'We obey.'
The three Daleks glided away, and the other four moved towards the door.
The members of the Earth expedition waited tensely as four Daleks glided down the ramp towards them. Only the Doctor seemed calm.
'Well? Have you decided?'
'For the moment a truce exists between our party and yours.'
'Very well. It seems you're being sensible for once.' The Doctor sounded rather surprised.
'The truce will end when power is restored.'
'Agreed,' said Railton impatiently. 'Now, I suggest we all go over to our mining dome. We've located rich Parrinium deposits nearby and set up a dome to refine the ore. It's slow work without power though. Perhaps you can suggest some improvements in the technique.'
For a moment the Dalek leader made no reply. The Doctor guessed it was hard for a Dalek to accept orders, or even suggestions, from what it had been conditioned to regard as a member of an inferior species. Then it said, 'Very well. Lead the way. Lead!'
Trust a Dalek to make even an agreement sound like an order, thought the Doctor. He followed Railton and the others towards the dunes, uneasily conscious of the Daleks close behind him.
They had left the plain and were moving through a narrow canyon in the range of rocky hills when an arrow sped out of nowhere and buried itself in Railton's heart. He stared down at it in unbelieving astonishment, and fell dead to the ground.
The Doctor yelled, 'Get under cover!' and leaped for the shelter of a nearby boulder, waving to the others to do the same. He scanned the surrounding terrain. He saw only the high walls of the canyon, a scattering of boulders on the rocky hillside, the rounded shapes of the distant dunes. No movement, no sign of life. Suddenly he realised Jill Tarrant was kneeling beside Railton's body, making a futile attempt to pull it under cover. 'Help me with him,' she sobbed. 'Doctor, help me.'
The Doctor ran to her side. 'Jill, leave him, he's dead. We can't help him now.'
Jill tugged at Railton's body. 'We can't just leave him here.'
A crude, stone-headed arrow struck the ground between them. The Doctor grabbed Jill's arm and yanked her back under cover.
Galloway wriggled close to him and pointed. 'The arrows came from over that way, behind those rocks.' 'Did you see anything?'
Galloway shook his head. A second shower of arrows whizzed towards them, thudding into the ground, and clattering against the rocks.
The Doctor said, 'It seems to be a fairly small group. If we break away and scatter we might stand a chance.'
'Just a minute, Doctor,' hissed Galloway furiously. 'I'm next in seniority to Railton. That puts me in command.'
The Doctor looked unbelievingly at him, astonished, not for the first time, at the rigidity of the military mind.
There was hysteria in Jill Tarrant's voice. 'All right, Commander. Give an order to get us out of this!'
Galloway glared furiously at her: He was about to make some angry reply when Peter Hamilton said, 'If you lot have finished arguing amongst yourselves—take a look around!'
They looked. A line of Exxilons had appeared on the skyline ahead of them. 'There are more over there,' said Hamilton. 'And over there!'
There were Exxilons to their left and to their right, still more blocking the gully behind them. They were armed with a variety of primitive weapons—bows, spears, clubs, stone-headed axes. Stone age weapons, thought the Doctor, but on this planet they were the only ones that counted.
Galloway's hand was gripping the useless blaster at his belt. 'They're like sitting ducks. If only the guns were working.' Almost berserk with rage, he snatched the bow from his shoulder, fitted an arrow and fired. Clutching its chest, an Exxilon tumbled from a nearby boulder with a shrill cry of agony.
The Doctor ducked down, expecting a hail of arrows in reply. Instead there was a sudden flurry of movement amongst the Exxilons just ahead of them. Someone was being shoved to the front of the little group. 'Look,' gasped Jill. 'They've got Commander Stewart.'
The wounded man was being supported between two Exxilons. He was barely conscious, his head lolling on his chest. A third Exxilon menaced the wounded man's throat with a jagged stone knife. The message was clear.
Peter Hamilton said quietly. 'That settles it for me. We'll have to surrender. Jill?'
Her eyes fixed on the Commander, Jill nodded. 'What about you, Doctor?'
