It spoke! I was so startled that I took a short step backwards and nearly fell over the Doctor’s body. The voice was all on one level, without any expression at all, a dull monotone that still managed to convey a terrible sense of evil.
‘What are you doing here?’
Susan seemed to have conquered her fear of the machines and it was just as well because I couldn’t have found the ability to speak if I’d been offered a fortune.
‘My grandfather is very ill,’ she said. I detected the slight uneven quality in her voice but I had to admit it was very slight. Her control was admirable and she seemed to improve as the amazing conversation went on.
‘Why?’
Susan looked at me in a bewildered fashion and then shrugged helplessly.
‘What does it matter why? Isn’t the fact that he is ill enough? Help us.’
The thought of these malignant things bringing out stretchers and drugs didn’t seem likely to me at all but I bided my time. The doorway was still unguarded.
‘Why is he ill?’ grated the machine, as if it had taken no notice of what she’d said. I decided it was time I took a hand.
‘It’s the air. We’ve just discovered it makes us ill when we breathe it.’
The eye-stick turned and regarded me. There was a pause of about five seconds, then the machine began to move backwards slightly and then stopped.
‘You will all rest in a compartment we shall show you.’
‘But my grandfather is ill! Desperately ill for all we know. Can’t you help us?’
The machine ignored her with a chilling repetition of its earlier statement and I thought I heard a more ominous note in the words. Nothing that one could describe as an expression exactly but more a sensation of definite command rather than the plain statement it had been.
I bent down and started to lift up the Doctor, motioning Susan to help me. As she bent down, my lips were close to her face.
‘One of us must get free,’ I whispered. ‘Can you see that doorway? Can you get away?’
‘You do it,’ she breathed. We made quite a play of making the Doctor seem heavier than he really was. ‘Take his key. In his top right waistcoat pocket. Bring back tablets from the drawer in my room in the Tardis. Bottle marked “stimulizers”.’
We gradually got the Doctor to his feet and he wasn’t completely unconscious because I could see his eyelids fluttering and his lips moved spasmodically, although no sound came. Susan tucked one of her hands under his left arm and took the weight and I pretended to be holding him up as I slipped my fingers into his waistcoat and took the key she’d told me about.
I winked at her and then let go of the Doctor and ran for the unguarded doorway. Immediately the machines spun round towards me and I heard a loud crackling sound. Something hit my legs just behind the knees and I crumpled to the floor in a frenzy of pain, suddenly and horribly aware that my legs were completely paralysed. I heard a short scream of helpless agony and realized that it was me who was making the noise. Pain stabbed up inside my legs, right up through my body. There was a terrible, burning sensation at the base of my spine and then again at the back of my neck and I blacked out.
The first person I saw when I woke up was Barbara. In turn I saw the Doctor and Susan. Barbara and the Doctor were both asleep or unconscious (I squashed the idea that they might be dead immediately), but Susan was very wide awake. I could see the marks of dried tears on her cheeks and her hair was disordered. I looked around me quickly and took in the room. Apart from one low shelf upon which the Doctor lay the room was devoid of any sort of furnishing at all. It was a square box of a room, made entirely of metal. I could see one archway and guessed rightly that it was the entrance. I couldn’t see any sign of one of the door bulbs that opened it and realized we were prisoners. I tried to get to my feet but my legs simply gave way. Susan came over to me quickly and gently pushed me back to the floor.
‘Don’t try to use your legs. Please don’t try.’
‘But they’re dead! No life in them at all.’ I stared at her in absolute panic. ‘I can’t do anything. Don’t tell me I’ll never use my legs ever again…’
She stopped my almost hysterical outburst with a finger over my lips.
‘Hush! You’ll use them again,’ she murmured. ‘The Daleks told me that the effect was only temporary.’
My heart stopped pounding quite so much and I felt the fear beginning to ebb away. Susan gave me a sad little smile but I found it comforting.
‘At least they haven’t killed us,’ she said.
I suppose I ought to have accepted that as some consolation, but I didn’t, simply because I couldn’t believe that wasn’t their ultimate intention. Daleks, Susan had called them. I asked her to explain.
‘I don’t know much more than that. We’re right under the city and we were brought down here in a lift. Barbara was in here when they pushed us in.’
‘How is she?’
‘Not as bad as my grandfather,’ she replied seriously, ‘but she’s ill. You and I seem to have escaped.’
‘Except for my legs.’
‘One of those sticks they carry is a gun of some sort. It projects a charge of electricity, I think. That’s what they hit you with. I spoke to one of the Daleks when we came down in the lift and it told me that they have built this city and that they think we’re called Thals.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Chesterton. I’m just telling you what I heard. I gather that there are two races on this planet – or used to be at any rate. The Dalek race and the race of Thals. The Daleks thought all the Thals were dead until recently and then their instruments began to record movements in the forest.’
‘Could that have been us moving about?’
‘No, this was quite a while ago. I’m afraid they think we’re enemies who are determined to destroy them. I tried to explain that we aren’t these Thals and that we aren’t enemies at all but then the lift stopped and I didn’t have time to talk any more. They’ve given us some food and water and it tastes perfectly all right. In a funny sort of way, I think they’re afraid of us.’
