid soldier.

'Would he be responsible for looking after runs of game chicks?'

'Yes. Part of his job in the Dales Park.'

'Then he's not doing his job. A couple of poachers found a run full of dead pheasant or grouse, starved.'

Eddie continued looking at Mattie Deakin.

'Why's he out here on National Trust grounds and not in the park? And he's got a shotgun, too.'

I got a less-hostile look.

'Maybe you're right.'

Between the two of us we came up with a quick scheme. I slunk back northwards, over ground that put me out of sight of Mattie Deakin. The clockwork horrors were nowhere in sight; we had at least twenty minutes before they caught up with us, so there was time to sort out Deakin.

Eddie got the hard part, having to walk nonchalantly over open ground towards his acquaintance, trying to project an air of normalcy and matter-of-fact daily routine whilst being soaked and helmetless. I could see him strolling slowly over the moorland towars the invisible (to me) Deakin, waving an arm in greeting.

'Hello Mattie,' he called as I crept closer to the castle walls, pistol in left hand, Eddie's borrowed truncheon in my right.

'Leyburn asked me to come out and investigate,' panted Eddie, slowly getting closer.

'What is the matter?' asked Deakin, in a creepy monotone. Straightaway my wariness climbed into the stratosphere; Deakin was not operating as a normal human being.

'Vandals, Mattie, vandals. Leyburn said the folks in Castle Bolton have reported kids trying to deface the castle.'

'There are no vandals here. Your presence is not required.' Once again that droning, emotionless reply.

'Have they tried spray-painting the walls? They did that in Kirby Lonsdale, you know,' said Eddie, coughing. That was my signal. I peeked quickly round the cold stone buttress, seeing Mattie Deakin with his back to me. His shotgun was unslung, not yet pointed at Eddie.

'You will leave now,' droned Deakin, closing the breech of the shotgun.

Hop skip jump, and I laid the truncheon smartly along the back of Mattie Deakin's skull, giving it plenty of elbow. He fell to his knees and then flat on his face, breaking his nose on the flagged entry to the castle.

'You violent sod!' hissed Eddie. 'Did you have to hit him so hard!'

'Shall we wake him and ask? Of course I did. He'll thank me later,' I replied, sarcastically. 'What are you doing?' seeing the constable inspecting Deakin's head closely.

'Looking to see if they've chopped his brain up already.'

'They haven't. What they've done is brainwash him to work for them. It wears off. In a week he'll be completely normal again.'

This is one of the few bright things about the Cybermen's brainwashing technology – it's not very permanent. After a week or so it wears off and the victim returns to normal, or as normal as you can get after having those things poking around in your mind. Providing, of course, that they don't Convert you in the meantime.

Eddie continued muttering about concussion and skull fractures, whilst I began to get a nasty, apprehensive feeling in my stomach.

Mattie Deakin had been standing outside the main entrance to the castle, on guard. A sentry. What was he guarding?

In that moment I had the answer to several questions, suddenly enough to make me smack the Colt against my temple.

'Feeling guilty?' jibed Eddie, before hearing a long stream of curses from me. 'Oh you are.'

Yes, except not about clouting his friend about the head.

'Eddie – this castle is built on solid ground, correct? Which wouldn't show footprints from inhumanly heavy traffic. It has extensive flagged areas, that wouldn't show the passage of heavy traffic. Stones don't leave footprints. I thought the tin men were chasing us, and they might have been initially, but I think this place is their hide and they're returning back to it! Damn it all, I've been leading us straight into trouble instead of away from it!'

Great. Better keep an eye open for Cybermats. I warned Eddie.

'Activated by the brain of a dog or cat? That's horrid!' he complained.

'It is, isn't it?'

The concept of a kennel, once in my mind, led to another question.

'Is there a dungeon in this place?'

'Dunno. I suppose so, it is a castle. Why?'

'My suspicious mind. Handcuff his right wrist to his left ankle – no, behind his back. Right, come on.'

Weeds, fallen masonry and small shrubs inhabited the interior quadrangle of the castle. A nasty smell assailed our noses once in this enclosed space.

'Smells like offal. Rotting offal,' I decided. Eddie sniffed and nodded. He led with his nose around the interior, coming to a nondescript doorway that led into the interior of the castle, behind a wire fence.

'It's strongest here. What say we go have a look at what's creating this stink?'

No flies. Given that the stench of rotting-whatever was almost visible on the air, an absence of flies was strange.