'I suppose so. When the only alternative to living is dying... What about our Dalek friends?'
All this time the little group of Daleks had taken no part in the action. Peter turned to them and called, 'We're going to surrender. What about you?'
The nearest Dalek trundled menacingly towards the Exxilons, acting from instinct rather than reason.'Daleks do not surrender. Exterminate! Exterminate!' A frantic clicking came from its useless weapon.
Immediately a shower of arrows rattled against its metal casing. There was triumph in the metallic voice. 'Primitive weaponry ineffective against superior Dalek shielding!'
A grinding sound came from above. A heavy boulder rolled down the hillside, smashing into the Dalek and knocking it on to its side. A swarm of Exxilons descended upon the disabled Dalek, bashing at it with clubs, axes and heavy rocks, hammering it into a shapeless lump of metal. The-tremendous battering triggered the Dalek's self-destruct unit. Suddenly it exploded in smoke and flame, killing the nearest Exxilons and blowing several others off their feet. The survivors danced exultantly round the smoking pile of metal, screeching in triumph.
The Doctor looked at the remaining Daleks. 'You'll have to do better than that, won't you? What do you say now?'
The Dalek leader said tonelessly, 'We will appear to surrender. It will enable us to observe the enemy more closely.'
'That's a good face saving attitude. Well, let's get it over with!' The Doctor stepped out of cover, his hands held high, and the others followed.
The Exxilons closed in on them.
6
The Sacrifice
Somewhat to her own astonishment, Sarah was still alive. When she had. been dragged to the altar, she had assumed that her end was literally minutes away. Presumably the high priest would produce his stone-bladed knife and that would be that.
In fact, things had gone rather differently. She had been lashed down upon the altar, held motionless by ropes at arms and wrists while around her the ceremony had gone on—and on and on.
There had been much chanting from the high priest, followed by responses from the crowd. Other priests had appeared to join in the ceremony. She had been sprinkled with strange fluids, menaced with various weapons, endlessly harangued by the priests. Incense-burners had been swung about her head; their thick, sweet-smelling smoke drifted across her face, almost choking her. Still the endless chanting and counter-chanting continued.
It was a funny thing to say about your own sacrifice, thought Sarah, but she was beginning to get rather bored with it all. To make things worse, the incense was making her dizzy. Suddenly the chanting rose to a crescendo and stopped. There was a moment of utter silence. The high priest loomed over her, and Sarah thought muzzily that surely this must be it. Curiously enough she felt no sensation of fear, just a calm acceptance.
But still there was no sign of the sacrificial knife. Instead the ropes were loosened and she was lifted from the altar. Her feet floated from under her, and without the support of the Exxilon priests she would have fallen. They began walking her towards the back of the cavern.
Sarah went meekly along with them. She seemed to have no will of her own and in some corner of her mind she realised that the smoke of the incense must contain a narcotic drug. But it didn't matter. All she had to do was walk, and everything would be all right...
The crowd drew back to form an alleyway, and Sarah walked between the two priests straight towards the black mouth of the tunnel.
At this moment the Doctor and his fellow prisoners were herded into the great cavern. It was obvious what was going on—the whole place reek
ed of ceremonial sacrifice.
The Doctor broke free from his Exxilon guards and ran the length of the great cavern before anyone could prevent him. 'Stop!' he shouted. 'Where are you taking her?' Grabbing the astonished high priest, and throwing him aside, he barged his way to Sarah's side, shoving the supporting priest away. 'Sarah, are you all right?'
Sarah stared dazedly up at him. She wanted to explain that he really mustn't interrupt the ceremony like this—but suddenly blackness closed in on her, and she slumped unconscious at his feet.
As the Doctor knelt to examine her the high priest barked a single guttural command and the two Exxilon priests descended on the Doctor, dragging him away.
Angrily he threw them aside again, fighting to get back to Sarah, but more and more Exxilons joined in the attack. They swarmed over the Doctor like huge black ants and he went down beneath the sheer weight of their attacking bodies. A stone club struck him a glancing blow on the head and he fell back unconscious.
