‘“You may show yourselves to your three companions,” Alydon replied, “but that is because you accept each other, just as my race and I accept each other. Yet I and my people are mutations.”
‘“You sound all right,” I said.
‘“Have you taken the drug?” he insisted, so I explained what had happened, all about the Daleks and everything. There was quite a long silence and then a terrific glow of lightning that lasted for every bit of ten seconds and I heard the one who called himself Alydon give an exclamation.
‘“You seem to be like us. This is the first time I have seen you clearly.”
‘“Then step out where I can see you. I have to get back to the others. They are held prisoner and I’m not sure whether I can trust you or not yet.”’
Susan looked over at Barbara and I saw quite a mischievous glint in her eyes.
‘There was a bit of a pause and then Alydon stepped out of the shadows. The daylight was coming back a bit now and although the lightning was moving away it still flickered on and off sufficiently for me to see fairly clearly. Well, I don’t know what they mean by mutations on this planet, Barbara, but he’s the most wonderful looking man I’ve ever seen anywhere in any world.’
The look on my face must have been a bit extraordinary because both Susan and Barbara laughed at me.
‘Present company excluded, of course,’ giggled Susan. I bowed, feeling ridiculous, and if you’ve ever tried to bow when you’re sitting on your haunches you’ll know exactly what I mean.
‘Be objective, Susan!’ urged the Doctor.
‘Alydon is about six foot four and perfectly proportioned and he has long fair hair. The scaly thing I’d caught a glimpse of is the cloak he wears.’ She glanced at Barbara again. ‘I’ll come back to Alydon later, if you like,’ and Barbara raised her eyebrows to agree to a future and secret conversation.
‘Anyway, Alydon walked with me through the forest and gave me another box of drugs just in case the Daleks wanted a whole box to themselves. He asked me a lot of questions about the machines and the city, most of which I couldn’t answer, but we agreed that I’d talk to the Daleks about the Thals and arrange a sort of truce.’
Susan leant a hand on her grandfather’s knee and looked up at him. ‘You see, the Thals have come searching for food, so I promised I’d arrange with the Daleks for them to give him some.’
‘So you made an arrangement with the Daleks, did you?’ the Doctor said very quietly.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Susan happily. ‘I told them all about the Thals and what they wanted and the Daleks said they’d let them have a supply of food and water. Those machines aren’t half as bad as they look, you know.’
The Doctor patted Susan’s head gently and got to his feet. His eyes met mine briefly and there was a thoughtfulness about them that made me uneasy.
‘Go on, Susan.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘I don’t know, my child. Just tell me everything that happened.’
‘The Daleks dictated a letter for me to write to the Thals,’ she faltered. ‘They gave me a sheet of thin metal paper and a sort of stylus. It just said that they’d leave a stock of food and water in that entrance hall where we were captured and the Thals could come and collect it.’
The Doctor sunk his chin on one hand, supporting his elbow with the other. His expression wasn’t unkindly but it was undeniably serious.
‘And how,’ he said quietly, ‘were the Thals to know it wasn’t a trap?’
‘I told them I’d sign my name to it.’
‘Which you did?’
Susan nodded miserably. The old man moved several paces away and I could almost hear his brain ticking over.
‘And when are the Thals to collect the food?’
‘Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises.’ Susan got up and ran to him and threw her arms around him.
‘Oh, Grandfather, what have I done? Something awful, I know I have!’
He stroked her hair gently.
‘Susan, I’m afraid you may have placed these Thal people in jeopardy. I don’t trust the Daleks and we have no reason to. On the other hand, I do trust the Thals. This Alydon of yours seems to have kept his wits about him. Leaving drugs for us. Keeping watch. Giving you an extra supply. These are two entirely different races. The one tries to imprison us, and when we are incarcerated do they make any effort to relieve our suffering? Not at all. They find out we have access to drugs and they send you for them. But they do so because they want the drugs for themselves!’
The Doctor looked at us all gravely.