The wire fence turned out to be hinged, on pivots, and swung out silently into the quadrangle. Easy access. Far too easy, in fact. This obstacle was supposed to deter people, not allow entry in no time at all. A damp passageway led inside, then plunged downwards in a set of steps, worn away in the middle. A rusty handrail had been set into the left-hand wall. What caught both our eyes was light spillage from where the passage turned right, indicating artificial illumination.

By this point the smell got so bad I had to breathe through my mouth alone. The cause of it could only be ghastly. Deep breath, John boy, and tiptoe silently down the stairs. Your imagination is only making it worse, whatever is down there can't be that bad.

Being stone, there was no give-away creaking or squeaking as there would have been on wooden steps, so the pair of us got to ground level noiselessly. Eddie had the precious-metal pistol cocked and ready to fire, and I could see his wide, scared eyes in the backwash of light.

Okay, first, listen. Subdued humming noises, random clicking, muted beeps. Nothing to indicate any hostiles moving around in what must be an underground cellar or dungeon. Next, peek. Using my trusty boot knife, I angled it around the corner. Mysterious shapes and objects reflected on the blade, nothing moving or Cyberman-shaped.

I tried to indicate "Go!" to Eddie in hand-signs, until finally shoving him forward. Both of us took the corner together and moved into what can only be described as a chamber of horrors.

Originally this chamber had been a good twenty feet long by twenty feet wide, with a low arched roof carved out of the native rock, damp, musty and mouldy. A single rusty ring set into a wall remained in place.

Now, floodlights secured in the ceiling corners over-lit the place, heating it up. A series of computers six feet tall stood against one wall, flashing and bleeping. Against the far wall stood a strange cage-like contraption, flanked by big metal boxes. Worst of all, against the near wall, and not two feet from us, lay a huge pile of rotting flesh. I picked out human arms and legs, discoloured and decaying, a set of lungs gone rainbow-coloured with rot, the hind legs of a collie, and a set of discoloured teeth complete with several fillings. There were coils of intestine, puddles of congealed blood and white inverted bowls that were severed human craniums, and then I looked away, feeling ill.

Eddie took it all in and was promptly sick.

'No sense of smell,' I realised. 'The tin men have no sense of smell, no refrigeration and it's summer.'

Eddie spat on the floor, leaning against a computer.

'Jesus Christ,' he intoned weakly. 'I though you were exaggerating before. God, this is awful.'

'Here. My canteen. Swill your mouth out.'

Abruptly, one of the big metal boxes flanking the "cage" began to throb, and a set of lights in a strip along the top flashed in sequence.

'Your photos are ready,' I ventured, which didn't go down well with Eddie.

That side of the box abutting the cage dilated open like a camera lens, and a horizontal carriage at floor level swung out from the depths of the mysterious box, carrying a cargo that was deposited upright in the cage, mechanical clamps securing it.

I say "upright" with poetic licence, since the – creature – slumped forward in a caricature of a portrait of bad posture. Eddie and I both got a good look at it. No mistake in definitions there: "it". The arms and legs were shiny metallic replacement prosthetics, squeaky clean, perfect definition, bulging with cables mimicking muscle. The scrawny, grey-haired, wrinkled and sagging torso that the cybernetic limbs were now attached to must have belonged to a person of at least sixty years old. Ugly, puffy red weals around the limb-torso intersections proved that the process had been recent.

The head was worst of all. Great right-angled metallic attachments stood out from bleached bone, temple to chin, secured by a metal skull-cap taking the place of a human skull, whilst the face had gone entirely, replaced by a metallic gauze overlay. One eye had been replaced by an optical sensor, which glinted in mirror-fashion back at us. The lower jaw was now metal, with a moving cut-out in the middle where a normal mouth might have been. Various tubes and wires led into the metal skull cap from cables that led back to the computer cabinets, and a single pipe that seemed suspiciously tinged with blood dangled from the metal-covered cranium. Computer programming being sent in, and dissolved brain being drained out.

That single, solitary human eye, reddened to practical blindness, pupil an almost invisible dot, focussed on the two of us. The metallic trapdoor mouth opened.

'PLEASE – KILL ME,' droned the creature.

Eddie jumped upright in fear. I leapt backwards in surprise.

'PLEASE – KILL ME,' repeated the mutilated entity, the single eye swivelling to look at either of us in turn. 'THIS IS NOT LIVING MY MIND IS GOING PLEASE PLEASE KILL ME BEFORE I STOP BEING HUMAN ALTOGETHER.'

I stared at the thing pleading with us, then back at Eddie, who looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach.