I digested this and it began to make sense. If there were only one race on a planet, or at least they imagined they were the only race, and then they learned that there were others, I suppose they might react as the Daleks had done. The thought kept repeating itself in my brain that what had happened to my legs was only temporary and I looked round the room, searching for some inspiration. Above the door, I suddenly noticed a small metal box with six glass balls set in it that glowed slightly. I had no idea what it was for but I marked it down for future examination.
The door slid open and one of the Dalek machines slid into the room, stopping just inside the doorway.
‘If you are not Thals,’ it grated out, ‘you will not have any drugs.’
‘We aren’t Thals,’ I replied.
‘But if you are, you must be immune to the polluted air. We are immune because of the casing we wear.’
The thought that there was someone or something inside the machine hadn’t occurred to me and I found it intensely interesting. I’d simply thought of them as machines.
‘You live inside your machines all the time?’ I ventured.
‘The Thals must have a drug to ward off the polluted atmosphere,’ the Dalek persisted. I suddenly felt Susan’s hand grip my arm.
‘Drugs! The metal box we found outside the Ship.’ She turned towards me and I could see the excitement in her eyes.
‘Don’t you see? That tapping we heard must have been one of the Thals. It dropped a box of drugs and that’s what we found.’
‘And the drugs have the power to ward off whatever it is that’s in the air, Susan. It may be able to cure the Doctor and Barbara.’
The Dalek had been listening to all this patiently enough but now broke in on our conversation.
‘We are interested in these drugs. We may be able to rid ourselves of these protective suits and leave the co
nfines of the city and rebuild the planet. You know where some of the drugs are to be found?’
‘We found some,’ I replied cautiously. We wanted the drugs for ourselves, not for the Daleks.
‘One of you will bring the drugs to the city.’
The Dalek began to glide backwards. I shouted out to it that we needed help to get back to the forest but the door slid shut. I forgot about what had happened to me and tried to get up and promptly fell down again.
I stared around me miserably. The Doctor and Barbara totally out of action, and although the air hadn’t affected me I was practically useless. That left a fifteen-year-old girl as a balance between life and death, which gave us about as much chance as a 500 to 1 outsider has of winning the Derby. Susan had plenty of courage and intelligence but she was scarcely suited to what lay ahead. I looked across the room at her, bathing the Doctor’s head with water from a metal pitcher and thought how small and defenceless she seemed.
The door slid open and the Dalek came into the cell again. At least I thought it was the same one. None of them had any distinguishing marks so it was impossible to tell.
‘One of you will fetch the drugs. It has been decided.’
‘We’re all ill,’ I said savagely. ‘Can’t you see you’re asking the impossible?’
‘The girl is the fittest,’ the Dalek droned back in its inhuman way. Susan looked at it and I saw how startled she was. I suppose it had never occurred to her that she would be chosen to go. The Dalek began to speak again.
‘The girl will start immediately. We have considered the question of the four of you. You may not be of the Thal race. There seems to be no reason for you to lie about it. Yet you resemble them in many ways.’
Susan said, ‘How do you know? I thought you said that you believed the Thals were all dead. How do you know what they look like?’
‘We know how they will look,’ was the enigmatic answer. ‘They will be much worse than you.’
I tried to work out exactly what the implications were. Worse than us? Yet we were like them in many ways. The Dalek began to speak again.
‘The chemical in the air can affect the structure and shape of human tissue. The race of Thals must be mutations. If they are in the forest where you say you have the drugs, you must be on your guard against them.’
Susan stared at me in horror and all I could do was look back at her helplessly.
The Dalek glided forward a few feet towards Susan.
‘You will start immediately.’ Again I heard that slight emphasis, the warning note behind the words.
After the silence, Susan said, ‘Must I go?’
I couldn’t bear to go on looking at her, I felt so helpless. Instead I glared at the Dalek.
‘She’s only a child!’
‘She will start immediately!’ This time there was no mistaking the menace in the words. Susan came across to me and I held her in my arms.
‘You’ll have to go, Susan. You can see how it is. The others need the drug desperately and my legs are useless. Just go straight there and straight back.’ I kissed her gently on the forehead. Then I held her head close to mine so that I could whisper to her.
‘Hide some of the drugs. The Daleks will take them all when you get back if you don’t.’ She nodded slightly against my chin and then got to her feet and faced the machine.
‘I’m ready.’
The Dalek moved backwards and Susan followed without even a glance back at me. The door descended and she was gone. I heard the Doctor muttering again, rambling on about the fluid link, a series of disconnected words and phrases that only told me how much his conscience must have been troubling him, even in his illness. Barbara didn’t make any move at all but just lay there on the floor, for all the world as if she were in a deep sleep.
For all the world! That phrase which I could use so thoughtlessly on Earth now came home to me. I wasn’t on any world I knew, any that I could trust. I was in alien surroundings, a prisoner and forced to give a man’s job to a girl of fifteen.