‘Why should these Daleks share what they have with anyone else? Can any one of you show me even a small hint that they possess compassion or mercy or friendship? Are they even interested? I can’t believe it.’
Just above the Doctor’s head, I could see that little box with the six glass eyes set in it. What else could it be, I argued to myself, but a television camera or some sort of microphone? Probably both. If the Daleks were overhearing everything we were saying, the best thing we could do would be to shut up and not make our feelings so clear. I was so busy working all this out that I didn’t realize the Doctor had been talking to me directly.
‘I said, “What’s the matter with you, Chesterton?” I don’t believe you’ve heard a word.’
I got up from the floor and circled around him so that my back was to the box. Then I was able to gesture with my hand under cover of my body. I pointed back urgently with my thumb.
‘If the Daleks could see or hear you, Doctor,’ I said, pretending to be angry, ‘how do you think they’d react? They haven’t killed us and they let us use the drugs, and you can’t blame them for being suspicious. Give them time, Doctor, they’ll soon prove how friendly they can be.’
The Doctor wasn’t slow-witted. He simply nodded his head after his eyes had slid past me and taken in the box. Then he bent down and picked up the metal water pitcher and held it out threateningly with one hand while the other, hidden by my body, gestured me to retreat.
‘Are you daring to argue with me, Chesterton?’ he blazed and I started to move backwards. The two girls, who hadn’t any idea at all what we were up to, started to remonstrate with him and I saw Susan moving with the idea of taking the weapon away from him and that was the last thing we wanted. I back-pedalled a bit faster and the Doctor came after me, his eyes gleaming with hatred as he waved the pitcher dangerously.
‘After all I’ve done for you, to have to stand here and listen to you defending our enemies.’
I meant to fall anyway but I did it a little sooner than I expected because something tangled up my legs and I had to twist to save myself. I was able to see the Doctor raise the pitcher and throw it with unerring accuracy at the box on the wall. It hit it dead centre and there was a short flash and a puff of smoke and the box hung shattered.
The Doctor bent over me, beaming with pleasure and helped me to my feet.
‘Excellent, my boy, excellent. The perfect team, eh?’ He turned and explained to the others while I picked up the thing that had tripped me up. It was a long cloak with the pattern of scales all over it and made up of some material I’d never come across before. It seemed to be like a cross between silk and rubber yet it was of the texture of cigarette paper.
Susan said, ‘That was Alydon’s cloak. He gave it to me because it started to drizzle again just as we reached the rocky ridge.’
‘Come along, both of you,’ interrupted the Doctor. ‘Before one of those machines comes in to find out what happened to their apparatus. We’ve got to get out of this prison.’
‘And warn the Thals,’ said Barbara quietly. The Doctor glanced at her but didn’t answer her.
‘What do we know about the Daleks?’ I asked.
We all thought for a moment.
‘Those eye-sticks of theirs seem to have a wide range of vision,’ murmured Susan, ‘and they carry a powerful kind of gun.’
‘As I know only too well,’ I said,
‘but how do they work? The suggestion is that the Dalek himself lives inside the machine, or the protective casing as they call it, yet there must be some sort of motor. If we could find out the principle of the engine, maybe we could attack it in that way.’
The Doctor rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘Yes, you’ve hit the centre of the problem, Chesterton. This whole city, you know, is made from metal. There are even metal floors. Also, they told Susan they could only travel as far as the edge of the city.’
‘And they work on electricity,’ put in Susan.
‘But how, my dear? Here we are walking about on the floor and not getting any shocks or anything. How are they drawing up their power?’
Barbara said, ‘Then there’s that slight, electric smell they have about them. You know, it reminds me of something and I just can’t put a name to it.’
She thought for a moment then looked up, her eyes gradually opening wider.
‘Dodgem cars! You know, Ian, in the fairgrounds. That smell is exactly the same!’
‘I wonder if…’ began the Doctor, then he moved over to me and took Alydon’s cloak out of my hands and ran the tips of his fingers over it. He looked up at me.