Sarah woke up in a cage. 'First a church, now a zoo,' she thought. It was a very large cage, formed by setting bars across an alcove in the rock, and there were several other people in it with her. Muzzily, Sarah studied them. There was a heavily bandaged man lying unconscious in a corner. There were two other men, one young and brown-haired, one black-haired and burly, talking in low voices. On the far side of the cage, three squat metallic shapes were huddled in a group. Finally, to Sarah's immense relief, there was the Doctor, lying against the cavern wall not far away, with a fair-haired girl of about her own age examining a bruise on his forehead.
Slowly and carefully Sarah got up. She still felt weak at the knees, but her head was clear again. She went over to the girl and knelt beside her. 'Is the Doctor all right?'
'I think so. He seems to be coming round.'
Sarah rubbed her hand across her eyes. 'What happened?'
'Don't you remember?'
'It's all a bit hazy. They made me inhale some kind of drug.'
'Well, as far as I can gather, they were going to sacrifice you. Then we turned up, and the Doctor broke up the ceremony. He laid hands on their high priest—apparently that's about the worst crime you can commit on this planet. I'm afraid you two aren't very popular with our hosts!'
Sarah looked round the crowded cell. 'Who are you all? What are you doing here?'
The girl smiled wearily. 'That's a very long story. For a start, my name's Jill Tarrant...'
Peter Hamilton looked across the cage. The Doctor had recovered consciousness and was talking quietly to the two girls. Dan Galloway nodded towards him and said angrily, 'The man's crazy, I tell you. He's stirred them all up against us, ruined any chance we had of making a deal.'
'Come on, Dan,' said Peter quietly. 'He hadn't any choice. A couple of minutes more and that girl would probably have been dead.'
'So what? She's no concern of ours.'
Hamilton said, 'We're all in this together. It could have been me or you about to be sacrified. Would you expect everybody else to stand by and let it happen?'
'The point is, it wasn't one of us. We've no loyalties to those two—they're simply not part of our mission.'
'So you'd let them die, just like that?'
Galloway leaned forward. 'You're forgetting something, Peter. Our job is to get hold of the Parrinium that will save the lives of millions. If a couple of people we don't even know have to die in the process—well, that's just too bad.'
The Daleks too had been conferring, and now their leader glided across to the two men. 'We have decided the action we shall take. We will offer the Exxilons our knowledge and technology in return for their assistance. You would do well to do the same.'
Galloway grunted. 'Aye, well, anything's worth a try. Until we track down the cause of that power block, we'll none of us get off this planet.'
Hamilton nodded towards the Doctor and Sarah. 'What about them? Do you think the Exxilons will agree to let them go? I mean, we'll have to make that part of the deal...'
The eye-stalk of the Dalek leader swung round in his direction. 'The Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks. The girl is of no concern to us.'
Galloway said calmly. 'It seems we're in agreement about some things after all...'
The Doctor had made his usual amazingly rapid recovery, and was cheerfully lecturing the two girls on the nature of primitive societies. 'The more primitive the society, the more complex the taboos. The sacrifice has to be made in exactly the right way, all the rituals observed, step by step. When I arrived and interrupted things, they had no alternative but to stop the ceremony.'
'So what do you think will happen now?' asked Sarah.
'I'm afraid that what they had planned for you has merely been postponed. And there'll probably be two of us starring in the next performance.'
Sarah tried to smile. 'Well, it's always nice to have company. Jill, what's the matter ?'
Jill was staring across the cage. 'Galloway seems to be getting very thick with the Daleks. I don't know what he's up to, but I don't like the look of it.'
Galloway and the Dalek leader had gone to the bars of the cage and seemed to be trying to communicate with an Exxilon priest outside.
The Doctor said quietly. 'I have a feeling it might be better if you didn't involve yourself with us, Miss Tarrant. We seem to be the flies in a very nasty jar of ointment.'