'You want to die,' I continued, dry-mouthed. 'Before you become one of Them.'

The metal-encrusted head nodded slowly. I stared at the floor, took a deep breath, then aimed and fired in one swift move. Right between the eyes.

The ghastly, mutilated thing shuddered and twitched then hung still in the restraints whilst alarms all around beeped and warbled. Lights flashed on the computer cabinets.

When I looked around, Eddie had vanished. Hard to blame him, really, considering what he'd seen down here. I rinsed my mouth out and spat water onto the floor, just as Eddie came back into the cellar with a pickaxe.

'Those tin bastards are about five minutes away!' he snarled. 'Which gives me time to work these things over.'

Swinging the pickaxe, he hit the computer cabinets one after the other, making a few scrapes and scratches.

'Armoured,' I judged. 'Here, allow me.'

The ceiling was too low to allow an effective overhead swing, so my strike came in at an angle. It made a hole in the cabinet top, about the size of a fingertip.

'Armoured on top,' I swore, getting rid of some anger with a few curses. Eddie perked up.

'Yeah, that's a liquid, and so's water. Empty your canteen into the hole.'

I did, and the Cybermachines didn't like half a pint of water, not one little bit. A gout of sparks shot out of the hole, and that particular cabinet began to steam and smoke.

'Right! Let's move!' I snapped, running back up the steps to the inner quadrangle. 'Get rid of that pick-axe, get a crowbar instead.'

I picked up a crowbar too, from a set of five foot metal bars lying outside the main entrance. No sign of the Cybermen.

'Coming in from the west,' said Eddie. 'There's a small side door at the top of a flight of steps on that side. I think they may come in that way.'

Being nosey, I had to check. Yes, there were the tin men, plodding along, this time in a crocodile. We had perhaps a minute until they got here. The lead tin man spotted me and aimed a weapon, so I darted back behind the buttress. Not a second too soon: with a sizzle and bang, a great chunk of stone got blown out of the buttress wall.

'Can we get onto the battlements above that doorway?' I asked. Eddie shrugged.

'No idea. I suppose so. We'll have to go up this tower here. Hey, what are you doing!'

I had taken my camouflage jacket off, and was scouting for the biggest bit of masonry I could find. There were several massive stone blocks, brushed clean and with identifiying black graphite scrawls on them, stacked in the quadrangle. I laid my jacket down and dragged a block onto it, then tied the sleeves together at the wrist and caught hold of the tail, hefting the whole thing onto my back.

'Top of the tower!' I grunted, staggering off the best I could manage.

There were no inner doors in the tower, luckily for me, since stopping or even slowing to open them would have been torture. An inner staircase of stone steps led up to the next storey in the tower, without a guardrail, making my progress slower but not too risky – it was a very wide staircase. The second storey had a separate staircase that moved up around the interior of the tower, with a doorway leading into both storeys above. Finally, a ladder led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling of the last storey. The ladder creaked alarmingly when I pulled myself and the protesting jacket upwards.

Collapsing onto the roof, I lay gasping for several heartbeats, before seeing Eddie appear from the trapdoor, clutching both crowbars.

'Where's that door in relation to here?'

Taking a moment to think, he pointed north-west.

'Below there. What – oh, I see!'

I unwrapped the dressed stone block, darted a quick peek over the edge and heaved it for all I was worth.

Only just in time. The last three Cybermen were queuing up to get in via the small sally-port door when my surprise hit them. There came a dull clang, as if a clapper had struck a flawed bell.

'Eddie!' I hissed in shock, seeing him leaning over the edge of the parapet. He darted back, pursued by high-energy crackles.

'You got one!' he gloated. 'Crushed flat, like a beer can.'

Back to the parapet, I lifted my boot knife after a pause, trying to angle it correctly. At such a height – I estimated ninety feet – detail was impossible to pick out, yet there were two camouflage smudges lying still down there.

'Eddie – where's that other crowbar?'

He shrugged.

'I threw it. It had a tapered end, like a spear, so I threw it.'

It wasn't possible, was it?

Moving to the far end of the parapet, I inched an eye above the stone and looked down.

Nothing left alive there. Instead there was a grotesquely-deformed Cyberman, head smashed in along the right hand side, right arm missing and right leg bent outwards. A trickle of fluids came from the smashed head unit.

'Christ!' I said, begging the Lord's pardon straight away – he was the only one capable of helping us now. Or maybe he'd weighed in already -

Eddie had been correct about the tapered crowbar – and he'd gotten the last Cyberman in the head, sharp end first. The heavy metal bar protruded from both sides of the metal monster's head, which lay twisted out of true.