I pounded at my useless legs with my fists in a fury of rage and resentment, but it didn’t do me any good at all. Hope seemed a far away thing and life a gleaming comet in the sky that was rapidly burning itself out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Escape into Danger
About two hours later the pain started to twist my stomach in knots and I knew that the poisoned air was beginning to work on me. It didn’t make any difference that both my legs were a mass of pins and needles which told me the feeling was returning to them. My clothes were sodden with perspiration and after a while the room started to do cartwheels. I remember crawling over to Barbara when she started moving her head from side to side and making little sounds of pain, because I had some idea of bathing her face with water. I never made it, of course, and the worst of it was I knew I’d even failed to do a simple thing like that. Then the floor did some more leap-frogs over the ceiling and I lost consciousness.
The first thought I had when my eyes opened was that passing out was something that was happening a little too frequently to be funny any more. The stomach pains had gone, and my head was clearing rapidly, although I had the very devil of a pain in my left arm. My watch was clearly in view and I was shocked to see that over five hours had gone by since Susan had left. At that moment a cool hand was laid on my forehead and Susan was staring down at me.
‘I want you to rest for a few minutes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve brought back the drugs and given you all some so everything’s all right. All you have to do is relax and you’ll be fine again.’
‘What kept you?’ I managed to ask.
It seemed to me as I were speaking perfectly naturally but Susan told me later that I croaked so much I sounded as if I’d been in a desert without water for two or three days. Probably I was too relieved that things had turned out for the better to notice.
Susan’s story was an extraordinary one and she told it to us, as we lay there together gathering our strength, without any false heroics or affectations at all and my admiration for the girl increased a hundred-fold.
‘The Daleks piloted me to the edge of the city,’ she began, ‘and then one of them gave me a little push with its sucker-like rod and I nearly fell on the ashy sand stuff. They told me they could only travel over metal and actually I was rather glad because I was a bit frightened they were going to go with me all the way and find out about the Ship. I couldn’t see them clambering over rocks and things but still I was a bit nervous until they told me I was to go on alone.
‘I ran across the desert part as fast as I could and climbed through the rocks. Just as I was beginning to think the worst was over, the storm began. It was really frightening, great flashes of lightning and huge raindrops. And I lost my way.’
She looked at me with those huge eyes of hers and I began to get quite carried away with her story. I could see her running through that forest of dead trees, being absolutely drenched by the rain and then discovering that she hadn’t an inkling where she was or which way to go to reach the Ship.
‘All I could think about was what Mr Chesterton had said to me just before I left. “Straight there and straight back,” he’d said.’ She smiled at me very slightly. ‘I could hear those words above the storm and the wind and they stopped me huddling down somewhere and gave me a kind of courage. And my stars! I needed all the courage I had, Grandfather, because even in all the noise and concentrating on trying to find some landmark, I began to realize I was being followed!’
She couldn’t complain about our lack of interest. The Doctor was bending forward slightly from his sitting position on the bench and Barbara was sitting up with her arms clasping her knees, while I couldn’t take my eyes off Susan as she walked about telling her story and punctuating it with small, precise little gestures.
‘I remembered what the Daleks had said about the Thals being mutated and I had visions of some four-headed, six-armed monster lumbering after me. Well, I was determined I wasn’t goi
ng to be a nice little luncheon for anybody and I raced along, not knowing much about where I was going but hoping against hope I’d be lucky. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t far out at all, although I’d circled around the Ship a little. Anyway, I broke through the trees at last and there was the Ship in that sort of clearing place. I rushed over to the door and unlocked it and banged it shut behind me. Grandfather, I was saturated and I’m afraid I’ve left pools of rainwater all over the floor.’
The Doctor smiled at her slightly and moved a hand to forgive any imagined misdemeanour.
‘I think that was the really dreadful part,’ continued Susan, ‘knowing I had the drugs, or what we hoped were the drugs anyway, and at the same time being aware that there were… things outside the Ship.’
‘Did you turn the scanner on?’ demanded the Doctor and Susan nodded.
‘Of course, and I could see something moving in the trees. It had a scaly look about it.’ She clasped her hands in front of her and then brought them up to her face slowly.
‘Well, I knew I had to go out there. The only sort of weapon I could find to defend myself with was one of your walking-sticks, so I took it and tucked the drug box in the waistband of my trousers and went out of the doors again.
‘The rain and the wind had stopped by this time, but it had become very dark. Now and again there was a flash of lightning. I didn’t quite close the doors behind me in case I had to retreat quickly, and I stood there looking around. Just to the left of the Ship there’s a flat rock behind some trees and I caught a movement in one of the lightning flashes. I was just trying to work out whether I could make a dash for it when I heard the voice.
‘“I will not harm you,” it said. “Do not be afraid of me.”
‘I asked him who he was and he said, “I am Alydon, of the Thal race. Have you taken the drug I left for you?”’
‘Left for you?’ echoed the Doctor. We all looked at each other, working out the implications. Susan clapped her hands together and sat down at her grandfather’s feet.
‘Yes, Grandfather, Alydon had left the box of drugs for us. He hadn’t dropped it by accident as we’d imagined. Anyway, this all sounded promising so I asked the voice if it would come out where I could see it.
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