After much guttural muttering from the Exxilons, a door in the bars had been opened, and Galloway and the Dalek leader were allowed to pass through. Jill gave the Doctor a worried look. 'I imagine they're trying to negotiate some kind of deal—a way for all of us to get out of here.'
'All of us?' The Doctor shook his head. 'That's wishful thinking, my dear. The Daleks certainly won't do anything to help me. And I don't expect too much from your friend Galloway either.'
In the small, compact laboratory of the Dalek space ship an experiment was in progress. There had been a significant modification in the appearance of the three Daleks left inside the ship. Instead of the now-useless blasters, another kind of weapon had been fitted to the squat metallic bodies. It consisted of a simple gun-barrel with an ammunition magazine clipped underneath.
On a bench at the other end of the laboratory was a target—a miniature TARDIS. One of the Daleks moved to the firing position. There was a staccato chattering sound and smoke drifted from its gun muzzle. The model TARDIS disintegrated in a shower of plastic fragments.
The Dalek glided to the bench. 'Target model completely destroyed. Substitute weaponry now functioning satisfactorily.'
'We will proceed immediately with the second stage of our plan.'
The three Daleks glided from the laboratory, and along the short metal corridor that led to the exit ramp. Soon they were moving along the path followed by the prisoners some time earlier.
Two Exxilons appeared on the rocks above them, both armed with bows. They fired and the stone-headed arrows bounced harmlessly from the Daleks' metal casing. Immediately the leading Dalek swivelled round, aiming its gun. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire and the Eilons were blasted from the rocks by the impact of the heavy bullets. They crashed down on to the stony ground behind the path, lying like two bundles of black rags.
Impassively, the leading Dalek said, 'Modified weapons moderately efficient when tested in action.'
The Daleks glided along the path. Behind them the blood of the Exxilons soaked into the rocky ground.
The gate in the bars opened. Galloway and the Dalek leader entered, the Exxilon high priest behind them. More Exxilon priests followed them into the cell. The high priest pointed to the Doctor and Sarah. The priests caught hold of them and began puffing them from the cell. Jill Tarrant cried, 'No!' and tried to stop them. A savage shove from one of the Exxilons sent her reeling away.
Hamilton turned to Galloway as the Doctor and Sarah were dragged out. 'Dan, we've got to do something.'
Galloway shook his head. 'Don't interfere. We've got to think of ourselves now, and what we came her
e to do.'
Hamilton grabbed him by the arm. 'What happened out there, Dan? What did you agree to?'
Galloway pulled away. 'We managed to communicate with the Exxilons. They speak a kind of pigeon galactic, though it's so debased you can hardly follow them. We made a deal—at least, the Dalek did. The Exxilons seem impressed by that armour of theirs.'
'A deal that includes the sacrifice of the Doctor and Sarah, I suppose? And you agreed?'
Galloway turned away. 'There was nothing else I could do.'
The Dalek leader moved across to them. 'Exxilons refuse to discuss final terms until interrupted sacrifices have been completed. We will follow and observe.'
The Daleks glided from the cell, and Exxilon priests herded Jill and Hamilton after them. Galloway was about to follow when he heard a feeble voice calling his name. 'Galloway...'
He turned and saw Commander Stewart struggling to sit up. Galloway went to kneel beside him. The Commander's face was grey, and his breath came in rattling gasps. It was clear that rough handling on top of his other wounds had been too much for his weakened constitution. Commander Stewart was dying. Hoarsely he whispered, 'I heard everything. Galloway. You are not fit to command this expedition.'
Galloway met the dying man's eyes without flinching. 'I'm only doing what's necessary, sir. I'm going to get that Parrinium whatever the cost.'
'You're a glory hunter, Galloway,' said the feeble voice. 'You always were. I never trusted you. Now I'm giving my last order. I'm appointing Hamilton over you.'
The voice was almost inaudible. Galloway thrust his lips close to the Commander's ear. 'Sir, you can't do that. He's just not tough enough.'
DOCTOR WHO - DEATH TO THE DALEKS Page 4
