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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.
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