Monsoons of Death Part 3

"Please listen to me," he said imploringly. "I know what I'm talking about. I--"

Ward shook the hand loose and stared coldly into Halliday's, white strained features.

"You're gutless, Halliday," he said in a low tense voice. "Now keep out of my way."

He turned to the door again, but Halliday grabbed him suddenly and pushed him back.

"You're not going to do it," he cried, his voice trembling. "I'm not going to let you."

Ward grabbed the man by his lapels and swung him away from the door. He stepped close to him and his right fist chopped down in a savage axe-like stroke. The short, powerful blow exploded under Halliday's chin. His knees buckled and he sprawled limply to the floor.

Ward stared down at the still form and he felt an instant of regret for striking a man fifty pounds lighter than himself, but he realized that it had been the only course open.

He drew his raytube, inspected it quickly to make sure that it was in perfect order, then swung open the door and stepped out into the gray murkiness of the Martian atmosphere.

The wind had increased to a wild mad scream. Flaky particles of soil stung his face like myriad needle-p.r.i.c.ks as he braced himself against the buffeting force of the gale.

He couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of him, but he knew the general direction of the building which housed the materialization unit and he headed that way, bent almost double against the wind.

He heard and saw nothing but the wild wail of the monsoon and the gray swirling murk. There was an awesome feeling in staggering blindly on through a dead gray world of howling dust-laden wind.

He felt as if he were the only person left alive in the universe. But he plowed stubbornly forward. There was work to be done and he felt a grim exaltation in the knowledge that he had enough fort.i.tude to let nothing stop him from doing his job.

h.e.l.l! What was a little wind? This thought came to him and he smiled grimly. He'd show Halliday! He'd show 'em all! Nothing was going to stop him!

There was a peculiar crackling sound in the air about him, as if bolts of unseen lightning were slashing through the turbulent atmosphere, but he forged ahead. He knew there was little danger of an electric bolt striking him as long as he was out in the open.

The distance to the goal was not a matter of a dozen yards or so, but it took him fully five minutes to cover the stretch. He had trouble breathing; each breath was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his open mouth by the fury of the wind. And his eyes were rimmed with dust and streaming from the stinging bite of the flaky soil.

When he reached the wall of the building he was sobbing for breath and blind from the whiplash of the wind. He sagged against the comfortable bulk of the squat, solid structure and wiped at his eyes with a handkerchief, but the wind soon tore the flimsy cloth from his fingers.

There was nothing to do but find the door of the building as quickly as possible. Using his hands as groping feelers he staggered around two corners of the buildings until his fingers closed about a door k.n.o.b.

The gale was increasing in intensity; the roaring lash of the wind was wild and explosive, as if the floodgates of Nature had swung open to unleash this maelstrom of fury and destruction.

The sputtering crackle of electric energy he had noticed seemed to be swelling in volume, rising steadily in pitch and fury. And then a new sound was added to the hideous cacophony. Ward heard it faintly at first and it failed to register on his consciousness.

The new sound was an unearthly rasping noise that roared about his head and crashed against his ear drums with terrifying impact. The sound seemed everywhere; it seemed to emanate from the unleashed forces of the storm itself; its marrow-chilling, rasping moan was a demoniacal cry, screaming a weird defiance into the teeth of the mighty monsoon.

Ward, hugging the building, heard the rasping sound, and he remembered what Halliday had told him. Crouched against the side of the structure, listening to that weird, desolate wail of unnamable horror, he felt his heart thudding with sudden fear against his ribs.

The door of the 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 b.u.t.t 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.

Without conscious thought or volition his legs suddenly churned beneath him and he lunged forward blindly, desperately, lurching through the buffeting force of the gale toward the sanctuary of the building where he had left Halliday.

The rasping, nerve-chilling sound roared about his head and the lashing screech of the monsoon was a banshee-wail in his ears as he stumbled and staggered on, driven by the wildest, most elemental fear he had ever known.

Suddenly the squat structure loomed directly ahead of him, only a yard away. The door was standing ajar, and, with a broken sob of relief, he lunged into the lighted interior of the room.

Halliday was crawling dazedly to his feet as Ward staggered blindly through the door, his breath coming in great choking sobs.

"My G.o.d--"

Halliday's voice broke and Ward saw that his eyes were staring in horror beyond him, to the still open door where the gray swirling fury of the monsoon was creeping in.

And other _things_ were in the open doorway!

Ward knew that without turning to look. The horror mirrored in Halliday's face told him that more plainly than could his own eyes.

There was horror and fear in Halliday's face, but the tightness of his lips did not relax into the flaccid looseness of hysteria.

With superhuman control he was keeping a grip on himself.

"Don't move!" he snapped, through set jaws. "I'll try to get at the rifle."

Ward's heart was thundering a tattoo of terror. Halliday's words made no impression on the horror-stunned brain. He lunged wildly across the room, dimly he heard Halliday's sudden shouted warning.

Without a backward glance he lurched into the small room that served as a kitchen. Through the fog of terror that swirled about his mind, he remembered only one thing: Halliday's remark of a refuge built there for emergency purposes.