'You must have got it in the eye,' I murmured. 'One of those open sockets they have. Bloody hell, Eddie, you must have a lucky touch. I couldn't have done that if I'd tried.'

He didn't reply straight away, instead peeking quickly over the south face of the parapet. More ferocious crackles came flying through the air, and a section of stone crenellation shattered apart.

'Yeah, well, javelin, hammer and discus at police college. And I couldn't carry a hundredweight of stone up five storeys. Listen, I can't see Mattie Deakin. D'you think they've killed him?'

I stared back.

'No bull, Eddie, if he comes at us, I am going to kill him.'

'You are a cold-blooded sod, you know that?'

'Enough flattery. Those clockwork horrors are going to be coming.'

Attack being the best form of defence, I wanted to hit them when they were coming up the stairs. Narrow, with no room for them to deploy.

'Ambush,' I whispered whilst we climbed down the ladder. 'We shoot and scoot. Get up the ladder first and I'll stamp on the rungs or shoot them. Stop them climbing up after us.' Tiptoeing down the stone flags and listening for the heavy metal stamp of our hunters, I didn't rate our chances highly.

It didn't do to dwell too closely on what happened after they trapped us up on the roof.

Taking it very slowly, we got down to the second storey doorway before hearing footsteps below. Only two of them, however.

By arrangement, Eddie ducked into the room, covering the stairs from within. I stayed higher on the steps, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

A big, blocky shape loomed up in the passageway, and Eddie shot it squarely in the chest unit with a golden bullet. The first monster dropped to all fours, allowing me plain view of the second Cyberman, and I started shooting at his chest unit. The .45 was deafening in such an enclosed space, which probably gave Tinhead Two an advantage, except that he couldn't defy plain physics. I could see big bright splotches of metal where the armour-piercing rounds hit, even if I couldn't tell whether they were penetrating or not. Their impact did knock the Cyberman off his feet, literally, as he backpedalled and fell down the passageway, unable to get any purchase on the smooth stone walls. The noise as he fell backwards down the stairs was tremendous, clanking and banging like a scullery full of pans being knocked around.

Meanwhile, Tinhead One remained on all fours, smoke and foam both beginning to pour from it's chest unit, a horrible droning monotone issuing from the mouth unit, which began to breathe vapours as well.

'Fall back!' I shouted to Eddie, acting the part and running back upstairs. He got into the top storey room several seconds after me, looking pale and drawn.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I think it broke my arm.'

'Wha!' I barked. 'You destroyed it!'

'Not quite,' he said. 'It hit me when I got hold of it's weapon.' He indicated a Cyberweapon dropped in the doorway. I stared at him.

'Up the ladder, quick smart.' I hefted the weapon, which looked like a science-fiction designer's idea of a ray gun. For a gun two foot long it also weighs around two stone, or as much as a Jimpy with a hundred-round belt. And Eddie dragged it up here with a broken arm.

'Stay up there!' I yelled at him, doubling back down the staircase to the storey below. The tramp of metal feet could be heard, echoing further down the passageways.

'You can bill me for this, National Trust,' I muttered, pointing the unwieldy weapon at the flagged floor and firing, knocking a big hole in the flags, then running back to the floor above and shooting holes in the flags there – effectively bringing down the ceiling below, to the effect of a couple of tons of stone.

'I used another gold bullet on it,' confessed Eddie when I clambered ungracefully onto the roof.

'Stop blathering and cover your eyes,' I warned him, crouching on the rooftop and aiming at the ladder.

Which flew apart spectacularly in a storm of wooden splinters when I fired the Cyberweapon. I slammed the trapdoor shut, then threw the bolt, for all the good that would do.

'Get back up against the parapet in a corner,' I warned Eddie. 'They may come out on the other rooftops and shoot at us.' Following my own advice, I crawled to the north-west crenellations.

'Are you married?' he asked, bizarrely.

'You're not proposing now, are you?' I replied. 'Sorry, don't bat for the other side.'

He stared at me in amazement.

'You can joke at a time like this! Good grief, you really are something else.'

I'm not sure if that was a Good Something Else, or a Bad Something Else.

'Comes with the territory. I'm not regular Army, and my brain doesn't work the way yours does. I don't get scared or frightened, I get angry.'

'Oh yes? You jumped in the dungeon when that – that – that thing came to life.'

