Doctor Who and the Daleks

by David Whitaker

  Suddenly I saw just the tip of a Dalek sucker pad edging its way out of one of the doorways. I flashed a look around the chamber and saw more Daleks. I could smell the evil in the air; it was like a poisonous gas that set every nerve on edge and sharpened every instinct. I jumped forward into the doorway.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ I shouted and all the Thals wheeled round and stared at me. ‘Don’t just stand there…’

  A Dalek shot out of its hiding-place about thirty yards away and I saw its gun-stick swivel and point at me. I threw myself sideways and rolled away desperately, hearing the short, sharp crackling sound as the gun’s ray flashed across the chamber. The wall behind where I had been standing a split second before blew up in smoke and fumes, melted and blistered.

  There was immediate pandemonium. The Thals began to panic, turning and bumping into each other, and the Daleks emerged from the shadows. The Thals’ leader was the only one who had any presence of mind at all. He raised his arms above his head and his voice rolled around the chamber and brought everything to a standstill. ‘Stop! I command you!’

  Amazingly, everything did stop. The Thals stared up at him and the Daleks, all of whom were in view now, came to rest in a rough semicircle around them. The leader looked round the room and there wasn’t a trace of fear on his face.

  ‘There has been enough war on Skaro,’ he said quietly. ‘Our two races are the only survivors. What is the point of further destruction?’

  He folded his arms and gave every impression of confidence and authority. Here he was, unprotected and unarmed, defenceless in a ring of dangerous enemies and yet there was no suggestion of pleading in his voice, no hint of fear or cowardice. More than that, he was making his authority felt. It breathed around the chamber like a blast of cold air, demanding common sense and reason to pay him attention. It was absolutely magnificent and for sheer, naked courage I have never seen anything like it.

  ‘We can work separately, going our own ways, developing different cultures, amassing new thoughts and ideas, customs and habits until such time as they collide and argue with each other. Or we can work together, learn from each other, share the hardships and the discoveries. I tell you, this is the only way!’

  There was a silence and the leader waited for his answer. When it came it brought a shiver of horror down my spine and I felt all my nerves and muscles bunching together. I heard one Dalek voice grating out from somewhere.

  ‘The planet Skaro is ours. And ours alone.’

  I saw thirty gun-sticks raise themselves slightly and point at the leader. As if realizing his danger he made one last attempt to exert his personality.

  ‘Daleks! We come in peace!’

  The moment he had finished speaking thirty blue streaks of flame sped out from the machines and hit him simultaneously. For one single second his body was illuminated with a pale glow so that he shimmered as the lines of a ship do on the horizon. Then he crumpled and fell into the boxes and cartons beneath him.

  ‘Run!’ I screamed. The Thals started to race past me out into the city. I turned and fell and a Thal’s hand lifted me up.

  ‘Don’t wait,’ I said savagely. The Daleks were beginning to sweep after us, fortunately delayed by the crates they had scattered about.

  The Thal still held on to me until I was safely on my feet again. We ran out of the building together. Ahead of us I saw one of the Thals suddenly crumple up and crash to the metal roadway. A small group of Daleks appeared out of another building and the Thals scattered, taking one of the turnings to the left. The Thal I was with pulled me into a safe place behind an upright metal pole about six feet thick.

  ‘Haven’t you any guns?’ I asked him. ‘Didn’t you bring any protection with you at all?’ He just looked at me, rather pityingly, I thought. Then he searched the buildings behind us.

  ‘This way seems to be clear.’

  ‘Back to the forest?’

  He nodded.

  ‘We’ll be out of range there, I think.’

  I saw one of the Thals being chased along a little alley between two short, square buildings by a pair of Daleks. They caught up with him and pinned him to one of the walls with their suckers. I could see his face quite plainly, his mouth opening and closing and his eyes wide apart with fear. They fired into him and I turned my head away in disgust. The Thal beside me pulled at my arm.

