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Tegan pulled her fur coat tightly around herself, while trying to ignore the musty smell that seemed to ooze off it every time she moved, and shuddered with the cold. The coat, which stretched down to nearly the ground, was keeping her body warm but the deeply cold air was stinging against her face. She felt like complaining about the cold, again, but what was the point. The Doctor and Nyssa were off examining the wreckage of the space ship; they had found and would ignore her, again. So she hugged the fur coat about herself and started to explore on her own.
She had found the coat in the back of the Tardis’ wardrobe, hidden away from the clothes she and Nyssa usually wore. When Tegan had come back into the console room, wearing the fur coat, the Doctor had explained:
“That’s one of Jo’s old coats.”
“She won’t be wanting it,” Tegan replied. “Will she?”
“No, no. Though she was a bit taller than you.”
“Thank you,” Tegan let the sarcasm ooze through her voice.
“Tegan, will you be warm enough in that coat,” Nyssa asked her. Ever the practical and caring Nyssa. Tegan smiled back at her.
“Don’t worry, this is nice and thick and I’ve actually put trousers on,” she told Nyssa.
“Time to find this beacon,” the Doctor announced, as he opened the Tardis’ doors.
The Doctor and Nyssa were closely examining some part of the spaceship, what was left of the spaceship. It seemed that it broken up in the atmosphere and only a small amount had survived to fall onto this planet, most of that was now covered in snow. Tegan watched them for a moment. Nyssa wearing a thick, black thermal coat and her head covered with the coat’s hood. The Doctor was wearing his ordinary clothes, his cricket hat on the back of his head, seeming so impervious to the cold. They were working closely together, no need for her. Tegan turned away and started to walk through the rest of the wreckage, what there was.
She was regretting wearing the fur coats now, as the hem became a sodden mass dragging through the snow. The coat was the kind of thing her Aunt Vanessa would have worn, Aunt Vanessa’s taste seemed to have stuck in the 1970s – she realised it was the first time she had thought about her Aunt Vanessa in a long time.
When the Tardis had materialised on this planet they had found themselves in a mountain range, snow deep on the ground. Tegan had watched the Tardis’ viewscreen, at the deep snow that lie everywhere, the smooth white blanket only broken by an occasional grey rock pushing through it. It was like the first time she had seen snow, out of a plane window flying over the Alps, she had felt that same childhood excitement of seeing snow. Then that excitement had evaporated as she heard Nyssa say:
“It is minus five degrees outside… most of this planet is covered in snow.”
She glanced over to see Nyssa reading from the Tardis’ computer.
“Well, you two girls had better wrap up warmly. Fortunately I don’t feel the cold,” the Doctor added.
“Are we near to the beacon,” Tegan asked.
“We’re almost on top of it,” Nyssa said.
“For once,” Tegan added, though it came out a lot louder then she had planned. She received a smirk from Nyssa and a scowl from the Doctor.
They had received the distress beacon an hour before and the Doctor, without a word of discussion, had announced they must investigate it. He had then hurriedly set the co-ordinates on the console as Tegan and Nyssa stood back and watched.
It had been a short walk from the Tardis to the small amount of wreckage that was all that was left of the space station, but tramping through the thick snow, cold biting at their faces, it had taken them a lot longer to actually reach it. The Doctor and Nyssa had busied themselves looking for the distress beacon; the Doctor announced that they have to switch it off. Tegan had stood by watching them, for a while, but she soon grew bored. She had complained about the cold on the walk to the wreckage, so instead she wondered off to explore the rest of the wreckage.
The wreckage seemed to be in a long, narrow strip, as slash mark into the hillside. Most of what was left of the spaceship was small, black and bent pieces of metal. She had seen inside so many different spaceships now and it seemed strange to see one reduced to such a small amount of wreckage. Occasionally there was a spot of colour or a few figures of strange writing but mostly it was black and bent pieces of metal.
She was on the point of turning back and heading for the warmth of the Tardis, when she saw it half buried in the snow. At first she thought it was a silver grey bowl or ball. It was dented and charred on one side but she could definitely see the shape of it. As she drew closer she could see it better. It was a helmet, battered and damaged by the impact, a silver grey helmet.
Tegan bent down, drawing her hands out of her pockets, and picked the helmet up. It was an instinctive move, the touch it, to turn it over, to fully look at it. It was the first thing she had seen in the scattered wreckage that she actually recognised.
