The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(18)

Reynolds sighed resignedly and looked away from his reflection in order to examine the nearest cluster of markings. Most of these were finely drawn symbols, vaguely reminiscent of Asian characters, framed by what looked like geometric shapes. He could not resist stretching his right hand toward one of them, with the aim of running his finger along their wavy spirals. Although he was curious to know what that peculiar shimmering material felt like, he chose to keep his glove on for fear his hand might freeze. When he touched the symbol, a strange plume of smoke began to rise slowly into the air, and as Reynolds looked on in wonder, a tiny blue flame sprouted from his glove like an unexpected bloom. The explorer felt a stabbing pain, which instantly radiated through his whole body. He withdrew his hand, unable to stop the excruciating agony from emerging as a terrible roar. Reynolds caught a sudden whiff of singed fabric and flesh and amid the pain was scarcely able to grasp that on touching the strange symbol, his glove had caught fire, despite the subzero temperatures. The sailors standing next to him recoiled in horror, while Reynolds, his face screwed up in pain, fell to his knees on the ice, holding up his right hand, now wrapped in shreds of charred cloth, blackened and smoking like a witch’s claw.

“Good God!” Doctor Walker exclaimed, hurrying to his aid.

“No one is to touch the outside of that thing!” MacReady roared. “Damnation, if anyone touches anything without my permission I’ll string him from the yardarm!”

The surgeon ordered Shepard, the sailor nearest him, to dig a hole in the ice as quickly as possible. Shepard took out his pickax and struck obstinately at the brittle crust until he managed to make a kind of burrow. As Walker thrust Reynolds’s arm down the hole, they all heard a noise like a red-hot iron being plunged into a bucket of water. When Walker deemed that was enough, or perhaps when he felt his own fingers begin to freeze through his glove, he yanked Reynolds’s hand out. The explorer, half stunned by the sudden contrast of fire and ice, put up no resistance.

“I must take him back to the infirmary immediately,” Walker declared. “I have nothing to bandage his hand with.”

“Captain!” cried Peters, before MacReady had time to respond.

MacReady turned his head toward the Indian, who was standing about ten yards from the machine, pointing at the ice.

“I’ve found some tracks, sir!”

The captain opened his mouth in surprise, then collected himself and strode over to Peters, a few of the other sailors following behind.

“It looks like something came out of the machine,” the Indian surmised.

MacReady glared at Peters, as though he were to blame for everything, when clearly what he was angry about were the endless surprises that prevented him from showing his men the imperturbable calm every captain should possess. The Indian knelt by the prints, studied them in silence, then explained to the others what he saw in those scratches in the snow.

“The prints are huge, too big for an animal, at least any I know,” he said, pointing at the outline. “Do you see? They’re almost as long as a man’s arm. And strangely oval shaped and deep, as if what made them weighed several tons. But the funniest thing is there are no toe prints in the snow. These look more like claw marks.”

“Are you sure about that, Peters?” Wallace said, leaning over them. “They look more like hoofprints to me.”

“Hoofprints? Since when did you become a tracker, Wallace?” Shepard scoffed.

“I don’t know, Shepard, but I have goats and those prints are—”

“Shut up, both of you!” MacReady bellowed at the two men. He turned to the Indian, who, rather than argue with them, was scowling silently, aggrieved perhaps that anyone should question his vast knowledge in this area. “Continue, please, Peters . . . You were saying the prints aren’t human?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” Peters confirmed.

“But that’s impossible!” MacReady exclaimed. “What else could they be?”

“Footprints never lie, Captain,” Peters replied. “Whatever came out of that machine is a creature that walks upright, but it isn’t human.”

A deathly hush fell as the others leaned over the strange tracks.

“And the prints are fresh,” he added. “I would say about twenty minutes old, possibly less.”

Peters’s words alarmed the men, who glanced around anxiously, peering into the white void. All of a sudden, they were not alone.

“And the next set of prints?” MacReady asked, trying to appear unruffled. “Which direction did this . . . creature take?”

“That’s the odd thing, Captain,” said Peters, leading them a few yards farther on. “The next prints are over here, nearly six feet from the first. That means that in one stride the creature can cover a distance impossible for any other animal. And the next lot must be even farther away, because I can’t see them.”

“Are you saying the creature moves in leaps?”

“It seems so, Captain. In bigger and bigger leaps, which makes it very difficult to follow even without this fog. Unless we comb the area, we can’t know which direction it took. It could have gone anywhere.”

“You see, Wallace?” Shepard piped up. “Could one of your goats do that?”

The captain gave Shepard a black look and told him to shut up.