"Cybermen?" the Doctor asked. "Why should they come here? This planet is of no strategic significance."

 The old woman smiled a toothless grin. "I think you can work that one out."

 The Doctor watched the approaching light in the sky. "This planet must be spewing chronons." He sighed. "Such a fissure can be highly unstable. I'm unfortunate enough to have seen it before."

 "Now you know how I feel, Doctor."

 **

 Bevin downed what was left of her Denebian Sparkleward and turned to Wil. "Come on."

 "Where are we going?" There was a hint of concern in his voice. "Back to warn the Doctor?" Bevin started moving towards the stairwell. Wil slowly followed.

 "If the Doctor needs warning, Nana will warn him," Bevin explained. "It looks as if the spaceship will land a few miles to the north. I think I can get us there in time to see it land." Wil said nothing. "If that's OK with you?"

 "Hmm?" They had reached the bottom of the stairs and emerged into the dark street. "Yes, fine by me" Wil lied.

 **

 The Doctor was still watching the ship. "Will it land near here?"

 The aged Bevin hobbled to her bed and sat wearily on the side of it. "There is a disused quarry not far from here. That is where it will land."

 "I should go there."

 The wizened old woman yawned. "You have no means by which to engage them in combat." Her face creased into more wrinkles. "Yet."

 The Doctor eventually turned away from the window. "Are Wil and Bevin safe?"

 "For the moment."

 **

 "Atmospheric turbulence is altering path, leader."

 The Cyberleader was built - literally - like his underlings, but with an enlarged head with black, rather than silver, lubricant pipes on top. "Adjust course settings to compensate." Its voice was a mechanical grating with only the smallest hint of vocal tone.

 "Adjustments complete. Rectification successful. Estimated touchdown in twenty cycles."

 Warship P8764X was on a perfect trajectory for landing on Altos 3. Had the Cybermen been capable of emotional response, the leader might well have congratulated his lieutenant on the correction. However, such "weaknesses" had been removed from the species centuries earlier, rendering such praise gratuitous.

 **

 "Where are your parents?" Wil asked as he and Bevin walked briskly through the streets of the city.

 "My dad died when I was three. My mum moved to the southern hemisphere ten years ago to study marine life there."

 There was a lull in the conversation for a minute or two. Eventually, Wil said, "My parents were farmers. I was brought up by a nurse most of the time though, by the request of the Lord who ruled the land where I lived."

 "Ruled? Sounds a bit outdated."

 Wil smiled. "You're telling me." She glanced at him and returned the smile.

 Bevin noticed people peering out of the windows of the houses that lined the roads they were walking along. They were presumably trying to discover the source of the loud rumbling that filled the air. This noise was due to the spacecraft which was now very low in the sky. It moved rapidly over their heads before disappearing behind the buildings in front of them.

 Bevin broke into a run. "Come on, it's landing!" Her statement was illustrated by a mild tremor. Wil sighed and ran after her.

 **

 The quarry was awash with breathless bystanders, all of them staring intently at the craft that had landed there. The spaceship was a massive metallic dart, covered in serpentine imagery. The snake designs seemed to be made from a different metal that was still glowing a dull red from the friction of the planet's atmosphere on the craft's hull.

 A hatch slowly opened in the side of the ship. Some of the gathered crowd backed away. Others murmured quiet discussions of the craft's origin and the beings that might be inside.

 In the hatchway stood a silhouetted figure. A metal-covered giant, only vaguely humanoid in form. It stepped out into the quarry, followed by Cyberman after Cyberman. They were carrying hollow cylinders under their arms.

 "They're armed," Wil noted.

 Some of the natives began to back away, several running full pelt.

 "Remain where you are," the Cyberleader ordered. A couple of shots from his lieutenants's weapon encouraged the crowd to comply.

 "I've a feeling they might be hostile," Bevin said.

 The shiny monsters began to round up members of the crowd and lead them into the craft.

 "I was wondering what was inside the spaceship," Wil admitted with the slightest of stutters. "It looks like we're going to find out."

 **

 Bevin and Wil were frog-marched down several corridors before they reached their destination. The room was about 50 metres square. Along three of the walls were disturbingly humanoid-shaped orifices. More disturbingly, Wil thought, some of them had people inside. His fears were realised when he and Bevin had been ordered into adjacent cubicles. The Cybermen then began attaching to them various devices, the purposes of which Wil didn't want to think about.

 "What are you doing to us?" Bevin asked. Wil wished she hadn't, and suspected that she thought the same.

 "You will be monitored for suitability."

 "Suitability for what?" one of the other prisoners asked nervously.

 The Cyberman turned to him. "Cybernetisation."

 Wil had a horrible feeling he knew what that meant. "And if we're not suitable?" he asked, pretty sure he could guess the answer.

 The Cyberman's mechanical voice answered him cordially. "You will be killed."

 Wil failed to find the knowledge that his guess had been correct much consolation.

 To be continued...