It was cold to the touch, as cold as the snow and yet it didn’t freeze her skin, as her fingers slide over the metal. She turned it around in her hands and than froze with shock, shock colder than the planet’s whether, shock snatching at her breath. It wasn’t a helmet; it was the head of a Cyberman. It had been severed just below the chin, a collection of empty tubes and wires hanging down from the neck, the dull and blank eye sockets staring back at her. It was obviously dead and yet it still had the power to frighten her to her very soul.
They had not encountered the Cyberman since Adric’s death; they had hardly talked about them or Adric’s death. There was grief over his death, obvious and painful grief, but there was also guilt. She knew she felt guilty, she had been spared, escaped with the Doctor, and she should have been able to do something to save him – but she didn’t.
As she stared at it she saw that the side of the faceplate was lose. Again she acted without thinking about it, instinct taking over. She slipped the fingers under the edge of the loose faceplate and lifted. At first the cold metal wouldn’t move, staying firmly in place. Then, with a sharp cracking noise, half of the faceplate actually broke away, before the metal started to break apart in her hand.
The shock she felt was replaced, in that moment, by physical horror, nauseating horror. Behind the broken face place was a human face, a face that had once been a young man. The skin was grey and dry, the eye had a silver sheen to it, but it was still obviously that of a human.
Tegan screamed, throwing Cyberman head back into snow and jumping to her feet, but her feet caught in the hem of her coat. Instead of jumping upright, she was sent falling backwards, her body sprawling in the snow. She struggled to stand up, her feet kicking out but still catching in her coat, her hands clawing at the snow, but it seemed suddenly an impossible thing to do. All the while shouting and screaming her horror.
Suddenly there are hands helping her up, arms pulling her up and out of the snow, and Nyssa’s voice next to her ear:
“Tegan? Tegan, what is it?”
Suddenly she was standing upright, once again her feet planted firmly in the snow.
“There, over there in the snow! It’s horrible!” She shouted, pointing straight at the Cyberman’s head.
“What?” The Doctor asked her.
“In the snow, there, a Cyberman. I know it’s one,” her voice shook with the emotions rushing through her.
“I’ll look,” The Doctor said.
His hand release her arm, while at the same time she felt Nyssa’s arm slipped around her shoulders. Nyssa’s comforting presence next to her.
She watched The Doctor walk over to were she had thrown it back into the snow, squat down and stare at the Cyberman’s head. He seemed to stare at it for a very long moment, before looking up again at them.
“I was right,” he said, his voice did not have that pleased tone when he was right. “It was a Cyberman ship. They must have a new design I didn’t recognise at first.”
“But Doctor we switched off the distress beacon, it won’t bring anyone else here,” Nyssa said.
“It was only the head, that’s all that’s left,” Tegan said. She was addressing them both but her eyes were fixed on the thing at the Doctor’s feet.
“Yes Tegan,” The Doctor replied as he stood up. “But the crash must have killed them all. We’re safe here.”
“And it’s got a human face,” she said.
“What?” Nyssa’s voice was heavy with questioning.
Tegan turned to her friend. Nyssa’s face, framed by the black hood of her coat, stared back at with a puzzled expression.
“When I picked it up part of the metal on the face broke away,” she told Nyssa “and under it was a face, a human face.”
“That’s horrible,” Nyssa said.
“Yes it is,” The Doctor added, walking back to them. “The Cybermen were once human but now they can’t reproduce. Anyone they capture they augment, replacing what was once human with machinery, and turn them into more Cybermen.”
“They killed Adric,” Tegan said, finally expressing the emotions that were pressing there way through her mind.
“Yes,” The Doctor said, his voice too heavy with sadness. “They would have changed us into Cybermen, everyone left alive on earth, if we hadn’t stopped them.”
“And they killed Adric, killed him,” she said again.
“I know,” he replied. The heavy emotions in his voice spoke far more than his words. She knew he was feeling the same things she was (later this knowledge would comfort her), he wasn’t as remote as she had blamed him for being – she realised silently and unspoken even to Nyssa. “Let’s leave this awful place,” The Doctor said.
“No Doctor” Nyssa said. “We need to stay here, only for a short while, but we need to stay here.”
“Are you sure?” He asked Nyssa.
“We can’t just walk away,” Nyssa replied.
Tegan fell Nyssa’s hands give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
The End
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