  ‘We must go. It is senseless to stay here watching.’

  ‘It was senseless to come here at all without taking any precautions,’ I shouted at him. He frowned and shook his head at me, as if I were talking gibberish. Over his shoulder I watched a Dalek machine swing round slowly, obviously attracted by the sound of my voice. I decided it was time to get as far away as I could.

  We managed to get out of the city without any further incident and joined up with what was left of the main group, who were resting in the desert strip between the city and the forest. I suppose there were about twenty of them and they looked in the last stages of exhaustion. None of them spoke much and they all seemed dispirited and downcast, although they were considerably relieved when the Thal I was with joined them.

  ‘This is the man who tried to warn us,’ he told them. ‘My name is Alydon,’ he went on, as we sat down with the others.

  ‘Oh, you’re the one who met Susan in the forest and gave her the drugs.’

  He nodded and turned to introduce me to another Thal who sat down beside me.

  ‘This is Ganatus.’

  He nodded to me briefly and then looked at Alydon.

  ‘Alydon, you are the leader now that Temmosus is dead.’ Alydon looked back at the city without saying anything.

  ‘We lost about seven men, including Temmosus,’ Ganatus went on.

  ‘The others must be warned. We must move from this area,’ murmured Alydon and started to get to his feet. I stopped him.

  ‘Look, before you go, have a talk with my friend the Doctor. We’ve already immobilized one of the Daleks. They aren’t invincible, you know. We can work out some sort of plan to defeat them.’

  The two Thals exchanged glances and I could see how puzzled they were.

  ‘Alydon, you can’t just let your leader die for nothing,’ I argued.

  ‘No, I agree.’

  ‘Well then. Let’s all work together. I’m sure we can find a way to beat the Daleks.’

  ‘You mean that we should fight them?’ he replied, and the astonishment in his voice was crystal clear.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘That is impossible.’

  ‘But I thought you needed food?’

  ‘Yes we do, and that’s why we asked your companion Susan to intercede for us.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that because it was through her you were trapped…’

  ‘We would have gone to the city in any event,’ he interrupted. ‘But we can’t fight the Daleks.’

  ‘We won’t fight them,’ put in Ganatus.

  I stared at them in amazement.

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘What you are suggesting is that we engage in a war with them. War is alien to us. So is fighting of any sort.’

  ‘That’s all very well but—’

  Again he interrupted me. ‘Under any circumstances.’

  ‘But Alydon,’ I persisted, ‘the Daleks aren’t human beings. They’re just evil, half creatures, half machines, determined to destroy you. Do you really imagine they’re going to leave it like this? They’ll find a way to come out of their city and destroy you in time. You know they will.’

  Alydon nodded. ‘Yes, we must move to another area.’

  ‘No! They’ll follow you wherever you go. They’re determined that no one else shall inhabit this planet except themselves. Alydon, they’ve told us this. The very air you breathe is death to them.’

  There was a silence for a moment or two. I thought I was making some impression on them so I ploughed on.

  ‘I’m not saying you should destroy them completely, but you’ve got to show them you�
�re at least as powerful as they are.’

  ‘Which means fighting them,’ said Alydon.

  ‘Yes, probably. You know what the alternative is. They’ll exterminate you, every one of you, without giving it a single thought.’

  There was another, longer pause.

  Alydon said, ‘If what you say is true there is only one thing left to say.’

  I waited. Ganatus stopped looking at Alydon and stared down at the ashy soil, running a little of it through his fingers. Alydon stood up and his eyes met mine.

  ‘The Daleks,’ he said quietly and with a terrible sincerity, ‘will have to exterminate us.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Lake of Mutations

  The Thals had made their encampment quite near to the Tardis and, at first, when we arrived there were cheers and laughing faces from the women and children and the older men. I went over and joined the Doctor, Susan and Barbara and we all listened as Alydon related the events that had taken place. The Thals grouped themselves in a semicircle round Alydon with the children in the front rank and the mothers and single girls kneeling behind them, while the remainder of the men stood at the back. I noticed that nobody asked questions; they just seemed content to wait for the story to be unfolded.

