The Map of the Sky (12 page)

And so, thought Reynolds, that motley crew consisted of men who were running away from something. In fact, neither Allan, nor Griffin, nor any of the crew on the
Annawan
gave a damn if the Earth was hollow. They were simply a group of desperate men fleeing their demons. And yet, in their flight to nowhere, the crew members’ destinies had converged, and now they faced a real live demon, and probably a death worse than that of being relegated to oblivion.

Reynolds shook his head at his own thoughts. He was taking too
much for granted, he told himself, as he approached Allan with a look of resignation on his face. How could he be sure the object’s origins were not earthly? Did he trust the suspicions of an Indian who could not even follow a trail? His intuition told him the creature
was
from another world, but since that was what he was hoping for, his intuition was surely biased. And as for the creature’s intentions, well, it was best not to dwell on them. Despite his desire to establish contact with the monster, Reynolds had been infected with the same fear as the rest of the men and had started going to bed with his pistol under his pillow, scarcely able to sleep as he imagined the monster outside, circling the ship.

Reynolds positioned himself alongside Allan, greeting him genially. For some minutes they maintained the respectful silence of two people sharing a box at the theater, admiring the spectacle of the white, icy terrain stretching out before them. The wind rocked the lanterns nailed to the posts forming a cordon around the ship, lending the scene a magical air, as though hidden in the snowy distance a ring of fairies were dancing. Were they being watched at that very moment? Reynolds wondered uneasily. Finally he cleared his throat and asked the gunner the question he had been longing to put to him from the very beginning.

“What do you suppose that thing is, Allan?”

The swaddled lump that was the sergeant’s head went on gazing at the ice for a few moments.

“I don’t know,” he replied at last, with a shrug.

Not satisfied with his answer, Reynolds tried to formulate the question in a different way. “Do you think it comes from . . . the stars?”

This time the gunner responded instantly: “I do, my friend, probably from Mars.”

The young man’s precision took Reynolds aback. “Why Mars?”

The gunner nodded and turned round, staring at him with his huge eyes, those grey eyes Reynolds always avoided looking at for fear they would suck him in like a whirlpool.

“It is the simplest explanation,” said Allan, almost apologetically. “And the simplest explanations are almost always the truest.”

“Why?” the explorer asked, without clarifying whether he was questioning Allan’s first or second statement, or both.

“Because Mars is the planet that has most in common with ours,” Allan explained, his gaze wandering back to the ice. “Have you read the Royal Society’s reports based on studies carried out by William Herschel, the astronomer royal, with his telescope?” Reynolds shook his head, inviting to Allan to go on, which he did immediately: “They maintain that Mars has a thick atmosphere, similar in many ways to ours, which means it is probably inhabited.”

“I see you haven’t considered the possibility that the creature and its machine could be part of a military experiment carried out by some foreign power, for example.”

“Of course I have. However, it seems inconceivable that a foreign power could possess scientific knowledge so disproportionately superior to our own,” said Allan, “and that they could have managed to keep it quiet until now, don’t you agree? Therefore I am dismissing the idea that the creature comes from Earth, which only leaves outer space. And if we accept that premise, we may not be far wrong in supposing that our visitor comes from Mars, the planet that is both nearest to ours and most able to support life out of all those around us.” Allan shot him a glance. “Of course, I could be mistaken, and I may even be distorting the facts to fit my theory, a common tendency in deductive reasoning. But until someone disproves it, this seems to me the simplest and therefore the most logical explanation,” he concluded emphatically.

Allan raised his penetrating gaze toward the sky, appearing to look in a specific direction, perhaps toward the red planet itself. Shivering with cold at his side, Reynolds watched him with a mixture of disquiet and fascination, struck dumb by his analysis of the creature’s origins. The extent of the gunner’s knowledge never ceased to amaze Reynolds. He had not met anyone so seemingly informed in such a variety of subjects, or who was capable of such categorical and exhaustive analysis. Not for nothing had the gunner enrolled in the prestigious University of Virginia at the age of seventeen. Although, according to what he had told
Reynolds during one of his drunken rants, he had immediately incurred impossibly high gambling debts, and with no one willing to pay them off for him, he had been summarily expelled, but not before setting fire to every stick of furniture in his room. Another message that his stepfather, whom Allan reproached for having educated him as a rich boy without giving him any money, had failed to interpret.