‘Do you think the Daleks have discovered how to operate by using static electricity, Chesterton?’
Reason made me want to argue, but then I thought of movement through time and space and the change of dimensions inside the Doctor’s Ship. You can’t really argue when you have those things at the back of your mind. I shrugged. The Doctor grinned at me and patted my arm.
‘That’s right, my boy, always keep an open mind. I know the use of static electricity may seem absurd but it is an answer, isn’t it? Well, if they do, they only have one point of connection. They draw the current from the floor and pass it back again. Now, supposing, Chesterton…’ He spread the cloak out on the floor and Barbara interrupted.
‘Supposing we pulled the Dalek on top of the cloak?’
‘Exactly, Miss Wright.’
‘Will the cloak insulate, Doctor?’
He and Barbara examined it together and I reminded them that Susan said that Alydon had given it to her because it had started to rain again. And there was no doubt that it had a rubbery sort of feel to it. Susan sat down on the floor and took her shoes off and started to pick off some of the ash from one of the heels.
‘Well, we must try it,’ decided the Doctor. ‘Chesterton and I will do all the work. You and Susan keep well out of range.’
‘Actually, what I was thinking, Doctor,’ I said, ‘was that either Susan or Barbara could jam something in the door. We have no guarantee that the Dalek is going to enter the room, but if we make the door stick he might be curious enough to come in.’
‘Good idea, but you do it. Sit here and as soon as the door opens stick something right at the base of the pivot. The door slides sideways, doesn’t it, up and then into the right-hand wall?’
I nodded.
‘Doctor, I don’t know whether it’s occurred to you yet,’ said Barbara, ‘but the Dalek’s eye-stick can practically see all around it. You haven’t much chance of creeping up on it.’
She held up her hand and showed a lump of what looked like streaky plasticine.
‘Unless you use mud.’
The Doctor came back to me and helped me pick up some of the fragments from the floor that had fallen out of the broken wall box.
‘We can’t go far wrong with this sort of co-operative enterprise,’ he murmured to me and then suddenly I saw the door start to open.
Immediately we darted about all over the place. I crouched down as near the door as I could and the Doctor flattened himself opposite me, Susan and Barbara stood in front of the door, directly in the path of the Dalek.
As soon as the door was fully opened, I pushed the little piece of soft metal I’d bent off the box into the corner of the door. The Dalek stayed out in the corridor, apparently suspicious of us.
‘You have destroyed our communication system,’ it rasped. ‘You will all stand together.’
Nobody moved. The Dalek advanced until it was half-way through the door. It still wasn’t near enough the cloak for my liking.
‘Why are two of you on either side of the entrance. All four of you must be together!’
The Dalek obviously decided it was time to illustrate what would happen if nobody took any notice of it. I saw the short, stubby rod point towards one of the empty corners. There was a harsh crackling sound and a jet of blue sparks shot across the room blistering the wall and twisting and melting it until little rivulets of molten metal ran down and pooled on the floor. The Doctor and I glanced at each other and moved over to join the girls reluctantly.
‘It has not been decided,’ the Dalek stated, ‘whether the communication system was broken deliberately or by accident. It does not matter. You are no longer of any interest to us. We have tested the drug.’
There was a pause as we all looked at each other in bewilderment. The voice of the Dalek suddenly broke in, evidently realizing further explanation was necessary.
‘Several of the Daleks upon whom the drug was tried failed to respond to it and have died. The drug, then, is poison to us. To be able to rid ourselves of these protective suits and go out and rebuild the planet Skaro, the Daleks must increase that chemical in the air which is alien to you and to the Thals.’
‘But if you do that,’ spluttered the Doctor, ‘you’ll kill everybody else.’
‘The planet belongs to the Daleks.’
I stared at the machine in horror.
‘But you’re all right in the city. You’ve got the suits. Surely there’s enough room for you and the Thals?’
