Chapter 4

Nita headed back to F Block where her friends were eating lunch. "What did Doctor Smith mean?" she murmured as she dumped her bag on the port-rack and fished out her lunch box.

"Huh?" asked Leigh next to her.

Nita sighed. She had kept this herself long enough. "Ok, so, you know this Miss Phillips who has disappeared?" she began.

"Yeah," replied Leigh.

"Well, the new Science teacher thinks he might know what happened to her."

"How could he know?"

Nita sighed again. "Because of something I told him."

"Something you told him?" asked Leigh, puzzled. "You're not making any sense."

Nita told her about what she had seen in the sky a month before.

"So Doctor Smith thinks that has something to do with Miss Phillips' disappearance?" asked Leigh.

"He said 'Would they wait around for a month? Or did they take others before Sharron?'" said Nita.

"Would who wait around or take Sharron?" asked Leigh.

"I don't know," replied Nita. "He said he wasn't sure yet, but had a good idea. He obviously wasn't going to tell me. I'll have to find out some other way."

Leigh looked at her doubtfully. "Do you really think you should get involved in this?"

"Look, someone has been abducted, possibly by aliens," replied Nita. "I saw these aliens, therefore I am already involved."

"Aliens? Seriously? You really believe that?" asked Leigh, incredulously.

"Well, what other explanation could there be?" countered Nita.

"Well, maybe the lights were helicopters on a manhunt looking for an escaped criminal," began Leigh.

"But, the lights were out over the bay, and they travelled south really fast," replied Nita. "They couldn't possibly be helicopters.

"Well, maybe your eyes were playing tricks on you," said Leigh.

"But my cousin saw them too," insisted Nita.

"Maybe you were drunk!" spoke up Mal, overhearing their conversation.

"Yeah, maybe someone spiked your Cokes for a joke," said Leigh.

"We were not drunk!" exclaimed Nita.

"Give up, mate," said Mal. "No-one believes you."

Shelley was right. She said no-one would believe us. "And yet, Miss Brown and Doctor Smith believed me," Nita realized.

"Why would they believe you?" asked Mal.

"I didn't even come up with the idea," she replied. "It was Doctor Smith's idea that the lights were aliens who abducted Miss Phillips."

"Whatever you reckon!" exclaimed Leigh, walking away.

"Yeah, look, you're my friend," said Mal. "But lay off the alien talk, ok?"

"Fine!" agreed Nita. "I won't say another word about it. Look, I'm going to the library, ok?" Turning on her heel before they could respond, she headed off, wondering if the library held any information on alien abductions.

"That ship sounds like the one we encountered on Necros," replied the Doctor.

"The Dalek ship?" exclaimed Peri, horrified. "Do you think Davros is abducting people from Earth to experiment on?"

On Necros, the Doctor and Peri had discovered humans being metamorphosised into Daleks. As warfare ensued between two Dalek armies, their creator Davros was caught in the crossfire and his only usable hand was shot off. The grey Daleks won.

"I don't think so," replied the Doctor. "Davros was taken back to Skaro to stand trial. I don't think he would have escaped and then tried to repeat his offense."

"You never know with Davros, though. He's been known to escape death or imprisonment before, right?"

"True," he agreed. "We shouldn't discount it. It couldn't be the Daleks he created on Necros though, because they were all destroyed."

"But he could easily have made more if he escaped."

"Yes, I suppose so. Well, we'll just have to see, won't we. In any case, I think it's fairly certain that the ships Nita saw are responsible for Sharron's disappearance, and that she won't be the only person to have been taken. And the ships definitely sound like Dalek ships. I have encountered the Daleks using humanoid slaves several times."

"The leopard seldom changes its spots, Doctor."

"You're right, Peri."

"What has been their methods in the past?"

"The first time I encountered them using human slaves, was actually in the future. Well, your relative future, that is. Daleks forced many people into labour in Bedfordshire, England, in the late 22nd century. They were running a mining operation in order to reach the Earth's magnetic core, replace it with a propulsion system, and turn the whole planet into a massive spacecraft."

"Did you stop them?" asked Peri, feeling a bit worried about her planet's future.

"Oh, of course, Peri! I am the Doctor, after all!" Peri rolled her eyes at his customary self-importance. "I foiled the plan and the volcano eruption killed the Daleks and destroyed their base. "Later, the Daleks allied with the Master to undermine the Earth and Draconian Empires and set them against each other and then take over with a huge army assembled on Spiridon. Despite the Master's failure to cause war, the army was prepared and the Daleks looked toward utilising the invisibility properties of Spiridon's inhabitants as a means of developing stealth technology."

"Don't tell me, you foiled that plan too?"

"Naturally! All of these plans were put on hold when the Dalek army was frozen by the myself and a taskforce of Thals. Of course, that wasn't the last time the Daleks enslaved people. It's very possible that this is what we are facing here."

"What do we do next, Doctor?"

"Nita said the lights were in the east and then headed south, toward Logan. But Sharron disappeared in the west, on Ipswich Road."

"They could have headed west without Nita seeing them."

"You're right, Peri. I think we need to examine the area where Sharron went missing."

"It will be crawling with police right now."

"Yes, perhaps we should wait a few days. In the meantime, we should question some of Sharron's workmates."

"Couldn't we just travel forward a few days in the TARDIS?"

"The TARDIS doesn't like doing short hops like that. I'd rather not."

"All right, I guess it's time to ask a few questions."

Nita's examination of books about alien abduction was fruitless. All she found were vague accounts of people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, none of which sounded credible. She decided her best course of action would be to offer assistance to Miss Brown and Doctor Smith. And to not say anything more about the subject to her friends!