He shook himself and swam up towards the light. He burst out of the water, taking in great lungfuls of air. The sonic screwdriver was bobbing in the shallow water a few feet away. He reached out and snatched it up, shook it dry, then looked about, treading water.

He’d been knocked back a fair distance from the cliff edge. He found the landmark of the crane with its wrecking ball on the skyline and looked down.

There was no sign of the Dalek.

He swam over to where it had fallen and cursed under his breath.

The casing had repelled him – and stolen electrical energy from the sonic screwdriver. The Dalek was active now, its mind fully formed.

Its instinct was to exterminate. What would it do next?

His mouth ran dry. ‘Frank,’ he said. ‘Frank, I’m so sorry.’

He started climbing up the cliff.

46

∗ ∗ ∗

Frank couldn’t help laughing. He pictured his wife getting in tonight, asking how things had gone at the dig, and him replying that there’d been nothing unusual. He’d just met a doctor who could travel in space and time, and seen the corpse of an alien robot from the planet Skaro. Oh yeah, and that Doctor, he would be popping in later.

He was on the train back home, his canvas bag on the seat next to him. Despite what he’d said earlier, he did have questions for the Doctor. He wanted the truth – and at the same time he didn’t. The Doctor would probably turn out to be just some bloke called Steve with a weird sense of humour.

Frank chuckled again. He found himself almost more willing to believe that the Doctor was an alien.

He didn’t know why, but there’d been something reassuring about the Doctor. In their brief time together, he’d seemed to represent something timeless. He had given off the comforting sense that no matter how bad the world got, things were going to be OK. Like a parent to a child.

The train ground to a shrieking halt. That was nothing unusual.

He heard sighs from the three or four other passengers in the com-partment. Frank stared idly out of the window, into someone’s back garden, where washing was flying on the line.

Something made a loud clang on top of the train carriage. This time Frank looked up, startled.

A section of the roof was bulging out, as if an incredibly powerful magnet was pulling at it. The other passengers stood up.

Frank looked towards his canvas bag, his heart pounding.

The roof splintered open, a jagged hole revealing a patch of bright blue sky.

Frank clutched the canvas bag to him. Though he was terrified, a small part of his brain rejoiced. The Doctor was for real. There were aliens.

Through the gap in the roof the Dalek descended. It gave off power, strength, sinister life. It spoke in a throaty electronic rasp, one syllable at a time, like an old computer in a 1950s B-movie. ‘I have detected 47

the weapon in this vehicle. Where is the weapon? Which of you has the weapon?’

One of the other passengers, a girl of about fifteen, screamed and the Dalek zoomed across to her. ‘Answer! Answer!’

Frank’s hand carefully unbuckled the straps on the bag. Perhaps there was some way he could use the weapon against the Dalek.

The Dalek caught the movement of his hand. ‘You will attach the weapon.’

Frank pulled out the gun, his hand shaking, and trained it right at the Dalek. His fingers felt desperately for some kind of trigger, a button or anything. . .

‘Attach the weapon now! Obey!’ screeched the Dalek.

Frank hesitated.

The Dalek’s sucker grabbed the girl and flung her down the carriage like a bag of rubbish. ‘Obey or the young female dies!’

Frank staggered forward.

‘Attach the weapon!’ ordered the Dalek. ‘Obey!’

Frank remembered the Doctor’s description of the Daleks – the most evil things in the universe. He couldn’t do it. But then he heard the young girl sobbing at the other end of the carriage. He couldn’t not do it.

He walked up and slotted the weapon into its housing. It clicked neatly back in place.

‘The Doctor will stop you,’ he heard himself say. ‘I know him. He’ll stop you. He’ll save us.’

The Dalek paused before replying, ‘The Doctor is not here.’

It raised the gun and Frank closed his eyes. The Dalek fired and a bolt of energy shot out.

Frank screamed, and for a second his body was suspended in the air, his skeleton showing through the dazzling beam of unearthly light.

Then the Dalek turned and picked off the other passengers one by one. It screamed with pleasure and joy, ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!

Exterminate!’

48

CHAPTER TEN

POLICE CARS HAD SCREECHED into the pretty market square. Seconds later, Rose found herself surrounded by officers, while the shoppers pointed accusingly at Kate, who was slumped against a lamp-post, sobbing quietly to herself.

‘I’m supposed to be looking after her,’ she told a policewoman. ‘It’s all my fault. She needs to get to a hospital far, far away.’ She was praying for the Doctor to turn up. Even to her ears, her words sounded feeble.

She watched as the police led Kate to the car. There was nothing she could do.

Suddenly there were screams. The sound of crashing cars. Running feet. A distant metallic voice cried, ‘Exterminate!’

The police and shoppers turned their heads towards these weird sounds.

Rose felt her stomach flip over. ‘Oh, no. No, you’re kidding me. . . ’

It was now twenty past twelve. People were starting to come out of the building societies, shoe shops, baker’s shops and butcher’s shops along Twyford high street, crowding on to the narrow pavements.

A column of smoke was rising from the far side of town.

The Dalek appeared through it, its, gun arm waving in all directions, strafing the street with sizzling bolts of deadly radiation.

A middle-aged woman got out of her car to run for cover. The Dalek fired again. Her skeleton glowed green as she was cut down without mercy.

The Dalek saw humans crowded in a window. It fired. The glass shattered and the humans backed away, running into their offices, screaming. The Dalek zoomed over, turned its midsection, thrust its gun through the smashed window frame and blasted them one after another.

49

Then it sped down the high street, chasing the fleeing, panicking humans.

‘Where is the other?’ it called. ‘Where is the one called Kate?’

Crouched behind a bin in the now deserted market square, Rose and Kate heard the voice. Kate instantly leapt to her feet.

‘No!’ shouted Rose, grabbing her, trying to hold her back.

When she looked into Kate’s eyes, she knew the battle for her mind was lost. The tears dried and the life went out of them. Her face took on an expression of twisted pride.

Kate flicked Rose away. ‘There is nothing you can do now,’ she said.

‘The Dalek factor is too powerful.’

Rose got up and pointed towards the high street, towards the smoke and ringing alarms. There were bodies all over the ground.

‘Look at that! Think of your mum, your dad!’

‘Family connections are a genetic weakness,’ Kate said in a flat voice.

‘They are weak and unnecessary.’ She stalked away.

The Dalek appeared through the smoke. It was now shining and gleaming. The casing could have been brand new. Rose guessed it had taken electrical energy from somewhere to repair itself.

Kate and the Dalek moved towards each other. Kate bowed her head.

‘Master, what are my orders?’

The Dalek pointed to Rose. ‘The other humans have fled. Who is this one?’

‘Rose. A companion of the Doctor.’,

‘Yeah,’ shouted Rose proudly. ‘You know, the Doctor, the man you’re so afraid of.’

The Dalek swung its gun to cover her. ‘I am not afraid,’ it said as if it were deeply offended. ‘Daleks do not fear. Must not fear.’ It moved closer and the blue glow in its eye seemed to stare right through her.