Stillman at last felt some of his dignity return as the jets of water cleaned away his shame. The prisoners had been ordered to disrobe before mounting a conveyor belt that took them into the heart of a monster machine. For Lemuel it evoked dark memories from Earth’s murderous past and for a moment he was convinced that poison gas would start seeping down from the ceilings. Fortunately it was powerful jets of water that doused their bodies instead; maybe the Daleks weren’t as perverse as their human counterparts.
After the scrub-down the conveyor belt moved them on to the drying area, where a hot wind blasted their bodies before moving them on the last stage of ‘processing’.
This involved them being issued one-piece orange overalls by human servants of the Daleks. It was interesting to Stillman that from this moment onwards there was no sign of the machine-creatures presence. He counted that as a blessing, but made a mental note of the opportunity it presented.
The greatest surprise of all was their transport to the mines, which they discovered waiting next to the platform they all found themselves on.
“A train,” said Stillman, “a steam train!”
“Steam?” said Lemuel. Looking towards the end of the row of gunmetal grey carriages confirmed Stillman’s observation: A bullet headed engine hissed noisily and there was that earthy, unfamiliar odour of soot and water.
“A bloody steam train!” exclaimed another prisoner, almost as if this one indignity too many for them to endure. A commotion broke out on the platform, it seemed that no one was sure whether the Daleks were seriously expecting them to get on this museum piece. This puzzle was resolved quickly when a surly looking man in dark blue overalls addressed them.
“Work Detail 587025,” he said across the hubbub. “I said Work Detail 587025!”
 The noise ceased abruptly as everyone realised he was addressing them. He was a thickset man with a worn expression on his face and sad grey eyes. “You will now board the train which is your transport to the dark matter mines. My name is Olsen, I am your Overseer, your Chief, your Gaffer, the BOSS!” he emphasised this last word so as to stamp out any ambiguity. “I hold you by the balls because the Daleks have mine in a vice. I have absolute discretion in the way in which my targets are met. If you don’t come up to scratch then I have power of life and death to get you working.” He paused to let this last point sink in, his eyes scanning the crowd for potential trouble. “But I am not like them. I don’t kill for pleasure, I don’t revel in misery. But I run a tight ship here, zero fatalities in the last two cycles, which is a lot more than I can say for the other overseers. I expect to keep that record up.”
With that he indicated that they were to board the train.
“The Daleks obviously pick the biggest bullies they can find to do their dirty work for them,” muttered Stillman.
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s entirely fair,” said Lemuel, ever willing to be generous. “After all he seemed to take great pride in having a low fatality record. So at least he cares about whether we live or die.”
“No he doesn’t Lemuel- he cares more about whether he lives or dies, not us!”
With a sudden jerk the train started moving forward. They shared a compartment with six others, four on the metal benches that served as seating and two standing. As they cleared the platform Stillman craned his head to look out of the small window built into the top part of the carriage. They were leaving the Dalek city behind, heading out into the hinterlands of the hollowed out asteroid. The scale of the place seemed astounding, the nearest that Stillman had ever seen to this was the orbiting colony of New Caledonia. Like this place it was basically a hollow cylinder, although human fashioned from metal and Perspex to form a floating suntrap. Fields and living areas would rotate through strips of night and day as the whole structure slowly turned in space.  Here the Daleks had to make their own sun, which curved over the inside wall of the hollow world in much the same way as Horus’ Chariot was meant to carry the sun according to the Ancient Egyptians. This was certainly a mythic landscape, felt Stillman. One question continued to dog him though- given the Daleks evident advanced technology why did they use a steam train?
“I think I know why,” said a young man with thick curly hair. Stillman knew him from sight but had never learnt his name in all the months they travelled together. Fortunately Lemuel came to his rescue.
“Daniels isn’t it, you were in Prof. Jenkins team?” he asked helpfully. Jenkins had been the head geologist on the Andromeda.
“That’s right,” said the young man. “The Prof was killed in the attack when the Daleks bust through.”
Stillman didn’t have much time for sadness: “You said something about why they’re using steam trains.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said the young man, his dark eyebrows knitting themselves into a frown. “This asteroid field isn’t like any normal stretch of debris. This field is part of a huge cloud of dark matter that surrounds our galaxy. Not all of the cloud is like this, sometimes its no more than an electromagnetic footprint, here it takes the form of solid objects like rocks and planetoids, which are mostly ordinary matter co-mixed with exotic energy patterns.”
