The Map of the Sky (21 page)

“Reynolds, Reynolds . . .”

The explorer knelt at his side.

“I am here, friend,” he said, placing his arm around Allan’s shoulder, ready to help him up.

“Where is everyone?” Allan inquired in the faintest of voices.

“Well, having seen what is in the hold, the Martian has decided to inspect the rest of the ship. I think it wants to make sure we are seaworthy,” Reynolds jested, managing to elicit a weak smile from the gunner. “Do you think you can stand?”

Allan nodded feebly, but as he tried to rise to his feet, his ankle gave way, and he fell to the floor with a grimace of pain.

“Damnation, I think I’ve sprained it. I am not sure if I can walk, Reynolds,” he said in a strangled voice. “What the devil are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Allan,” the explorer replied, slumping beside him. He pushed Peters’s head to one side with the toe of his boot. “Perhaps we should stay here and wait if you can’t walk—this is as good a place as any. Maybe the others will manage to kill the monster. And if it comes back, we have more than enough weapons,” he concluded, signaling the pistols that Foster and the captain were still clasping.

“No, Reynolds. You go and help the others,” the gunner croaked. “There is no need to stay here with me.”

But before the explorer was able to reply, they heard Kendricks’s voice in the distance.

“I’ve found him, Lieutenant!” he cried. “That son of a devil is hiding in the powder store!”

“Be careful, Kendricks!” the lieutenant warned him. “Don’t open fire in there!”

Then Reynolds and Allan heard several musket shots.

“For God’s sake, Kendricks, I told you not to—”

A blast cut the lieutenant short, and almost immediately afterward Reynolds and Allan felt the ship shudder violently. The pile of crates they were leaning against began to wobble, and Reynolds hurriedly pushed the gunner to one side, then rolled on top of him as several crates containing whole sides of lamb toppled over and crashed to the floor, right where they had been sitting.

“Damn you, Kendricks,” cursed Reynolds, standing up and hauling the gunner to his feet. Allan clung to him, stifling a cry of pain as he tried to rest on his injured foot. “Come on, Allan,” Reynolds encouraged him. “We’re leaving. I don’t think it is such a good idea for us to stay here.”

The echo from the first blast was still reverberating when they heard
another, followed by a fresh convulsion. Reynolds realized that Kendricks had set off a chain reaction in the powder store, and it would not be long before the boxes of ammunition and barrels of gunpowder exploded, blowing the ship sky high. They had to get off the
Annawan
as quickly as possible. He dragged the gunner over to the trapdoor leading up to the deck where the officers’ and crew’s quarters were. Clouds of thick black smoke were billowing down the passage between the powder store and the hold, making it almost impossible to see. Reynolds assumed the sailors who had chased after the creature were dead and even dared hope the creature was too. Not wishing to suffer the same fate, he wasted no time praying for their poor souls, but urged Allan to climb the steps. Once they had managed to get to the lower deck, where there was not a sailor in sight, the explorer tried to think what to do next, but he scarcely had time to give Allan any instructions when they were startled by a third, even bigger explosion. The blast raised some of the floorboards, splintering the wood, and hurled the two men into the air, together with a handful of equipment and a few barrels. The explorer was flung against one of the walls and rolled along the floor for a few yards. Half dazed, he lay amid the debris; a dark fog began to cloud his consciousness.

“Reynolds . . .”

Allan’s voice roused him from his stupor. He blinked several times, coughed, and was surprised to find himself still alive. His whole body ached, but no bones appeared to be broken. He half sat up and tried to locate the gunner amid the thick clouds of smoke obscuring everything. The blast had torn some of the lanterns from their hooks, and here and there tiny fires had broken out, which would soon spread, kindled by the tinder-dry wood from which the polar frost had wrung every drop of moisture. But before Reynolds could find Allan, he made out a figure at the far end of the deck, trotting calmly toward the armory, like a sinner so used to being in Hell that he feels completely at ease there. He realized it was Griffin, that curious sailor, who apparently had not followed the others into the powder store, thus escaping with his life, and
who, instead of leaving the ship, which seemed the most sensible thing to do, was arming himself, as though he did not consider the battle with the creature to be over. Reynolds shrugged. That lunatic could do what he wanted with his own life; he had no intention of trying to stop him.

