by Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker, Paul Magrs, et al (retail) (epub)
Ian stared as the stranger crouched to enter the tiny den. He was followed by a lady with blonde hair, then Ian’s brother and sister.
‘Doc-tor.’
‘Oh, dear, dear. You are in a bad way. Separated from your fleet. Away from your bombs and armies.’
‘You will o-bey me!’ the Dalek cried.
‘I’ll do nothing of the sort, old chap.’
‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked Jo.
‘You’re far from the time and place you’re meant to be. You’re stuck here,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Rather like myself.’
‘Ex-act-ly,’ Starman said. ‘We know a-bout your ex-ile to this time zone.’
‘You do?’ The Doctor frowned.
‘News of your shame tra-velled far and wide. Your en-em-ies re-joiced.’
The man in the cloak looked briefly annoyed. ‘Why are you involving these children in your undoubtedly wicked schemes?’
‘They are help-ing me, as oth-ers have in the past.’
‘Yes,’ mused the Doctor. ‘It looks like you’ve patched yourself up with all kinds of bits and pieces of junk. It’s like a scrapyard in here. I congratulate you on your ingenuity, but this can’t go on.’
All at once an ice-blue glare surrounded the Dalek, rippling along his outer shell. Ian felt it creeping coldly up his arm and all over his own body.
‘What’s he doing to Ian?’ shouted Ange. ‘Make him stop!’
‘Doctor, do something,’ gasped Jo.
‘Dalek!’ said the Doctor in a very calm voice. ‘These are hatchlings you are threatening. Juveniles. You will not hurt them.’
‘You will do as I com-mand, Doc-tor, or they will die.’
‘Very well.’
‘My mess-age has been sent in-to the Vor-tex to summon the Da-lek fleet.’
‘No!’ cried Jo.
‘If you help me, I will stop them in-vad-ing this planet.’
‘Ha!’ said the Doctor. ‘Who’d want to invade 1973? Your lot are much more interested in the future.’
‘They would come here for you.’
The Doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘Your years of seclusion have sharpened your cunning.’ He stepped closer and the crackling intensified. ‘Let the boy go and I will help you.’
The clawed arm relinquished Ian, who jumped with surprise. He rubbed the marks on his skin and flew straight into his big sister’s arms.
The Doctor was examining his enemy. ‘Yes, I can see that you do need help, don’t you? You’re blind, aren’t you? And you’ve no weapon. Your arms are actually kitchen implements. Oh dear …’ His voice became hushed, betraying his scientific curiosity. Now he was close enough to see that the Dalek’s metallic chest cavity was badly smashed. Inside there was a glint of silvery material. It looked rather like a large, primitive tooth filling. There was even, in the darkness, a shimmer of topaz and green flesh belonging to the Dalek mutant deep within the shell. It was a wonder this creature was still alive.
‘Jo, would you help me? And you others, too. He won’t hurt you now. We must carry him and his strange machine to my car.’
‘Where are we taking him?’ asked Jo.
‘Back to UNIT Headquarters,’ said the Time Lord. ‘We’re going to help him as best we can.’
Jo and the children exchanged worried glances.
‘Thank you, Doc-tor,’ Starman said painfully.
It was a hellish journey back through the dark woods. The gaps between the trees were narrow and the branches seemed to lash out purposefully, snagging their clothes and trying to drag them back.
Among the junk in the den they had found a set of pram wheels the Dalek had once tried to make use of, and now his middle section sat lopsidedly on top, with the Doctor and Jo pushing from behind. The three children carried the heavy, mutilated radiogram between them.
‘If you att-empt to stop the mess-age my mach-ine will self-des-truct and des-troy you,’ the Dalek warned.
‘Yes, I thought it might.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Come on, Jo! Push!’
Only a few lights were on this late in the houses near the car-park. The mist was thicker than ever as they wheeled closer to Bessie. It took some time to manoeuvre the Dalek on to the back seat, with his machine squashed beside him, still bleeping and blinking away.
‘Say your goodbyes,’ the Doctor told the children.
‘We’ll never see him again?’ asked Ian.
‘You are free of your bond,’ Starman told them.
‘You should thank them for helping you,’ Jo said.