'That was surprise. There is a difference.' Getting angry was not a good thing, it meant having to beat down the furious rage and think logically and clearly instead of charging into danger and getting killed needlessly.

The air between us crackled and hissed as the discharge from a Cyberweapon tore past us. From the angle, a shot coming from the north-west tower.

Why did the clockwork buggers only send two killers after us? Where were the rest and what were they doing?

'Why ask if I'm married?' I asked, curious despite our dire situation. 'D'you have a fit sister who's desperate?'

'No. I was just thinking marriage might mellow you a bit.'

'I wish! My girlfriend's father is a chilly old sod who doesn't like the British, or soldiers, or British soldiers. Our chances of getting his approval are about nil.'

'Irish, is he?'

'French.'

Eddie's eyes widened in surprise.

'Au pair, is she?'

My eyes narrowed in annoyance.

'You're lucky those clockwork buggers are pointing guns at us and I can't cross the roof. "Au pair"! She's a Professor of Applied Ceramics. Curvy and clever.'

Strange behaviour in the face of certain death, but that's how human beings cope with stress and distress. I kept quiet about my other girlfriend, an alien shape-shifter at the other end of the galaxy, two thousand years into the future. Eddie might not believe that, you see.

More crackling energy discharges went zipping past our protective parapet. Blindly, I retaliated with the Cyberweapon, not hitting anything at all except the sky.

'If you're not regular - ' began Eddie.

'UNIT,' I replied, making him snap his fingers.

'I knew it! I bloody knew it! You're the ones who dealt with the dinosaurs in London!'

Why is it that every Tom, Dick and Harry remembers the damn dinosaurs? Nobody recalls the first attack of the Cybermen, nor the Auton's infiltration. No, it's always the Fantastic Vanishing and Probably-Didn't-Exist-In-The-First-Place Dinosaurs.

'Yeah, amongst others. PASS ME THAT GRENADE!'

Eddie jumped in surprise, as I winked at him to hint it was a bluff. Cybermen are vulnerable to grenades.

'You put another nail in me coffin!' he accused. 'Bloody hell, what a bag of tricks you are!'

Flatterer. A faint scratching noise came from the inner quadrangle. Seconds later it was echoed from both the south and west faces of the tower we lay trapped upon.

Now what were the clockwork cowboys up to? They hadn't come at us in strength, not for at least half an hour after they ought to have done. Perhaps, and I was half-right here, perhaps they were trying to relocate the Conversion Unit. That thing had to be authentic technology of the future, an artefact they couldn't replace with local twentieth century substitutes. Hopefully Eddie and I had damaged the hideous thing enough to slow or stop any more hapless human beings getting the conversion process.

The scratching got louder, coming from the quadrangle. Abruptly, the hairs on my neck jumped to attention all at once.

Birdsweat. The metal monsters were climbing up the outside of the tower. Given that they had sixteen units available, send one up each tower wall, cover from below with two more, and have two on the nearest towers to shoot at us -

'Eddie!' I called. 'I'll do you a deal.'

'Yeah? What? Painless death – thanks a bunch!'

'Baffoon! No – if I get killed and you come out of this alive, pass my love on to Marie. Tell the Doctor to pass my love on to Clara.'

'Marie. Clara. Got it. Who's Clara? And which doctor?'

'Never mind! Don't you have any touching last-minute messages!'

He sat and thought, stolid Yorkshire thoughts. Long, slow Yorkshire thoughts. Damn it, Clint Eastwood always has a ready quip on his lips at moments like this.

'You can tell my mam, tell her that it wasn't me who broke the kitchen window,' he finally told me.

My shoulders slumped in disbelief.

'Eddie, we are about five minutes from a better world. You want me to bang on about a bit of smashed glass?'

He shrugged.

'We can't all be supermen.'

I burst out laughing at that response, to his bewilderment. It was just so utterly prosaic I couldn't help but laugh. Trapped atop an English castle by metal monsters from the far future, and all he found worrisome was breaking a window.

'Sorry, sorry! Okay. Any other last requests?'

'Yes – what other UNIT jobs have you been on?'

This was sailing close to the wind. As a permanent UNIT officer, it was incumbent upon me never to divulge information about past operations to non-sanctioned personnel. Especially since Eddie might be in possession of top-secret info for maybe, ooh, ten minutes at best.

'Well, you called me cold-blooded. That comes with experience. I'd say that thing in the cellar was a four, maybe a five, on a personal scale of ten.'

Eddie sucked his teeth.

'What could be worse than that! Oh – can't you tell me?' he replied, adding in a silent mouthing 'What's that noise?'