  At Alydon’s feet sat the other Thal I had met, Ganatus, and a young woman whose name was Dyoni. Susan told me she was to be married to Alydon. Like the men, all the female Thals were perfectly proportioned and their hair was fair. As I watched the girls listening to Alydon’s story, I reflected that they were very much like a cluster of different jewels. Each one with her own sparkling beauty yet each one different. Of them all, Dyoni was undoubtedly the rarest gem. She wore her hair several inches longer than the other women, well below her waist and gleaming like fine spun gold in the sunlight that speckled through the dead white trees. The average height of the female Thal was about five foot six, but Dyoni was just under six foot and she had a superb dignity and grace which offset her height. I noticed she wore a small coronet on her head which bore some resemblance to the one the Thal leader, Temmosus, had worn. Susan whispered that she was his daughter.

  I didn’t know what to make of them. Alydon’s words echoed and re-echoed round my brain yet I couldn’t seriously believe that any person would willingly accept death rather than make some struggle. I whispered as much to the Doctor and he led us away until we were out of earshot. We sat down in a little glade and Susan produced wax cups of water and some food she had laid ready from the Ship.

  ‘From what I gather,’ said the Doctor, as he tackled some of his favourite Venusian Night Fish, ‘the Thals are the survivors of a terrible war. I have been talking to some of the elders and I think I can piece the threads of their history together. Two hundred years ago there was a vast atomic explosion here that destroyed all living matter but left buildings and construction intact. Because of mountain ranges and other things of that nature, some parts of the planet escaped the worst effects and the people who happened to be in those areas lived. It must have been a miserable existence for them because they had little food in stock and the air was poisoned as well.’ He finished his food and dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief. I offered some more food to Barbara but she looked away coldly. I imagined she still hadn’t forgiven me for speaking so abruptly to her in the city. The Doctor broke in on my train of thought.

  ‘The result was mutation, Chesterton, as you may well have guessed, and that must have been the most terrible hardship of all. To discover that the offspring were ugly and deformed, to ask each other why it had happened and to know that there was only one possible reason – war.’

  I had never seen the Doctor more serious.

  ‘War between whom?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, the Thals and the Daleks, my dear boy, without any doubt. The Daleks built that city out there and others like them and then exploded their bomb. The trouble was, the bomb was a million times more powerful than they’d imagined. It seems that this is the only city with any living thing in it that the Thals have found as they’ve wandered over the planet, so that’ll give you some idea.’

  Barbara said, ‘Then why have these Daleks survived?’

  ‘The mountain range, Miss Wright. It deflected the greater part of the radiation. It was the same with those survivors of the Thal race, too. They have come from a valley thousands of miles from here, a valley totally surrounded by enormous hills, I understand.’

  ‘But surely the Daleks weren’t always the way they are now, Doctor?’ I said.

  ‘No, Chesterton. You see, the Thals battled on with a drug they managed to evolve, which warded off the poisoned air. They perfected it until it was able to cure them from any disease at all. As time went by, with each successive generation, they gradually came round in full circle. What we see now is the result of total mutation. They weren’t unattractive people in the beginning, you know, but now they have eradicated ugliness and awkwardness from their bodies altogether.’ He paused significantly. ‘And from their minds as well.’

  ‘But the Daleks haven’t,’ said Susan.

  ‘Precisely, my child. The Daleks encased themselves in those protective suits. They became acclimatized to the poisoned air without realizing it. Now they need the poison just as we and the Thals need good, fresh air. So the mutation cycle has not completed itself and the Daleks are as you and I have seen them, Chesterton.’

  I made an expression of disgust.

  ‘Are they as bad as that?’ asked Susan.

  ‘Like something out of a nightmare.’

