e building was jammed. He slammed his shoulder against its
solid unyielding surface again and again--without avail! The harrowing
rasping undertone of the crushing gale was growing and swelling--it
seemed to be converging on him from all sides, a creation of the gray
whining murk of the monsoon.

Ward's hand tightened on the butt of his raytube. He wheeled about,
pressing his back to the wall of the building. His eyes raked the
swirling turbulence of the storm.

And through the raging, eddying mists of gray his wind-lashed eyes made
out dreadful, weaving shapes, slithering through the fury of the
storm--toward him!

An instinctive scream tore at the muscles of his throat, but the wind
whipped the sound from his mouth and cast it into the gale before it
could reach his ears.

He crouched and raised his gun.

The shapes were vague misty illusions to his straining eyes. Then a
blanket of wind swept over him, buffeting him against the wall at his
back, and in a momentary flick of visibility that followed the blast, he
was able to see the _things_ that were advancing toward him.

There was one nauseous, sense-stunning instant of incredible horror as
his eyes focused on the nameless monstrosities that were revealed in the
gray mists of the monsoon.

One instant of sheer numbing horror, an instinct a billion years old,
buried beneath centuries' weight in his subconscious, suddenly writhed
into life, as pulsing and compelling as the day it had been generated.

The lost forgotten instincts of man's mind that warn him of the horror
and menace of the unknown, the nameless, the unclean, were clamoring
wildly at his consciousness.

For these _things_ were hideous and repellent in their very essence.
Whether they were alive or not, his numbed, horror-stunned brain would
never know. The dry, rustling rasping sound that emanated from them
seemed to partake of the same nature as the electrical energy generated
by the monsoon, but that was only a fleeting, terror-strained
impression.

The raytube fell from his palsied hand; but he didn't notice. There was
only one blind motivation governing his thoughts.

And that was flight!

The unreasoning terror of the hunted, of the helpless, gripped him with
numbing force. There was no thought in his mind to fight, to face these
things that emerged from the dead grayness of the monsoon, but only a
hideously desperate desire to escape.

* * * * *

Wi