A shrug from me, even if I pointed at his pistol in warning.

'Worse? Well, have you heard anything about Wandsworth Prison?'

'Yeees. An almighty slaughter, from what I got on the grapevine.'

Too bloody true. Marie still wakes me occasionally from nightmares about my entry into the abbatoir of Wandsworth.

'I was first man in there, with another UNIT officer.'

Eddie stared speechless at me for long seconds, cocking his head to either side, listening for more of the scraping sounds.

'And I'd say Wandsworth counts as an eight on a personal ten scale.'

My personal ten, the worst I'd seen so far, had been off on a jolly little jaunt with the Doctor, off to a world where renegade Sontarans indulged in casual slaughter for whimsical entertainment; tens of thousands of humans turned into mindless slobbering slaves who died by the thousand and got dumped in corpse pits with no dignity or compassion or regard. A lot of renegade Sontarans met the condition of Death By John after that. Anyway, enough of the far future encountered months ago.

Eddie coughed, re-arranging his broken arm and nodding towards the quadrangle.

'Oh the pain,' he hammed, maybe trying to distract our attackers.

Above the level of the parapet on the quadrangle side of the tower a football-sized metal dome bobbed into view, flanked by two aerials. The whole entity became clearer as a pair of metallic gauntlets grabbed the parapet and heaved our new arrival upwards, the dome being the upper part of a Cyberman's head, the aerials it's ear-units.

Whang! went a golden bullet as Eddie let fly, scoring a bright weal on the armour of our foe. I zeroed the clumsy Cyberweapon on our new arrival's head and pressed the trigger.

The weapon gave out a dismal triple honking sound, and the Cyberman dragged itself upwards even further. I tried again, frantically aiming for the upper chest, only for the apologetic metallic sound to bray out again.

The metal monster loosened a rod-like weapon from it's chest unit, clinging on to the edge of the parapet with one hand. Eddie was madly reloading single-handedly.

Light dawned on me, and I shot the parapet edge Mister Metal Mother was clutching so hard. The stone blew outwards in all directions, the metal man lost his grip, then dropped his weapon and tried to grab hold of the stonework, missed totally and fell backwards into the quadrangle, landing with a satisfying wallop.

This was a Cyberweapon, I told myself. It wouldn't work against Cybermen. Automatic cut-out.

Cue a mad sequence of shooting at the parapet edge, destroying the handy perpendicular that an opposing cyborg could climb by main force. The trapdoor set into the middle of our rooftop began to bulge from beneath, before exploding upwards in a storm of broken planks and shattered hinges.

Think fast John, think fast. I pulled the .45 from my belt, ready to let loose at whatever came up that hole. I'd aim for the eye holes.

BANG! went a weapon outside the castle, very loudly indeed, abruptly enough to make both of us jump in surprise. BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG. The sturdy stone walls shook, followed by more shattering explosions. BANGBANG. I risked a peek over the parapet to see the last two explosions targetted on the Cybermen that had been shooting at us from the North tower. Both blew to bits in colossal explosions as glowing dots streaked in to hit them, coming from the west. Missiles. Great big anti-tank jobs, too, to judge by the size of the explosions.

Way over to the west, behind that ruined barn and outbuildings Eddie and I had run past ages ago, I saw a helicopter bob up and down. A Gazelle, which must be using anti-tank missiles to be effective at that range.

'The cavalry are here!' I yelled at Eddie. 'Riding Gazelles not horses, but I forgive them!'

'YOU WILL SURRENDER TO US,' droned a machine-voice from below the destroyed trapdoor.

'Catch this 36 Pattern hand grenade!' I shouted, throwing a bit of rubble into the gaping hole. An undignified rumble of metal feet took place before they realised I was lying.

'YOU WILL SURRENDER TO US,' droned the voice again. 'OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU.'

I shouted back a rude invitation that a Cyberman couldn't possibly do, not having any gender or sexual characteristics.

A Gazelle soared into view over the castle, gaining height vertically, then staying static in the horizontal hover. Two bright dots detached themselves from its weapons rack, shooting downwards into the castle quadrangle at fantastic speed. BANGBANG.

'YOU WILL SURRENDER TO US,' droned that voice yet again, free from any novelty or irony. 'OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU.'

'Get it right, you idiots,' grated Eddie. 'You're the ones in trouble.'

