One Cold Step (short story)

One Cold Step
Main character(s):	Anne Travers
Featuring:	Edward, Alun
Main setting:	North Atlantic, April 1969 Kilham, Yorkshire and The Vault, Northumberland, April, 1969
Key crew
Publishers:	Candy Jar Books
Editor:	Andy Frankham-Allen, Shaun Russell, Hayley Cox
Writers:	David A. McIntee, Andy Frankham-Allen
Cover by:	Nathan Hudson
Designer:	Simon Williams
Release details
Release date:	8 July 2015
Reprinted in:	The HAVOC Files
Format:	E-book
Lethbridge-Stewart short stories
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One Cold Step was a short story released by Candy Jar Books in 2015. Originally released as a free pdf download on the Lethbridge-Stewart website, the story was reprinted in the anthology The HAVOC Files. It has since been rendered unavailable on the Lethbridge-Stewart website.

Plot

Anne and Edward Travers are aboard the icebreaker Amundsen. She recalls her brother Alun visiting her in her new bungalow in Yorkshire. They talked about their father, who wanted to return to Tibet. Alun didn't want him to go, and suggested Anne find a way to keep him in the UK. A few days later, at her job at the Vault, Leonard Harkness and Sam Hawkins told her she'd been given an assignment in the North Atlantic. She refused unless she could choose a member of her team.

Anne, her father, and two technicians board a helicopter piloted by Susan Parr. The copter lands on a new volcanic island and the team heads to the crater they've come to investigate. In the centre, Anne finds curved metal beneath the gravel. Eventually, they unearth a cylinder large enough to transport a person.

Characters

• Anne Travers
• Edward Travers
• Alun Travers
• Leonard Harkness
• Sam Hawkins
• Susan Parr

Worldbuilding

• The Amundsen is an icebreaker.
• Anne moved from an apartment in Nevada to a bungalow in Kilham, Yorkshire.
• Anne doesn't have time to watch Tomorrow's World or Panorama.
• Anne is eighteen months younger than her brother Alun. They are the children of Edward Travers and Margaret Travers. Edward's father is Lyndon Travers. Anne and Alun have an uncle named Sebastian Goff and an aunt named Kathleen Goff, as well as cousins.
• Alun teaches at Oxford College.
• Anne previously lived in Nevada.
• The Vault was, on paper, created as part of Wilson's plan to develop new technologies. It was run by a man known only as "The General".
• Edward Travers previously worked for the Fourth Operational Corps in the 1940s.

Notes

• It also contained a short history of the Travers family.
• The edition released for free online is credited to Andy Frankham Allen and David A. McIntee, consisting of a framing narrative with Anne and Edward in the Atlantic and a flashback sequence to Anne's time at the Vault before setting out on the expedition. The framing narrative is sourced directly from McIntee's novel The Schizoid Earth.
• The version included in The HAVOC Files omits the framing narrative and is solely credited to Frankham Allen.

Continuity

• Edward Travers is old friends with the monks at Det-Sen. (TV: The Abominable Snowmen)
• Alun refers to the recent evacuation of London. (TV: The Web of Fear)
• Anne works at the the Vault. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice, AUDIO: Tales from the Vault) Sam Hawkins also works at the Vault, (PROSE: The Forgotten Son) and later was with UNIT. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians)

External links

• One Cold Step