• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He saw their gunsticks take aim.

‘No,’ he shouted desperately. ‘No, don’t. I have a message for Mr Ratcliffe.’ He didn’t know if they had understood, but they didn’t fire. ‘A message for Mr Ratcliffe,’ he repeated. The Daleks moved forward; Mike expected to die.

‘You are my prisoner,’ said the Dalek, and Mike relaxed.

‘You will obey all instructions or you will be exterminated.’

‘You said it mate.’

‘Watch your end,’ said Allison. Rachel tried to get a better grip on the big television set — it kept threatening to slip out of her hands. They started down the cellar stairs again.

‘When the Doctor said he needed our help,’ said Rachel,

‘I hoped he meant more in the technical area.’

‘It was a vain hope,’ said Allison.

The Doctor and Ace were by the transmat. The Doctor had pulled the panelling off the shattered consoles and was buried in a spray of cables. When Ace saw Rachel and Allison coming down the stairs with the television, she tapped him on the shoulder.

The Doctor pulled his head out of the console and smiled at them. ‘Good, you got it,’ he said. ‘Put it down on here.’ He patted the transmat dais.

Rachel and Allison heaved the television on to the dais.

The Doctor immediately started running cables from the transmat to the television.

Allison watched in fascination. ‘How does he do that?’

‘Do what?’ asked Ace.

‘It’s easy,’ said the Doctor, ‘when you’ve had nine hundred years’ experience.’

Nine hundred years, thought Rachel, right. She watched the Doctor’s fingers working. Precisely what he did, Rachel couldn’t make out, but under his hands grew a complicated assembly that ran from transmat to television.

‘The Daleks got themselves in a war with the Movellans,’ said the Doctor, ‘who are a race of androids.

They’re just as nasty as the Daleks but more attractive to look at. The Movellans decimated the Dalek battle order with a selective virus.’

He’s not even looking at what he’s doing, realized Rachel. How does he do it? Is it instinct?

‘Am I boring you?’ asked the Doctor.

Allison’s eyes had a glazed look. Ace was grinning.

Rachel shook her head, and the Doctor smiled.

‘The virus fragmented the Daleks and left them in isolated factions, one of which seems to have resettled Skaro. This imperial faction seems to be in conflict with a force of renegade Daleks.’ The Doctor stopped working and looked up at Rachel. ‘And that’s odd.’

‘What’s odd about some internecine violence?’ said Rachel. ‘There’s been enough of it on this planet.’

‘Daleks don’t have internecine conflicts,’ said the Doctor, shaking his head. ‘One Dalek meets another Dalek, they bang databases, and one winds up giving orders to the other, except...’

‘Except what?’

‘Except,’ said Ace, ‘when one Dalek doesn’t recognize another Dalek as being a Dalek.’

The Doctor and Rachel both looked at Ace. ‘Very good, Ace,’ said the Doctor. ‘How did you come to that?’

Ace grinned. ‘Simple, ain’t it. Renegade Daleks are blobs. Imperial Daleks aren’t blobs – they’re bionic blobs with bits added. You can tell Daleks are into racial purity, so one faction of Daleks reckons that the other blobs are too different, mutants, not pure in their blobbiness any more.’

‘Result?’

‘They hate each others chromosomes,’ said Ace, ‘war to the death.’

‘With us in the middle,’ said Allison.

The Doctor pulled a slim case from his pocket. He pushed a switch on the side and it clicked open. A lens and body assembly snapped out. The Doctor attached another cable to it and placed it carefully on top of the television.

‘Now, Ace,’ said the Doctor, ‘let’s see which blobs are winning.’

Mike carefully watched the Black Dalek. It moved silently through Ratcliffe’s office and stopped by the desk. There, a young girl was bent over a globe; inside the globe, lightning flared.

The two Daleks had ordered him into the office.

Ratcliffe was waiting there on his knees.

The Black Dalek – the Dalek Supreme – turned its eyestick to regard him. ‘Kneel,’ it had ordered, and Mike had knelt. Then that creepy little girl had come in and started working on the globe.

‘Repairs to