The Map of the Sky

by Félix J Palma

  “Well, perhaps we still don’t know what the monster looks like, but at least we know its skin is a bright crimson,” he said, standing up straight. “It will be easy enough to spot in the snow.”

  “Crimson, sir?” one of the sailors said in surprise as he studied the shreds of skin. “It looks yellow to me.”

  “In that case, Wallace, you need your eyes tested,” another sailor named Kendricks chimed in. “It’s obviously blue.”

  Wallace insisted it was as yellow as straw, at which the other sailors leaned over to see which color the monster’s skin was. Each appeared to see a different color.

  “Stop arguing, damn it!” roared the captain, tired of this absurd debate. “Can’t you see it doesn’t matter what color the creature is? For God’s sake, look at what it’s capable of!”

  Suddenly ashamed, the sailors fell silent. For his part, Reynolds felt a degree of disappointment as well as horror as he contemplated the carcass.

  At that moment, Captain MacReady stepped back from the remains, scanning the horizon through narrowed eyes while the others looked on apprehensively.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, turning to them at last. “From now on, no one leaves the ship without my permission. We’ll take shelter inside and take turns on watch. If that thing did this to an enormous elephant seal over sixteen feet long, I don’t need to tell you what it could do to any of us.”

  An anxious murmur spread through the crew.

  “As for the head of the seal,” he added, “take it on board. At least we’ll have something to eat while we wait for that thing to come after us, which it will do sooner or later.”

  The crew nodded as one and trudged back to the ship, trying to come to terms with the state of siege into which they had suddenly been plunged, although their apparent composure probably owed more to the fact that there was no one to gripe at. As if freezing to death on that accursed lump of ice were not enough, now they had to contend with a monster that could tear an elephant seal to ribbons. Reynolds, who had taken up the rear of the gloomy procession, noticed that Allan was still standing next to the sled, gazing thoughtfully into the distance. Finally, the young gunner turned around and followed the group, head bowed, a grim look in his eyes.

  “We are alone . . . ,” he said, as he drew level with Reynolds. “Alone with the creature.”

  His words made Reynolds’s blood run cold. All of a sudden, that vast space seemed to him terribly small.

  • • •

  TWO DAYS LATER, EVERYTHING was still calm. It was a tense calm, filled with furtive glances and fearful faces, where the slightest noise made everyone jump, and the more sensitive souls spilled half their broth, while muskets sat alongside spoons at the table. A wary, strained composure where tempers frayed easily and arguments were generally resolved by one party drawing a knife or by the intervention of Captain MacReady. In short, the kind of nail-biting stillness that made them all secretly wish the monster from the stars would attack once and for all, so that they could see if they could defeat it—or, on the contrary, find out if all resistance was useless, as in the case of the seal, whose flesh was now sating their hunger in broths.

  So that the monster’s arrival would not take them by surprise, MacReady had posted four lookouts on deck, one at each compass point of the ship, and had ordered the men to take two-hour watches. Despite having been exempted from lookout duty, whether because of his status as leader of the expedition or because of his wounded hand, Reynolds would occasionally come up on deck to take the air and escape the long hours of confinement that made his already cramped cabin seem even narrower. However, on this occasion it was not to escape his cabin, but rather because his room was too close to the infirmary in the ship’s prow, and he had just learned that Doctor Walker, who had been so merciful toward his scalded hand, was intent upon amputating Carson’s right foot before it became gangrenous. Having been subjected a few moments earlier to the hellish screams of Ringwald, who had only lost three fingers, Reynolds preferred to be freezing on deck than to face such brutal evidence of the cruel conditions endured by members of polar expeditions, such as the one he had so merrily organized.

  Judging from the intense cold that hit him as he stepped outside, the temperature that afternoon must have been forty degrees below zero. A fierce wind roared above the stunted masts and up the ramp, blowing the snow hither and thither. Reynolds wrapped himself in his oilskin and glanced about. He was pleased to see that Allan was one of the lookouts. The gunner’s figure, which seemed to be made up of long, slender limbs like those of a spindly bird, was unmistakable even beneath several layers of clothing. The sergeant was scanning the horizon attentively, cradling his musket in his poet’s hands. After watching him for a few moments, Reynolds decided to engage him in conversation. After all, the youth from Baltimore was the only man in the crew whose impressions of what was happening might interest him.

  As he had done with Griffin when they were walking over to the flying machine, Reynolds had first approached Allan to discover why someone who had so little in common with the others had signed up for his expedition. Allan stood out among those loutish men, with their vulgar tales and simple vices. From the very beginning, Allan had proved a brilliant conversationalist so that the explorer contrived to bump into him whenever possible, in order to lift his spirits. As the days went by and Allan also seemed at ease in his company, Reynolds had decided to invite him to his cabin to help him make inroads into the store of brandy he had brought from America. As a result, Reynolds had been able to witness the devastating effects of drink on poor Allan: if the first sip turned him into an eloquent speaker, the second made him ramble, losing himself in his own discourse, and the third left him sprawled across the table, semiconscious, a nearly full glass in front of him. Reynolds had never met anyone with less tolerance for alcohol than the gunner.

  Those erratic, exalted discussions had allowed the explorer to form a clear enough picture of Allan’s life. He discovered that the poet had joined the crew of the Annawan for no other reason than to escape his atrocious relationship with his stepfather. After years of discord, and even threats from both sides, which had rendered the atmosphere in the family home intolerable, the exhausted Allan had devised a way of placating the obdurate tyrant who had become his guardian following his parents’ demise: he would offer to enroll at West Point. As Allan had anticipated, his stepfather accepted, relieved that the tiresome youth had at last found the path that would deliver him from idleness. However, as the day of his enrollment dawned, Allan realized there was nothing he would like less than to go to West Point. All he wanted was to disappear, for the earth to swallow him up or, if not, to find a place where time would stop miraculously and he would be able to think, gather his strength, decide what he wanted to do with his life, perhaps to write the new poem he could feel emerging in his mind, without having to worry about where his next meal was coming from. Was there such a place apart from prison? He realized there was when he heard about the expedition of the Annawan, which gave no guarantee of return but offered plenty of adventure.

  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. Desp
ite 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 o
ver 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.