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‘Or an occupant,’ said Allison.

‘What the devil is it?’ asked Gilmore.

‘A Dalek,’ said the Doctor.

Ace gave the ignition key another savage twist, cursing stone-age technology under her breath.

‘Trouble is, it’s the wrong Dalek.’

Aced looked over the primitive dashboard, hunting for something to start the van. ‘What would the right Dalek be like? Better or worse?’

‘Guess.’

The engine turned over and juddered to a stop.

‘Choke,’ said the Doctor.

‘No thanks.’

The Doctor reached over and pulled out a knob on the dashboard. Ace turned the key and the engine revved up. Ace made a stab at the gears and the van lurched forward. The driver’s door slammed backwards and Mike angrily stuck in his head.

‘Oi!’ he shouted over the engine noise. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Borrowing your van,’ the Doctor said cheerily as Ace put her foot down and the van roared away. Ace caught a glimpse of Mike’s astonished face as she veered the van out of the junkyard and left into Totters Lane.

‘These Dahliks?’

‘Daleks,’ the Doctor corrected.

‘Daleks, whatever. Where are they from?’

‘Skaro. Left here.’

‘When were they left here?’

‘No, no,’ cried the Doctor, ‘turn left here.’

‘Right,’ Ace heaved on the steering wheel and sent the van careering down a narrow street. That’s funny, thought Ace, I didn’t know they had one-way systems in 1963.

Oncoming traffic started to behave in a peculiar manner.

‘Concentrate on where you’re going,’ shouted the Doctor.

‘I’m doing the best I can,’ Ace yelled. A narrow railway bridge loomed in front of them. ‘If you don’t like it, you drive.’

The van plunged into darkness.

They emerged into the light and the Doctor was driving. Ace stared at his umbrella which she was now holding. The seats, dashboard and steering wheel were all in the right positions – it was just that the Doctor was sitting behind the wheel and Ace was in the passenger seat.

I think I’ll just decide that never happened, she decided.

‘The Daleks,’ resumed the Doctor, ‘are the mutated remains of a race called the Kaleds.’

The Doctor remembered that time when he stepped out of a petrified forest and saw a city of metal spread out under an alien sky. He thought of Temmosus, the Thal leader, screaming for peace and friendship even as a Dalek gunned him down. Images of people, the last desperate rush to thwart the Dalek’s plan to mine the Earth’s core.

Crawling among the thousands of dormant warriors in the ice caves of Spiridon, and then later, the Time Lords’

intervention and Davros.

‘The Kaleds were at war with the Thals. They had a dirty nuclear war in which evolution of the resulting mutations was accelerated by the Kaleds’ chief scientist Davros. What he created he placed in metal war machines and that is how the Daleks came about.’

His mind again went back to Skaro, a planet wasted and broken by a centuries-long conflict – all rubble, death and mutations. From the debris rose the stench of corruption: Davros, rotting and grotesque, gloating over the death of his own people. ‘The Daleks will be all powerful! They will bring peace throughout the galaxy, they are the superior beings.’

‘So that metal thing had a creature inside controlling it?’ asked Ace.

‘Exactly. Ever since their creation the Daleks have been attempting to conquer and enslave as much of the universe as they could get their grubby little protruberances on.’

‘And they want to conquer the Earth?’

‘Nothing so mundane. They conquer the Earth in the 22nd century. No, they want the Hand of Omega.’

‘The what?’

But the Doctor had said enough for the moment. ‘One thing at a time, Ace. First we have to discover what’s going on at the school.’

3

Friday 17:30

UNIT had its roots in the Intrusion Counter Measures Group established in 1961, under the command of Group Captain Ian Gilmore of the newly formed Royal Air Force Regiment. Staffed with Royal Air Force personnel it was charged with the task of protecting the UK from covert actions by hostile powers and mounting intelligence operations against such a threat. In 1963 it was involved in what later came