At this point I'm afraid my temper took hold and I began to shoot the roof apart, dropping what the renovators told me was fifteen tons of rock and stone on the Cybermen below. Two of the remaining four were smashed apart, leaving the last two to stagger into the quadrangle. BANGBANG. Picked off by Gazelles.

Thank Heavens for the Army Air Corps. Thanks to my exploits with the Cyberweapon it was impossible to get to ground level in the west tower. They came down low over the rooftop in their Gazelles and allowed Eddie and I to get a lift to ground level.

There had been ten helicopters, eight gunships, one CCC ship and one carrying a whole complement from Hawes.

'Get PC Hill medical attention soonest,' I bawled to the world at large. 'Suspected broken arm. Oh – oh, hello Harry.'

Harry Sullivan, UNIT Aylesbury's resident doctor, appeared from nowhere. So did Nick Munroe and Tad.

'Another sucessful attempt to upstage me,' glowered Nick.

'Let's see to that arm, shall we?' beamed an enthusiastic Harry. 'I can tell you've been keeping company with Captain Walmsley, rough chap, no breeding, gets people into bother.'

'We found a Cybermat in Hawes public house,' added Tad. 'Proprietor of Green Man looked very green on discovery.'

The heroine of the piece was Lady Abigail Forbes-Masson. Captain Beresford informed me that everyone realised things had gone badly wrong when I failed to return or report in after an hour, especially as two of the isolated farms were discovered without any inhabitants, but with signs of significant physical intrusion. Abigail felt it fell to her to try and resolve matters, since it was thanks to her that I'd gone blundering into a certain-death situation.

Sir William Walker, on the other hand, wanted to wait until the cordon had been strengthened by the arrival of Assault Platoon, and didn't want to send in the helicopter gunships on an unfamiliar battlefield shortly before nightfall. He got over-ruled when Abigail's husband interceded in Whitehall, possibly aided by Nick's appealing to relatives there in parallel.

End result was that the Gazelles with anti-tank missiles went into action and pulverised the clockwork cowboys from a safe distance. End of story? Not quite.

You might remember Mattie Deakin. His shrivelled corpse was found on the stairs to the cellar, the handcuffs that Eddie used to detain him broken in half. Now, this is speculation, but my feeling is that Mattie getting smacked about the back of the head with a police truncheon broke the Cybermen's hold over him. They didn't realise that their mindlessly obedient slave was now a free agent, and released him. He spun them some bullshine story about where we were hiding and what we were doing, hence their less-than-efficient searching for us. That done, he seems to have laid his hands on cans of diesel used for the site generator, taken them down to the Conversion Unit and doused it in flammable liquids. The whole lot had settled into plastic and metal slag when we came to inspect it, totally useless. Mattie must have known this was sealing his own death sentence, but that's what human beings do, we commit acts detrimental to the individual in order to help the whole, especially when we've been working for inhuman metal monsters out to consume everyone. Personally, even though Cybermen aren't supposed to feel emotion, I think they were so pissed-off at having their state of the art Conversion Unit destroyed that they shot Mattie dozens of times just to work off their anger.

Anyway, I raise a glass to Mattie Deakin. Here's one to you, Mattie. You got your humanity back, and you shafted the tin swine to boot.

The affair didn't end there, oh no. The "foot and mouth" cordon got expanded, incorporating various Army exercises. Some folk even claimed to have witnessed gun battles on the moors, the poor deluded fools.

Well, they were deluded! All gunfights had ended when the Gazelles shot the Cybermen to bits. A series of sweeps detected and destroyed half a dozen Cybermats on the moorland, which amounted to giving the metallic trilobites a 7.62 armour-piercing in the guts.

Here is a good point to show how Eddie and I were saved. Tad, aptly enough, quick-witted chap, remembered the trail of footprints crossing Semer Water and plotted that track on a map. That pointed roughly in the direction of Bolton Castle and the village of Castle Bolton. Nick added a northerly vector from the Bickersdyke's farm, which also intersected at Bolton Castle.

The Brig came up from Aylesbury with the Assault Platoon, whose arrival no doubt caused tongues to wag in Hawes for weeks afterwards. Bolton Castle was out of bounds for a day whilst the scrap Cybermen were carted off. Eddie gave evidence about the ghastly chopped-about thing in the cellar that I'd killed, and nothing more was said about it, and I tried to forget it, too. We didn't even know which of the abductees it had been, poor anonymous sod.

'I suspected those damn creatures,' explained the Brig. 'Those metal craters had a look of the Cybermen about them.'

'Watch what you say near Lady Abigail, sir,' I warned him. 'She has hearing like a bat.'

