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here.’
‘Yes,’ Knight said contemptuously. ‘Perhaps you’d
better.’ Followed by Corporal Lane he strode out of the room.
Sergeant Arnold and Corporal Blake stood examining a
cobwebbed pile of shattered wood—all that remained of
several crates of high explosive. Arnold raked among the
debris and picked out a few fragments of twisted metal. ‘What
do you make of this?’
‘Part of our detonator. So it fired all right. But if it went
off...’
‘Why didn’t the tunnel come down? Why’s all this wood
piled together instead of scattered around? How can you have
an explosion without any damage?’
‘Obvious, innit?’ said Blake. ‘Someone interfered with
the charge. Maybe this Doctor bloke.’
Arnold nodded. ‘Maybe. I’d certainly like to know where
he is!’
The Doctor woke from a nightmare in which he was
running furiously through endless semidarkness—only to find
that the nightmare was true. He forced himself to stop, and
leaned gasping against the tunnel wall, while he tried to
remember what had happened.
The explosives had gone off while he was examining
them. But there had been no explosion, not in the true sense.
The cobweb cocoon with which the Yeti had covered the
boxes had somehoiv absorbed all the power. But the Doctor
had been standing only inches away, and enough explosive
energy had remained to send him flying across the platform.
He could dimly remember picking himself up and running
frantically into the tunnels, presumably in a mild state of shell-
shock.
Now more or less himself, the Doctor realised he had no
idea how long he’d been running or in what direction. He
might even have passed through other stations in his
headlong flight. How on earth was he going to find Jamie and
Victoria? They couldn’t be left to roam the tunnels, not with
Yeti on the loose again. The Doctor groped in his pocket,
looking to see if his torch had survived unbroken. It hadn’t
and he threw it away. Suddenly a light-beam flashed out of
the semidarkness and a clipped voice spoke. ‘Stand perfectly
still and raise your hands.’
The Doctor obeyed. A tall figure appeared, torch in one
hand, revolver in the other, covering the Doc-tor. It was a
man in battledress, the insignia of a Colonel on his shoulders.
Even through the semi-darkness the Doctor caught an
impression of an immaculate uniform and a neatly trimmed
moustache. The soldier peered down from his superior height
at the small, scruffy figure of his captive. ‘And who might you
be?’ he asked, sounding more amused than alarmed.
Feeling at something of a disadvantage the Doctor
answered sulkily, ‘I might ask you the some question.’
‘I am Colonel Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the
precise, military voice.
‘How do you do? I am the Doctor.’
‘Are you now? Well then, Doctor whoever-you-are,
perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing in these
tunnels?’
5
Battle with the Yeti
Although neither of them realised it, this was in its way
as historic an encounter as that between Stanley and Doctor
Livingstone. Promoted to Brigadier, Lethbridge-Stewart
would one day lead the British section of an organisation
called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), set up
to fight alien attacks on the planet Earth. The Doctor,
changed in appearance and temporarily exiled to Earth, was
to become UNIT’s Scientific Adviser.† But that was all in the
future. For the moment the two friends-to-be glared at each
other in mutual suspicion.
‘Never mind how I got here,’ said the Doctor
impatiently. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. The
important thing is that there are Yeti in these tunnels.
They’re robot servants of an alien entity called the Great
Intelligence. We must warn the Authorities at once.’
Lethbridge-Stewart’s revolver, which he had lowered on
seeing the Doctor’s harmless appearance, was raised to cover
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