The Map of the Sky by Félix J. Palma

few seconds, alarmed by what would have happened if he had touched it. He had been told that metal was a lethal substance in subzero temperatures, even when wearing gloves, and Reynolds had no wish to put that theory to the test. He gave a weary sigh. This accursedly hostile place allowed no respite. Everywhere was fraught with danger: at that very moment, in order to stop the ship from capsizing, a group of men with hatchets and pickaxes was hewing off the ice that had built up on the masts, and chunks of it were dropping onto the deck with loud thuds, like the sound of cannon fire. If Reynolds wanted to gaze up at the starry sky, he was obliged to dodge the lethal shower of icy shards capable of dashing his brains out. Yet, despite the perils, the explorer preferred being on deck, occasionally pacing up and down to get the circulation going in his numb legs, rather than in the infirmary, where the groan of the ice as it crushed the ship’s hull prevented him from falling asleep. That relentless creaking had become a dreadful lullaby, forcing him to ponder each passing hour in that ghastly, interminable twilight.
    It was more than five hours since Captain MacReady and his group had returned from their exploratory trip, having found nothing. Only Carson and Ringwald, who had gone north, had failed to show up at the meeting point. MacReady and the others had waited for almost an hour until finally, tired, cold, and hungry, they had decided to return to the Annawan. No one had drawn any conclusions about their absence, and yet the question everyone was silently asking himself was whether those two poor wretches had stumbled upon what the crew had begun referring to as “the monster from the stars.” They could not know for sure, of course, but it was the most likely explanation. However, even thoughthe captain and most of the rest of the crew had apparently given the two men up for dead, Reynolds imagined that, as soon as MacReady thought they had rested enough, he would organize a fresh search party.
    Earlier, while Foster and Doctor Walker were dragging him back to the ship, reeling with pain, Reynolds had regretted his recklessness, not simply because it made him look foolish in front of the crew, and would fuel the captain’s mockery, but because it had prevented him from exploring the surrounding area as he had been longing to do from the moment they became icebound. But now he was glad of his foolish act because, as Sergeant Allan had pointed out, it would have been impossible in that dense fog to find his longed-for passage to the center of the Earth unless he had fallen directly into it. Not to mention the threat posed by the creature from the machine, which had almost certainly ended the wretched lives of Carson and Ringwald. On hearing that, Reynolds decided that a burn seemed a modest price to pay for having avoided putting his life in peril.
    However, he had to admit that the expedition was not turning out quite as he had expected, and after the recent events it was difficult to predict what would happen next. He remembered the series of obstacles he had been obliged to overcome in order to get this far and the enemies he had made because of his persistence. It had not been easy to find backers for such an expedition, owing to the fact that the vast majority of people gave no thought whatsoever to whether the Earth might be hollow. Needless to say, Reynolds did. Indeed, he could almost claim he had been inside it, albeit only in his dreams.
    •   •   •
    I T HAD ALL BEGUN on a distant afternoon when, by sheer chance, one man had changed Jeremiah Reynolds’s fate. From that day on, he had ceased drifting and had set off along a single pathway, whose end was very clearly mapped out.
    He had been passing by a public lecture hall in Wilmington, Ohio, when he heard loud guffaws coming from within. And if Reynolds needed anything after a disappointing day’s work at the newspaper heedited, it was laughter.