“Reynolds . . . ,” he heard Allan wailing from somewhere.

Then the explorer saw him, trapped under a heap of shattered beams. He was still alive but would not be for much longer if Reynolds did not dig him out and help him to abandon ship. This time, Reynolds surprised himself by not even entertaining the option of leaving Allan there. He rose unsteadily to his feet and ran over to help him. When he arrived, he noticed a deep gash in Allan’s forehead, which was bleeding profusely. He was still half conscious, yet beneath his matted hair, his bright eyes were flickering like two candle flames before an open window. Reynolds managed to pull him out from under the fallen beams, help him to his feet, and drag him over to the nearest hatch. Hauling him up the ladder proved grueling. When they finally emerged on the
Annawan
’s upper deck, Reynolds felt the cold like a rejuvenating balm. But they were not yet out of harm’s way. Reynolds quickly collected himself and located the ice ramp. He pushed Allan toward it, and, placing his arms around the gunner’s waist, they hurled themselves over the side, as behind them another violent blast shook the vessel.

Once they were on the snow, Reynolds heaved Allan up off the ground and dragged him to what he thought was a safe distance from the
Annawan
. The two men collapsed close to the cage where the dogs were barking wildly. As they tried to catch their breath, they gazed in fascination at the slow, relentless destruction of the ship, as though it were a prearranged spectacle. The blasts followed one another at irregular intervals, and, according to how powerful they were, either blew a hole in the hull or gently rocked the boat on its plinth of ice. Meanwhile, the fire, greedy and unstoppable, had spread to the bridge. Huge tongues of fire leapt from the forecastle and coiled themselves like flaming serpents around the wooden masts, in a disturbingly beautiful display that was undiminished by the awful sight of sailors hurling themselves from the
top deck, some of them in flames. The poor wretches must have been hiding from the monster somewhere on the ship and been unable to escape when the blasts began. Fortunately, Reynolds and Allan were far enough away not to hear the crack their bones must have made as they hit the ice. Then Reynolds saw a dense mass of smoke, like a thundercloud, rise from the bridge, a sinister overture to the violent explosion that followed, scattering a hail of splintered wood, metal, and human limbs in all directions. Reynolds threw himself facedown in the snow and covered his head with his arms, while Allan remained sitting beside him, admiring the deadly shower of debris with the fascination of a child enjoying a firework display. The thunderous noise resounded off the icy hillocks, and the air itself seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces. When the echo died away, only the din of the dogs barking and leaping around in their cage prevented the two men from being engulfed in a tomblike silence.

Reynolds sat up slowly, relieved to see that none of the debris had fallen on Allan, who remained sitting on the snow as though at a picnic. He studied the devastation around him and in spite of everything felt a wave of joy wash over him as he realized the Martian must have perished at some moment during that orgy of destruction. The nightmare was over. After the final explosion, the ship had been reduced to a pile of timber and twisted metal, from which a plume of smoke arose, while the snow around it was strewn with an assortment of variously burnt and mutilated bodies. By pure chance, Reynolds’s gaze rested on one of them, which was smoldering faintly, like a torch about to go out, and he was seized once more by an absurd and irrepressible euphoria. He knew he would only be able to enjoy his salvaged life for a few more hours, before cold and hunger finally snatched it from him forever, but that did not stop him from smiling to himself in the middle of that white immensity, simply because he was still alive.

It was then that the dead body he had been watching idly slowly began to stir. Reynolds contemplated it with fascination, wondering how anyone could possibly have survived that devastation. But suddenly, he
realized that the figure that had begun to pick itself up from the snow was too big to be a man. With a mixture of panic and helplessness, he saw the Martian stand up, huge, unscathed, and indestructible. The skin on its shoulders was smoldering, but the monster did not appear bothered. Once it was on its feet, it sniffed the air, glancing about until it spotted them, twenty or so yards away, slumped in the snow, insultingly alive. The Martian began loping toward them over the ice. Reynolds glanced at Allan. The gunner had also seen the monster and, with a contorted expression that was beyond fear, was watching it approach.