“Dark matter,” muttered Lemuel. “I heard the Overseer say something about that.”
“Dark Matter Mines,” said Stillman. “I heard that as well. How would dark matter affect the Daleks?”
“I don’t know for sure,” admitted Daniels. “But I should imagine it plays havoc with their travel machines, anything that is dependent on electrical impulses will be affected one way or the other.”
“H’mm, steam trains and slave labour,” Stillman mused to himself. He returned to studying the landscape outside the window. They were making their way through a fertile valley, bisected by a river and divided into symmetrical fields of cereal crops, Stillman wasn’t sure what exactly, but it looked like maize to him. Settlements were dotted here and there throughout the ‘valley’, which was delineated by a mountainous outcrop of rock on either side. Across it must have been about twenty miles from one wall to another, it was hard to judge distances because of a peculiar orange haze that hung in the atmosphere.
The train steamed on for another hour more, it was difficult to tell how long exactly and Stillman had to guess from the position of the ‘sun’. The landscape began to rise up before them as they steamed away from the valley floor, Stillman could hear the engines taking the strain as it tackled the gradient. The track then climbed through a series of foothills, which in turn gave into narrow and treacherous mountain passes. As they drew nearer the mines a huge wall of black rock loomed before them, so vast it curved up until it met the sky and continued upwards, reminding the slaves of the true nature of their captivity. Nestled at the foot of this immense wall was another platform, a tiny sliver of white against an ebony backdrop.
They exited the train and were once more marshalled by Olsen on the platform. He held up a piece of greenish, clay like substance in his hand.
“This is Dark Matter!” he announced, letting go of the lump, which continued to float in mid-air. Evidently pleased with his party trick, the Overseer continued his demonstration. “As you can see it has a number of interesting properties,” to everyone’s surprise he began to shape and mould the lump into a smiley face. It hung there for a few minutes as he continued: “Its lethal for the Daleks of course, which is why they get us to dig it out. But its harmless to us,” he assured them as the smiley face began to warp and dissolve before their very eyes. A disfigured, angst ridden blob now grinned at them all, before turning into a skull. “Its also psycho-morphic,” he said. “Which means it responds to your brain waves, so you have to watch out for that as well. The stream you are about to mine lies four hundred meters down the corridor we have blasted into the rocks. You will need protective gear and helmets, which you can get from the quartermaster. Pick up your pickaxes and shovels boys. Its back to basics down here!”
Stillman found he had been paired off with a more experienced miner- a well-built, wiry little man called Luton. He didn’t say much, just grunted at Stillman for the first hour or so. The tunnels into the rock face got narrower the nearer they got to the stream. By the time they got to where they were supposed to start digging they were on their hands and knees. It was pitch black, the light from the glow-torches seemingly swallowed by the stale air itself. (They used tubes of fluorescent liquid as torches, another consequence of the embargo on electricity).
“Here college boy!” yelled Luton. “Come and take a swing at this wall!”
Stillman edged closer to the rock face, in the pale fluorescence he could see the leering, knowing grin on Luton’s face. Stillman knew that look well and took the pickaxe from him with an air of grim determination. He was no stranger to hard work; he’d soon show this half-wit.
He soon found it was much harder than he looked, his first few swings rebounding from the hard black rock. Luton’s grin just bigger and bigger and his laugh dirtier and dirtier the more frustrated Stillman became.
“Ain’t so simple now is it Professor,” scoffed Luton.
“Nonsense!” barked Stillman. “Just a problem with the angle that’s all.” In anger he swung the pickaxe in a wide arc before it connected with the wall, the force of the blow sent it spinning out of his hand. “God-damn-it!” he cried, throwing himself at the wall in frustration. He felt his hands connect with something treacly and viscous and very, very cold. He heard a popping noise and next moment he found himself embedded up to his elbows in what seemed to be…the wall?
“What the hell!” Luton’s laughing suddenly cut dead.
“Oh shit!” Stillman heard himself say. He tried to pull himself free but the wall pulled him back and he found himself being pulled into a morass of freezing black substance, neither solid nor liquid but something in-between. Now it was all around him, in his face, blacking out his eyes, sealing up his mouth and lungs, drowning him in stone.