‘Be grate-ful you have sur-vived our time to-geth-er,’ was the best the Dalek could do.
‘All right, old chap, that’s enough of the sentimental farewells.’ The Doctor chuckled. He took off his cloak and laid it like a tarpaulin over the Dalek’s head. Then he looked at the children. ‘You lot had best get back to your parents.’
‘They’ll be out of their minds with worry,’ said Jo. ‘It’s gone midnight!’
Ange, Terry and Ian were much more interested in finding out what was going to happen next, but they stood back as the funny old-fashioned car revved its powerful engines and roared off much faster than might have been expected.
‘Well, that’s the children out of harm’s way,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now to deal with the rest of it.’
‘The Dalek’s blind and unarmed, isn’t it? Why are you still doing what it wants?’
The Doctor tapped his nose. ‘There’s a lot I can learn from a helpless Dalek. Even a mad and injured one. Its mind is a vast storehouse of future technology.’
Jo suddenly realised. He’s after the Dalek version of the time-travel codes. He’s doing this all for himself …
The Doctor put his foot on the accelerator and Jo spent the journey back to UNIT HQ fretting about the ominously quiet Dalek in the back of the car.
In the small hours of the morning, they arrived back at the stately home where UNIT had its British Headquarters. The guards were quite used to the Doctor coming and going at strange times, often bringing with him bizarre equipment, so they waved him sleepily through the main gates.
‘We don’t want them taking too close a look at what we’re carrying,’ he muttered, swerving round to the mews buildings at the back of the complex.
Jo questioned the wisdom of what he was attempting. They were smuggling a Dalek into the very heart of UNIT HQ. Are we getting out of our depth here? she wondered.
‘All right there, old chap?’ the Doctor asked, as they manhandled the bulky alien out of the car.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to fetch Mike or Sergeant Benton to help?’
The Doctor shot her a severe look.
Keeping the Doctor’s cloak draped over their enemy, they pushed him on his improvised wheels into the shrouded corridors of the main building.
‘Your TAR-DIS is here some-where,’ said the Dalek. Its voice made Jo jump. ‘I can sense its pow-er.’
‘That’s right,’ said the Doctor, patting the alien’s dome with mock fondness. ‘Now, shush. We’re going to take you and your marvellous space-telegraph machine to my laboratory and then we can have a little chat.’
After what seemed a horribly long and tense interval they were installed in the lab and Jo watched as the Doctor examined the ruined Dalek. Their captive stared, meanwhile, with rapt attention at the police-box shell of the TARDIS. ‘This is the ship that has tak-en you all over the gal-ax-y, war-ring with my race for count-less mill-enn-i-a.’
‘I suppose it is, yes.’ The Doctor smiled modestly. ‘Though I do other things besides fight the Daleks, you know. You are a conceited lot, aren’t you? Now, don’t over-excite yourself, my dear fellow …’ He peered into the cankered and mildewed interior of the Dalek’s casing, astonished once more that the creature was still alive.
A single purple eye stared back from deep within the Dalek shell. It blinked sadly at the Doctor.
‘Now, this message of yours to your people. I want you to stop it. Tell them there is not
hing for them here in 1973.’
The Dalek laughed croakily, a sound that made Jo’s skin crawl. She had never heard a Dalek laugh before.
The Doctor became annoyed. ‘I’ll turn it off myself. How do I work this?’ He hovered over the primitive radiogram. ‘Tell me.’
More gurgling laughter.
‘You know,’ said the Doctor crossly, ‘if the Daleks actually respond and come here they won’t want anything to do with you. What do your lot want? Purity. Perfection. You’re far from that. You’re patched together. Falling apart. How long have you lived here?’
‘O-ver six-ty Ter-ran years. I crash-lan-ded be-fore that hu-man town was e-ver built. When it was all woods.’
The Doctor stared at him calmly. ‘And in that time you have been terribly injured and slowly going half mad.’
‘On-ly half mad?’ The laughter stopped.
‘They’ll want nothing to do with you.’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘They will exterminate you.’
‘No,’ said the monster from the woods. ‘They will see that I have brought them to you, Doc-tor. You will be a prize for them. They will be grate-ful to me.’