“May God have mercy on our wretched souls,” Reynolds heard him murmur.

The explorer looked back at the creature, which at the pace it was going would soon reach them. But he calculated that he had time to make one last attempt to kill it. He stood up, leaving Allan where he was, and ran toward the cage where the dogs were barking frantically, flinging themselves at the bars. He broke the padlock with the butt of his gun, released the door, and stood aside, praying the dogs were barking out of anger and not fear. He felt immensely grateful when he saw that, once released, the team of twelve or more snarling dogs made straight for the Martian. Reynolds’s tactic took the creature by surprise, and it stopped in its tracks, watching the dogs hurtling toward it. The lead dog flung itself at the Martian, unleashing all the fury that had been fermenting since Carson first came aboard the ship. But, with an almost effortless movement of its claw, the monster sliced the dog in two in midair. Fortunately, the rest of the pack was undaunted, for it did not enter their brains that they might suffer the same fate. Or if it did, then they did not care, for they leapt at the monster with the same primitive ferocity, like brave soldiers doing their duty, perhaps because they could not help making that final gesture for Man, their master. They attacked the monster with their powerful jaws, but within seconds it had pulled them off, hurling them in the air or decapitating them with its talons, and Reynolds soon realized that the dogs’ spirited attack would detain the Martian for only a matter of seconds. Knowing they must keep running,
the explorer hurried back to Allan and pulled him to his feet. Then he took off in the opposite direction, practically dragging the gunner, while behind them he could hear the dogs yelping as they were torn limb from limb. A couple of them, reduced to bloody shreds, even went sailing over the two men’s heads before landing with a dull thud on the snow.

Suddenly, Reynolds felt he had no more strength to go on running and came to a halt, exhausted. Without Reynolds to hold him up, Allan slid to the ground on his knees and gazed up at the explorer with a weary face. What was the point in trying to flee? he seemed to be asking. Would it not be better to surrender to the creature, to let it kill them without further ado, so that they could at last be allowed to rest in peace? Reynolds stared at the vast expanse of ice stretching in front of them, which had seemed so claustrophobic, and realized it made no sense to keep running, that it would only prolong their end. He took a deep breath and turned to face the monster, which was making its way slowly toward them over the snow, a pair of dogs still clamped to its body like some macabre adornment. Reynolds drew the pistol from his belt and gazed at it for a few seconds, as though weighing up the possibility of using it once more, before throwing it onto the snow. There was no longer any need for heroic or desperate deeds, because no one was watching. From the very first scene, the drama had taken place without an audience, in the intimacy of that godforsaken stretch of ice.

The monster came to a halt ten or twelve yards away, contemplated them, its head tilted to one side, and let out a noise resembling an animal screeching. Now that the creature was no longer using a man’s vocal cords, what they heard was its real voice, a kind of cawing sound, like a domesticated raven attempting to speak. Naturally, Reynolds could not understand it, but he fancied the tone was triumphant. He prepared to die hacked to pieces. He lowered his head and let his arms flop to his sides in an attitude of surrender, or simple exhaustion, or possibly of indifference to his fate. Then his eyes fell on the pistol he had so casually cast aside a few moments earlier, and an idea formed in his head. Why
succumb to a slow and gruesome death at the hands of that creature when he could take his own life? A bullet in the head and it would all be over quickly and cleanly. That would be a far more merciful end than the one the Martian no doubt had in store for him. He glanced at Allan, who was lying flat, his cheek resting on the ice, his gaze focused on horizons that only he could see. In the meantime, the monster continued edging toward them, as though savoring the fear of its quarry. Even so, Reynolds doubted he would have time to shoot Allan, take out the gunpowder and tamping rod, reload his pistol, and then shoot himself in the head before it reached him. No, he would only have time to kill himself. In any event, the gunner seemed to have found refuge somewhere beyond consciousness or reason, and he prayed with all his might that his friend could remain in that place until the very last moment, so that he could escape in some way the torment that would be the end of his life.