“Do you know something, Reynolds? I have always thought it was only a matter of time before they paid us a visit,” the gunner suddenly added with an air of somber reflection, as he continued to gaze up at the star-studded sky.

“A Martian,” Reynolds repeated, still incredulous.

The sergeant’s words had made him feel elated and terrified at the same time. The man beside him, whose intellect was as keen as his own, believed, as he did, that the creature came from outer space. Overwhelmed once more by all the ramifications of this, Reynolds felt his head start to spin. A Martian had fallen out of the sky . . . And they would be the first humans to establish contact with it, the brave crew of the
Annawan,
the members of the Great American Expedition organized by the famous explorer Jeremiah Reynolds. The first man to communicate with a being from the stars, the man who would possibly never be appointed viceroy of the subterranean world, but who might go down in History as Earth’s ambassador to outer space.

“Yes, a Martian,” reiterated the gunner, who was by now looking at Reynolds, eyes shining, as if the brightness of the stars he had been contemplating were glinting in them. “And his existence changes everything, don’t you think? How could Man go on believing in God now, for example?”

“Well,” replied Reynolds, “I wouldn’t be so sure. According to Genesis, God is the Creator of all things, of Heaven and Earth, of all that is visible and invisible: of everything, Allan, including the Martian. I think God will appear even more powerful to us for having been able to invent beings beyond Man’s imagining.”

“And what makes you so sure?” Allan gently replied. “Consider the
Annawan
for a moment. She is a relatively modern vessel, and yet after almost four hundred years, the main thing that differentiates her from a simple galleon is that she is powered by coal as well as wind. And only a few miles away from her is a machine from another world, something so incredibly advanced it is beyond the grasp of our most brilliant minds. Try to imagine what kind of civilization could have created such a thing and what other marvels a society like that might reveal to us. A vaccine against aging? A cure for our most terrible afflictions? Creatures made in our image that could carry out the most backbreaking or the simplest chores for us? Immortality perhaps? Tell me, Reynolds, who will believers look to after this? I am afraid that when it all comes to light, no one will care what God and His Heaven have to offer,” declared the sergeant.

Reynolds did not know how to challenge him, above all because he agreed with everything Allan had said. If Reynolds had played the devil’s advocate, it was only because, unlike him, the gunner had given no thought to how he might benefit personally from all this. No, Allan had focused on the significance the Martian’s arrival might have for humanity, making Reynolds feel small-minded, selfish, and grasping. Both men fell silent, watching the lights dancing on the surface of the ice. In any event, thought Reynolds, he was not going to waste time arguing, since it made no difference to him whether in fifty years’ time Man still believed in God or had begun worshipping skunks. What he really wanted to ask Allan was whether, despite the revolutionary nature of their discovery, it was right that Man should welcome his supposed guest with a hail of bullets. If Allan agreed with him that this was a mistake, he might join him in trying to dissuade the captain from pursuing this course of action.

However, Reynolds did not get the chance to pose any more questions, for a sudden uproar inside the hold obliged them to cut short their conversation. The two men turned as one, and, after listening intently for a few moments, deduced that the sounds were coming from the infirmary. What the devil was going on in there? It seemed a little unreasonable of Carson to make such a fuss over losing a foot, Reynolds
reflected. Like the rest of the lookouts, Allan did not dare to abandon his post, and so, after taking his leave with a shrug, the explorer was the only one who broke the icy silence on deck as he scrambled over to the nearest hatch to see what was going on. He clambered down to the lower deck and made his way to the infirmary. A group of sailors stood crowded outside, a look of terror in their eyes. Reynolds barged through them and into the infirmary. The grisly scene he encountered left him speechless, as it had Captain MacReady, who stood ashen-faced in the center of the room.