‘They will destroy you. As a result of living sixty years on Earth, you have mutated. You have lived among humans. Depended upon them. Look how you let that smallest child go free. You even regretted holding him hostage. I could hear it in your voice. You’re developing a conscience, aren’t you?’
‘No!’ the Dalek cried.
Jo glanced sharply at the Doctor. The conversation was becoming noisy. A part of her wished they’d be heard so that soldiers would come rushing to their rescue.
‘Halt that message,’ said the Doctor, ‘and I will save your life.’ He held aloft the elegant wand of his sonic screwdriver, plus another device Jo recognised. ‘I can fix your shielding permanently. You’re dying, aren’t you? That’s why everything’s become so urgent for you lately. You know you have little time left.’
The Dalek’s eye dimmed slightly. ‘Ve-ry well. Help me. The mess-age I trans-mit-ted … it would ne-ver reach my kind an-y-way. It was de-signed on-ly to capture your att-en-tion, Doc-tor.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that’s something. Now you can tell me something else: the time codes. Give me access to the Dalek time-travel codes. Then I will help you.’
The creature was puzzled. ‘Is that why you brought me here? Not out of fear for the hu-mans, but so that I would help you fix your TAR-DIS?’ It laughed raspingly again. ‘Fool-ish Doc-tor. To stake so much, to take such a risk, on such a stu-pid hope.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I am a low-ly troo-per. I know no-thing of time trav-el. I know so lit-tle.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said the Doctor.
‘If I am be-yond re-pair, my on-ly log-i-cal re-main-ing func-tion is to des-troy you.’
‘What?’
Jo jumped in alarm. ‘Doctor, he’s glowing! What’s happening?’
‘Oh!’ The Doctor looked worried as a strange golden glow suffused the Dalek. ‘Er … I may have miscalculated.’
‘What?’
‘I believe he’s planning to blow himself up.’
Jo was rooted to the spot in shock.
The Doctor added, ‘He’ll take the whole of UNIT HQ with him if he puts his mind to it.’
‘Do something, Doctor!’
Waves of scarlet energy were now rippling over the cracked hull of the Dalek. His maniacal laughter seemed to fill Jo’s whole mind.
‘I was rather hoping not to have to do this,’ said the Doctor. He held up the device Jo had seen him working on yesterday evening. He shot his cuffs like a stage magician and gained the Dalek’s attention. He was holding up the thing Jo had dubbed the ‘time fridge’.
‘I’m reversing the polarity of this handy implement’s neutron flow,’ said the Doctor, buzzing it with his sonic screwdriver. Then he tossed it into the cavity in the Dalek’s shell.
‘Will that help?’ Jo shouted into the rapidly worsening din.
‘Hopefully it’ll make things better rather than worse.’
‘But will it stop him from blowing us all sky-high?’
The Doctor looked sorrowful. Almost ashamed. He said, ‘It will melt his heart.’
‘What?’
‘The device will heat up rather than cool, and it will boil the lead that he shielded his mutant self with. The effect will be, I’m afraid, quite deadly.’
The Dalek’s pulsating light show ended abruptly. He was no longer capable of building up the energy required to self-destruct. ‘What have you done to me?’ he shrieked. ‘Doc-tor, what is this burn-ing? This heat … What have you … put in-side … my heart?’
Jo looked away as the Doctor stepped up to address his enemy. ‘I’m so sorry about this.’
‘You were go-ing to help me … You said you were go-ing to help!’
‘I’ve killed you,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m sorry. I had no other choice.’
Jo tried to close her ears to the Dalek’s dying cries. They became so loud that they attracted military attention at last.
It didn’t take long for the Dalek to die, or for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to come and marvel at the remains. He stared in amazement at the Doctor. ‘Well done for stopping him, Doctor!’ the brigadier said.
‘No, old chap. Save your congratulations. This was a failure on my part. We might have learned so much from him,’ the Doctor said ruefully.
‘He would have blown us all into tomorrow,’ said Jo.
‘Such ingenuity,’ said the Doctor. ‘Such cunning. What a terrible waste.’
The brigadier slapped his back. ‘It was a monster. They’re all monsters.’
Jo saw that this night had cost the Doctor greatly.
‘He was developing a conscience, wasn’t he? He let that child Ian go. But he forced me to destroy him; he forced me to do it.’