  ‘Well thank goodness we shan’t meet them again,’ she said. Barbara got to her feet and walked away slightly. The Doctor watched her carefully, then his eyes met mine. I raised my eyebrows but he shrugged eloquently. I knew him as an expert in summing up a situation and producing a solution with uncanny accuracy, but I also knew that he was not likely to hazard a guess about Barbara’s feelings. Or any woman’s for that matter. I got up and strolled over to her.

  ‘You’re pretty quiet, Barbara.’

  She started to break pieces of a branch off a tree and crumble them between her fingers, but she made no attempt to answer me or even give any indication that she knew I was anywhere within a mile of her.

  ‘Look, I know I upset you in the city. Will you accept it if I say I’m sorry I spoke harshly to you?’ I touched her arm lightly.

  She twisted away sharply and faced me. I could see a tiny pulse hammering away in her throat and her whole body seemed to be trembling with suppressed anger.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ she half whispered at me and there was such venom in the way she expressed the words I was completely startled. I have never been brilliant at hiding my feelings, unless I have it well worked out in advance, and obviously my face betrayed how surprised I was.

  ‘I suppose you imagine I like having you hanging around me all the time. Well you’re wrong! We’re forced together, I can see that, but that doesn’t mean to say I have to like it!’

  ‘But, for heaven’s sake,’ I stammered, ‘what have I done, Barbara?’ I simply couldn’t understand her at all. She turned away from me furiously but not before I saw the suspicion of tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, leave me alone!’

  There was a pause for a moment or two while I thought of any little thing that I might have said or done to offend or upset her other than taking the lead rather abruptly in the city, but I couldn’t think of anything. I moved back to where the Doctor was finishing his cup of water and I could see he’d watched the whole performance very closely.

  ‘A little rift in the lute, Chesterton?’ he said, beaming at me happily. It wasn’t a moment when I appreciated his sense of humour.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ I muttered rudely. The Doctor clicked his tongue sympathetically.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear. That’s a sullen sort of temper you have there, Chesterton. You’ll have to mend it, my boy, if you want to stay friends with everybody, eh?’

  I glared
at him murderously.

  ‘There are times, Doctor,’ I said through my teeth, ‘when I could cheerfully pick you up, turn you upside down and drop you on your head. Preferably from the top of a mountain.’

  It was so much water off a duck’s back for he smiled at me in the most engaging fashion, as if I’d just paid him a compliment.

  ‘Oh, you can work your feelings off on me if you like. It’s all right when I’m in a good mood.’ He came over to me and patted my shoulder. ‘But if I were you, Chesterton,’ and he glanced speculatively at Barbara’s back and dropped his voice, ‘I wouldn’t show any feelings at all.’

  He stepped back and suddenly in his eyes I noticed a genuine expression of friendship.

  ‘You’d be surprised what happens when you learn to control your emotions, my friend. It’s the quickest way to learn the truth.’

  ‘What truth? What are you talking about?’

  ‘My dear fellow, you don’t want me to tell you. The whole key to life is discovering things for yourself. What you do with that discovery is what lies on the other side of the door.’

  Alydon stepped into our little glade at that moment, otherwise I would have questioned the old man further. I hadn’t any idea what was the matter with Barbara and the Doctor hadn’t helped me one bit, although he was obviously driving at something.

  Alydon said, ‘Why did the Daleks kill Temmosus?’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ I replied slowly, ‘but I think I have an idea.’

  I saw Susan come into the glade with Dyoni and even Barbara forgot her moodiness sufficiently to come nearer and listen to the conversation.

  ‘Why are they against us?’ he said quietly. ‘We came to them in peace. We offered to work with them. And yet they kill us. Why?’

  ‘I believe it’s simply a dislike for the unlike,’ I replied.

  The Doctor nodded and added, ‘There’ll never be any sort of treaty or understanding between the Thals and the Daleks as far as I can see, Alydon.’