‘For a short time, perhaps. But as we multiply and as the Thals multiply, the conflict between us will grow. We will demand more of the chemical air and the Thals less of it. So they must be exterminated.’
There was another pause as the eye-stick surveyed us each in turn.
‘The decision as to your future,’ it said at last, ‘will be made tomorrow. After we have shown the race of Thals our power.’
The Dalek moved backwards smoothly and the door started to close. Then, as the door descended on to the piece of metal it stopped abruptly. The Dalek waved its sucker-stick over the eye on the outer wall but the door still refused to budge. It advanced into the room. I noticed that the gun-stick was directed at Barbara.
‘Remove the block on the door.’
I didn’t have any choice in the matter and I went over and threw the little piece of metal away. The Dalek glided out. Our plan had failed. Then Susan had an inspiration and shouted, ‘Bring us some more water. It’s all gone and you can’t leave us all night without it.’
‘It will be brought later.’
The door slid down.
Susan’s brainwave meant that the Dalek would return, but we had to wait three hours before he did, though the machine that brought our water may well have been a different one. Anyway, the door slid open and it trundled into the cell without any suspicions at all. We were all sitting about on the floor, the Doctor half asleep and Susan and Barbara playing some word game that I was amazed to find had Susan an easy winner. Apparently lexicography was one of her strong points.
As soon as the door opened I saw my chance because I was nearest to the door and rather to one side of it. I pretended to be asleep and as the machine sailed in I leapt up and pushed it from behind as hard as I could. It rolled over the cloak and stopped and Barbara jumped out of range of the gun-rod and smeared the mud she’d kept tacky right over the lens of the eye. I could hear the voice of the Dalek squawking but this time the words were quite indistinguishable, as if someone was being choked. The Doctor had woken up immediately and we all got out of the way of the front of the machine, well out of danger in case the gun-stick was still operating.
‘Susan,’ ordered the Doctor, ‘find another bit of metal and jam that door open. Miss Wright, go with her and keep watch along the corridor. Chesterton, you and
I are going to see if we can get this thing open.’
Barbara and Susan moved off and he and I started to examine the outer casing, looking for some sign of a hinge or a join. We found it eventually in the front, about a foot from the top and directly in the centre. There was no movement or noise from the machine at all, so we put our hands to one of the metal flanges and lifted up the top.
I don’t like to think about what we saw inside. It was an evil, monstrous shape. There was one eye in the centre of a head without ears and with a nose so flattened and shapeless it was merely a bump on the face. The mouth was a short slit above the chin, more of a flap really, and on either side of the temples there were two more bumps with little slits in them and I heard the Doctor mutter that they must be the hearing parts. The skin was dark green and covered with a particularly repellent slime. I felt my stomach heaving and I bit the inside of my mouth until I tasted blood. The Doctor viewed the thing with repugnance and wiped a hand over his brow.
‘This is awful, Chesterton, but we must get it out of the machine.’
After the silence, I said: ‘Because I’ve got to get inside?’
He looked at me keenly. ‘Yes, my dear boy. It’s the one hope we have. Can you do it?’
I was saved from answering because Susan wanted to come back and have a look at what we’d found. She took some persuading to stay with Barbara but at last the Doctor succeeded. Barbara’s eyes met mine and she knew that what we’d found was a secret she wouldn’t want me to share.
The Doctor came back from his argument with Susan, which had culminated in a direct order, something Susan always obeyed; and together we pushed the machine off the cloak. The Dalek started to move! I saw its head begin to raise slowly and was suddenly aware that it had two short stubby arms about two feet long and that one of them was moving towards a lever. Then the Doctor pushed the cloak inside the machine and we lifted the thing out and bundled it into a corner. It was the most dreadful and horrifying experience I’ve ever had and I could see it had affected the Doctor, too, because he constantly licked his lips as if his mouth had gone dry, and his cheeks had a rather grey look about them.
Doctor Who and the Daleks Page 8