Jo knew the Doctor would never forget what he had learned this Hallowe’en.
Fight as she might, Sarah Jane was drowning. She was submerged in a dark, suffocating nightmare of thick, blood-warm liquid. Her lungs screamed to be allowed to inhale. Her oxygen-starved brain was already beginning to cloud with confusion. Tiny stars pricked her blurring vision.
Refusing to surrender, she made one last, desperate bid for survival. She fought to move her leaden limbs, striving to propel herself to the surface – though she could only guess in which direction it lay.
It was no use. Her lungs would surely burst. She had to breathe.
Something touched her outstretched arm. A hand. It clamped round her wrist and began to pull. Bony fingers clawed at her shoulder. The pain of their biting grip brought her back from the brink of unconsciousness. More hands grasped at her, tugging her by her hair, her clothing, her other arm. They dragged her limp, energy-sapped body through the murky ooze …
As she broke the surface, Sarah Jane sucked in a great, shuddering breath. A violent fit of coughing and spluttering seized her. She was drunkenly aware of being hauled on to dry land, of sharp fingers digging into her flesh. Dumped on her back, she managed to roll feebly on to one side to retch up the bitter, dark fluid she had swallowed. She lay with her chest heaving, too weak and dazed to move. As her breathing gradually calmed, she vaguely registered a voice close by.
‘Shall I stop its heart, sister?’
‘No, Doomfinger!’ The second speaker’s voice, like the first, was a rasping croak, cracked with age. ‘I have an appetite for living flesh!’
‘Patience, Mother Bloodtide!’ The third sounded less ancient, but no less harsh. ‘We will feast soon enough. But first –’
Sarah Jane winced as something tugged sharply at her wet hair, making her scalp sting.
‘Let us learn what we can of our pretty little catch.’
With difficulty, Sarah Jane rose on to all fours. Her head swam. The surface beneath her crackled under the pressure of her knees and palms. It appeared to be covered in a layer of pale, brittle twi
gs. It was certainly not the floor of the TARDIS attic, as it ought to be.
Only moments earlier, she had been safely aboard the Doctor’s remarkable vessel, happily exploring one of the cluttered chambers in which he stashed the souvenirs of his adventures in time and space. She had no idea why she wasn’t there still.
Sarah Jane gave a sudden shiver. She had just realised what she was kneeling on. They weren’t twigs at all; they were tiny bones.
‘Be swift, Mother Bloodtide! It revives!’
‘Complete the binding!’
Sarah Jane got unsteadily to her feet. She turned towards the voices … and recoiled at the sight of the three hideous hags to whom they belonged. They bore an alarming resemblance to the wicked witches of classic fairy tales: repulsively ugly with straggly grey hair, warts, wrinkled skin, hooked noses, jutting chins and jagged yellow teeth. The scrawny frame of each, bent with age, was wrapped in a ragged, drab cloak and a tattered black shawl. Two had their bloodshot eyes fixed on Sarah Jane. The third, muttering under her breath, seemed preoccupied with something clutched in her gnarled, taloned fingers.
The frightful trio even appeared to have a witch’s cauldron of sorts. An area of ground behind them was largely clear of the bone-litter that lay elsewhere. At its centre bubbled a dark circular pool edged by a mud-sculpted rim. The steaming liquid it held was the colour of dried blood. It was from this, Sarah Jane realised, that she had been dragged moments ago. Glistening ooze still clung to her clothes and hair. It had a foul, sulphurous stench.
The muttering hag – one of the two elders – looked up with a gleeful cackle.
‘It is done, Lilith!’ she croaked. ‘The words have been spoken!’
She passed the thing in her grasp to her younger companion, who received it with an unpleasant yellow-toothed grin.
Sarah Jane tried to pull herself together. Witches were the stuff of story-land. She had no idea who these three old crones were, but she shouldn’t assume that just because they were ugly they were dangerous. Appearances, as the Doctor had impressed upon her, could be deceptive. She must talk to them. Find out who they were. Communication was key.
Nervously, she tried to make a start … but found to her dismay that she was unable to do so. Her mouth refused to open. Her lips were tightly sealed, as if stitched together. As Sarah Jane’s eyes widened with alarm, the grotesque faces of the watching hags filled with cruel amusement.