The cause of the captain’s horror was none other than the dismembered corpse of Doctor Walker. The surgeon lay on the floor like a broken doll. Someone, or perhaps it would be more exact to say
some thing,
had torn him limb from limb with shocking meticulousness. His right arm had been wrenched from its socket, both legs hacked off, and his throat sliced right through so that his spinal vertebrae were exposed. His thorax had also been slit down the middle, and a medley of organs, entrails, and splinters of rib cage were strewn about the floor. The walls were covered with gruesome splatters of blood and viscous blobs, and wherever Reynolds looked his eye alighted on a fresh lump of flesh or organ. His face turned pale as he surveyed the carnage. It seemed unbelievable that if all these different bits were reassembled, they would form Doctor Walker, the same sentient being who only a few hours earlier had smiled at him and inquired about his hand when they had met in the gangway. And in the midst of all this destruction, trembling from head to toe as he crouched on the cot as though he had just witnessed all the horrors of the world, was Carson. It did not take long for Reynolds to conclude that the author of that bloodbath was the demon from the sky—or the Martian, if he was to believe Allan. The thought that in the monster’s eyes a man deserved no more respect than a seal, and that apparently it could enter the ship undetected, made Reynolds’s blood run cold, obliterating any trace of euphoria he might have felt when, only a few moments before, he and Allan had speculated about the creature and its origins. What he felt now had another name: fear. Fear unlike any he
had ever known, fear that showed him how fragile, insignificant, and pitifully vulnerable he was, and above all the pathetic presumptuousness of his aspirations to grandeur.

“Good God . . . ,” Captain MacReady murmured, unable to take his eyes off the surgeon’s ravaged corpse.

When he managed to regain his composure, he walked over to Carson and questioned him about what had happened, but the sailor was in a state of shock. MacReady shook him a couple of times, then began frantically slapping him, but Carson seemed unable to respond. At last the captain realized he was wasting his time, and, thrusting Reynolds aside, he addressed his men.

“Listen, everyone. The thing that did this to Doctor Walker is probably still inside the ship,” he said. “Go to the weapons store, take as many guns as you can carry, and search the vessel from top to bottom.”

All at once Reynolds found himself lying on the infirmary floor, while in the distance he heard the captain barking orders to his men, organizing a sweep of the ship. Trying not to retch, he glanced once more at the gruesome remains of the surgeon’s dismembered body. Then he looked at Carson and wondered whether he was shaking because he knew they were all going to die, because his stupefied mind had grasped that the demon from the stars was so terrifying that no human being stood a chance against it and they might as well give themselves up for dead. The creature would finish them off one by one, on that distant lump of ice, while God looked the other way.

VI

F
OLLOWING
M
AC
R
EADY
’
S ORDERS, THE SAILORS
scoured every inch of the ship. Muskets at the ready, they inspected the coal bunkers and the powder store, where the gunpowder and munitions slept their uneasy sleep. They even peered inside the boilers in the engine room and laundry. The demon from the stars was nowhere to be found. After hacking the surgeon to pieces, the monster had apparently vanished into thin air. There was no trace either of any damage to the ship’s hull, no hole through which the Martian, or whatever it was, could have slipped aboard the
Annawan.
Incredible though it might seem, the creature had found a way to enter and leave without being seen. Unnerved, MacReady’s only answer was to double the number of lookouts. He even posted a few men outside on the ice, forming a ring around the ship.

But, regrettably, his strategy did nothing to wipe the fear from the eyes of the sailors, who went on obsessively searching the ship and grilling Carson about what he had seen. They needed to know what the monster looked like. But Carson’s account was only sketchy. The sailor had been stretched out on one of the cots in the infirmary, semiconscious from the laudanum, so that he felt the teeth of the saw as little more than a pleasant, harmless tickle, even though the surgeon was about to take off his right foot at the ankle, when a huge shadow entered the room and hurled itself at the unwitting Doctor Walker. In a matter of seconds, the apparition had torn the surgeon to shreds, pieces of him flying about the room in a hail of bloody lumps of flesh and broken bone. Unsure if
this was a hallucination caused by the laudanum, or, however insane it seemed, if it was really happening, the horrified Carson prepared himself to meet the same fate, wondering whether he would feel anything more than a pleasant tickle when the creature began to dismember him. But luckily for Carson, his fellow sailors’ movements had alerted the demon, and it had fled the room. Carson could only offer a vague and incomplete description of the monster that added nothing new to the information Peters had gleaned from its footprints. The Martian, indeed, did have claws, not hooves, and was terrifying to behold, but they could get no more information out of Carson, not even about the color of its skin. Carson was a man of few words who knew when to unfurl a sail to make the most of the wind but whose vocabulary was too limited to describe a creature that probably resembled nothing he had ever seen before. When Carson had recovered from the shock, they dressed the tiny incision on his foot made by the saw, although none of them dared finish the amputation the doctor had started. They left him in the infirmary, hoping for a miracle or that a game of cards would decide who would wield the saw and put an end to Carson’s suffering.