They could only pray it would be enough.
It had taken her longer than she’d hoped, but Susan finally reached the corridor where the Daleks’ weapon was stored. She’d managed to duck and hide from every passing Dalek or Roboman, though she’d had a couple of narrow escapes. And, as far as she could tell, the Daleks weren’t yet aware that she’d escaped from her makeshift cell.
The question was – now what? There was bound to be at least one Dalek, and most likely more, with the weapon – to operate it, if not to guard it – and all she was armed with was a machine gun and her wits. Would that be sufficient to stop them?
She reached the lock outside the laboratory and checked its readout carefully. Thank goodness computers were all basically binary! She couldn’t read the Dalek language as such, but she could decipher that there were two Daleks inside the room. And that was a definite problem. Maybe she could defeat one Dalek, but she didn’t have a chance of finishing off two before one of them managed to kill her What she needed was a better weapon.
Or a distraction…
She moved to the next door in the corridor. This led simply to a storage area of some kind, and there were no Daleks inside it now. Opening the door, she checked out the room. It was filled with electronic and chemical supplies. If only she had the time, she could try to build a bomb or something. But the Daleks had claimed the weapon would be operational in five units of time. She wasn’t sure how long that would be, which meant that she couldn’t take the time for anything elaborate. Opposite this room was a second storage area. She keyed that door open and left it while she went back to the first storage room. Instead of anything complicated, she simply mixed up a flammable bunch of chemicals, spread them about the room and then fired a single shot into them.
Flames whooshed about the room so fast she was almost caught in the blast. She dived backward, dosing the door to contain the fire. Alarms started whooping as she dived through the door opposite that she had left open. Then she waited.
The door to the laboratory opened, and one of the Daleks within emerged. It glided around to survey the problem in the storage room, hesitating in the doorway. Susan rushed forward, and slammed as hard as she could into the unsuspecting Dalek. Unable to stop itself, it shot forward, into the blaze. Susan hit the control to close the door before it could turn around, and then shattered the lock with her rifle butt.
She had no idea whether or not that would finish the Dalek, but that wasn’t what was important right now. She dived through the doorway of the laboratory, her weapon ready. ‘Dalek!’ she yelled.
The remaining Dalek spun around, its eyestalk fractionally faster than the rest of its body. Susan fired a short burst, and shattered the lens of its eye. She dived to one side as the Dalek opened fire.
‘Cannot see!’ the Dalek howled, its gun blazing in all directions. ‘Intruder alert! Exterminate!’
Susan managed to get close enough to the Dalek to grapple with it. Blinded, it could do nothing but struggle and continue firing randomly. With luck, Susan thought, it might even damage its own equipment and save her the bother. But she couldn’t work with it firing constantly. Gritting her teeth, she rolled the Dalek towards the door, picking up speed, and then hurled it against the far wall. It crashed with a metallic splintering sound, and Susan hoped it had broken some vital systems. Then she keyed the door closed and shattered the lock. That wouldn’t keep the Daleks out for ever, but it might be long enough for her to disarm and destroy the device. After that, of course, they would undoubtedly kill her. But she’d worry about that when the time came. If she could save New London, dying might well be worth it.
It wasn’t hard to locate the weapon, since it was the only operational machine in the laboratory. It was smaller than she had expected, a tube about eighteen inches tall and six across. It was wired into a timing device that was counting down. It was shaped like a human clock, and marked off in increments. If she assumed that each mark represented one time unit, then there was about one quarter unit left.
How much time could she have?
The weapon was semi‐transparent, and she could see small lights pulsing within the device. It was connected to the timer through about a dozen links. Should she simply disconnect each of them? Or had the Daleks planned for that? The weapon was, after all, basically a trap for the unwary. On the other hand, the Daleks couldn’t have anticipated that any human would get quite this far into their complex.
After agonising for a few moments, she saw that the timer was crawling its way to zero rather too quickly. Perhaps the best thing would be to simply destroy the device. She considered the idea. But would gunfire do it any damage? Or would bullets simply ricochet off and injure her?
Finally, she simply acted on instinct. With the butt of the machine gun, she shattered the connections that held the device to the timer. Then she held her breath, waiting to see what would happen.
The timer continued to tick its way down, uninterrupted. But the lights in the weapon itself died out. Susan jerked the device free of the framework, and clutched it to her chest. All she had to do now was to destroy it…
There was a sound at the door as it hissed open. Susan was astonished that the Daleks had managed to break through so quickly. Her weapon wouldn’t be of much use against a Dalek if she couldn’t hit its lens, but she brought the gun up just in case. Maybe the Daleks would fire at her and destroy the device…
But it wasn’t a Dalek that stepped through the doorway, nor was it a Roboman. Instead, smiling cheerfully, it was the bearded man who had started all this. He held a gun of his own, and before Susan could pull the trigger, he fired first.
Pain lanced through her body as the bullet tore across her hand. She dropped the gun, unable to clench her fist any longer, and cried out in pain. Blood welled up, following the fire of agony.
‘My apologies,’ the man said politely, ‘but I do believe you were attempting to destroy the Daleks’ matter transmuter, and I simply can’t allow that.’ As Susan collapsed to the floor, he strode across the room and tore the Dalek device from her faltering fingers. ‘I am the Master. Thank you, my dear, you’ve been such a help.’
13
Zero Hour
Susan stared at the Master in pain and shock. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’ she asked him.
‘I have every idea of what I’m doing,’ he replied cheerfully. He raised the transmuter slightly. ‘With this device, I’m going to rule as many worlds as I care to.’
It was almost impossible to believe his self‐centredness. ‘You’ve set the Daleks loose on Earth again, all to steal that?’
The Master shrugged. ‘That, as you put it, is the key to my forthcoming control over the universe,’ he smiled.
‘How? What will you make it do?’ asked Susan, helplessly.
‘As you know, the Dalek war efforts extend over thousands of parsecs. And they need for their expansion more than anything…?’ He was acting as though this was school, and Susan some backward pupil.
‘Raw materials,’ Susan guessed. ‘Their efforts must use up so many metals, they need greater and greater sources. That’s the reason they came to Earth in the first place – they wanted the metal present at its molten core.’
‘Quite right,’ the Master agreed. ‘Well, at the same time, I have discovered they were working on a different approach to the problem.’