'Lip-reading,' answered the Brig. 'Chairwoman of a local deaf charity.'

Sir William came up to shake my hand, all bluff good humour.

'I shall probably get made a Companion of the Bath for this,' he cheerfully informed me. 'Successful operation, you see.'

Yes, well, the sun shines on some people, doesn't it?

Abigail drove off Willie with her forceful stare and came over to see me and offer thanks. I had, after all, rescued her friend Mrs Hill's son PC Hill from being ambushed by the Cybermen.

'He said he would have given up if not for you dragging him along by main force.'

Eddie politely left out my warning of certain death if the Cybermen caught up with us.

'Not at all. Thank you for getting your husband to gee up the Whitehall warriors. Oh – would you mind winding up Lieutenant Munroe a little?'

By working overnight, our UNIT force cleared up the battle, leaving Project Broom to come along and pay the National Trust thousands of pounds to repair Bolton Castle. They left out any blurb about a battle in the publicity I've seen since then, about the "luxury hotel".

A big black saloon came into Hawes to pick up Sir William and his anonymous minion, and Lady Abigail stood prominently at the front of the locals who came to see us leaving. Some of them looked confused, UNIT and the regular officers mingling.

'Goodbye, John. Parting is such sweet sorrow!' called Lady Abigail. She clutched a hand to her bosom as we drove away. 'Oh, the arrow in my heart!'

Most of the rest of us in the Bedford were in on it, with the exception of Nick. His mouth fell open and he made a strangled choke, which gradually resolved into words.

'Good God! You didn't - John! She's old enough to be your grandmother, let alone – let – oh, I see, yes, very amusing,' he finished acidly as the whole collection of us burst out laughing.

More serious conversation took place on the long haul back to Aylesbury. Mostly, I wondered why the Cybermen suddenly appeared out of nowhere at this precise point in time.

'I wondered that, too, John,' replied Fitz – sorry, Captain March. 'So did the Brig. He thinks the clue lies in the date.'

Mid 1976. What was so special about that?

'The Cybermen were here in 1969, weren't they?' continued F – Captain March. 'Well, as the Brig pointed out, they didn't arrive en masse overnight. There's no proof, not any more, thanks to Vaughn's computers dumping their information, but he reckons the first Cybermen arrived here in 1966.'

That made sound sense – a scout force sent to contact willing traitors on Earth, set up their hiding places, build equipment, get things set up.

I didn't quite get the rest of Captain March's explanation, so I daringly approached the Brig later that day – after dinner, when he was bound to be a bit mellower. He invited me to sit.

'I think Fitz garbled it a bit, John. Ever heard of the Auxiliary Units? No? I'm not surprised. My uncle was in one, though he never talked much about it. He was a Boer War and First War veteran, hunted big game, stuff like that. Crack shot. He enrolled in the Home Guard in 1940 when things looked pretty bad after Dunkirk, and then got invited to join an AuxUnit. Their job, if the Germans had invaded, was to lie low until the soldiers had gone by, then pop up and make life as uncomfortable as possible for the beastly Hun.'

'Stay-behind units!' I realised. 'NATO has similar ones in West Germany, in case the Warsaw Pact develops an irresistible urge to paddle in the Channel.'

'Quite,' he acknowledged. 'What the thought processes of the Cybermen are is a moot point, but I suspect that these metal craters concealed a stay-behind force with instructions to emerge ten years after arrival. If the whole world was enslaved, they'd merely have arrived late. If their original invasion had been defeated, then they'd start again.'

He held up a hand before I could start more questions.

'Before you start, no, we don't know why they were active in Sakmara. Unofficially, I have been told that a review of Russian MVD radio logs reveals that the security staff there might have actually blown the plant up themselves.'

Low whistle from me. Desperate measures! Thinking about the mathematics of the situation, I realised that the Cybermen's stay-behind team in the USSR could have totalled five of their ghastly Conversion Units, and fifty Cybermen to begin with. Let loose on the mineral plant, they could have overwhelmed the human staff.

PC Hill is now Sergeant Hill, and he regularly dines out on how he spent an afternoon of terror with a mad UNIT officer. I got his home number and rang his mum with the message about the kitchen window. More positively, he didn't take offence at me threatening him with instant death. In fact, when a motorcycle patrol pulled me over in Kirby Lonsdale for speeding ages later, the officer radioed in, came back and tore up the ticket in front of me.

'Sergeant Hill sends his regards, sir, and mind how you go now.'

See, that's another thing that humans do, look out for each other.