The Mind of The Daleks

Chapter 3: Prisoners

A tall, stocky, almost conical figure covered with round and stick-like appendages confronted them; its gray and silver dully reflected the sunlight. It rolled toward them, bumping over the uneven ground, completely silent and rather ridiculous. But for some reason everyone stopped and backed away with something like fear, perhaps because of the words of the stranger and perhaps because the thing looked so much like a tank, relentless and unstoppable. And after all, a tank looks ridiculous too.

For a very long ten seconds, they all stood and stared. And then unanimously they turned to run in the opposite direction. But it was too late for that, too. Another of the miniature tanks was approaching from out of the desert. And from the direction of the road, a man with a very mean-looking gun walked at a steady pace towards them.

"Halt!" barked a grating, staccato voice from behind them.

"Halt!" repeated the other thing. "Halt, or you will be exterminated!"

Everyone instantly froze in place. The hysterical woman let out a high-pitched laugh and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

Isabel felt the hand on her elbow tighten its grip, and turned to the mysterious man. "What are the Daleks?" she asked in a low voice.

"Oh," the man answered, the deep lines around his mouth hardening into grim determination, "you'll find out."

For a moment, the former bus passengers stood motionless. But then-

"What are we doing?" The well-to-do business man with car problems made a sudden movement. "C'mon! We don't have to obey these freakin' robots!"

The stranger made a sharp jump forward and shouted, "No!"

But the business man lunged at the man with the gun, who took a startled step backward and tripped. Just for a second, there seemed to be the glimmering of a hope. But then a blinding flash of light, like but more unlike what they had seen on the road, shot out from one of the appendages of small tanks. The business man gave a blood-curdling scream, threw back his arms and arched his back. For a second, they could see him through the bolt of energy, like looking at an X-ray and the negative of a photograph combined. And then he crumpled to the ground and lay motionless.

The doctor darted over to him before anyone could stop her.

"You will be still!" commanded a Dalek.

"I've got to see how badly he's hurt!" she shouted back. "I'm a doctor!"

"He is dead." The Dalek stated without the slightest shade of satisfaction or regret.

The doctor bent, intent, over the motionless huddle on the ground for a moment and then slowly rose, pale to the lips under her make-up. "It - it's right," she announced, her voice hollow. "He is dead."

"I'm afraid," remarked the strange man in a low tone but loud enough to be heard, "that the best we can do now is to obey them. The Daleks would have absolutely no objection to killing us all. I'm sorry."

This was anything but encouraging advice.

The man with the gun had stood up again and regarded them with an eerie combination of menace and complete lack of emotion. He might be more vulnerable than their other captors, Isabel theorized. She kept a close watch on him as she rapidly tried to assess whether there was any chance of escape. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him; he was in his late thirties and dressed in nondescript, middle-class clothes. What made him out of the ordinary was that he was almost as impersonal as his Dalek friends.