Eyes distended, he pinioned the door unnecessarily with spread-eagled body, laughter not his own dropping from his mouth.
"You thought I'd let you in tonight, didn't you?" he choked. "Thought I was through. But I had everything ready, waiting. You won't get me, by the gods. You can't—you won't!"
The fury flanked the house with resounding echoes. A great vacuum machine nuzzled at the gables. Shutters leaped open, clattered; tiny breaking wings—clipped off. Trees doubled up as if attacked, struck in the vitals.
Colt abandoned the door, hurried to a window. The wind followed. It was all about the house, but its volcanic head looked after Colt, pressed a hard shifting face against the panes.
The window glass whined a crystal song of strain and stress.
"You can't break it!" jeered Colt. "You can't. It's new, unbreakable! I made sure of that yesterday."
The intangible thing outside followed him from window to window and then from room to room, pressing and mourning.
Colt stopped, struck by a strange thought. He gave it to the wind:
"You're a big hound run amuck," he cried. "You're the damndest, biggest prehistoric killer that ever hunted prey. A big sniffling hound, trying to smell me out, find me. You push your big cold nose up to the house, taking air, and when you find me in the parlor you drive your pressure there, and when I'm in the kitchen you fling your power there. A big invisible beast with the muscles of the mad winds, damn you!"
In reply, the night shrieked with all the agony of death. The wind seemed to razor the very gown of night, ripping it to shreds, shaking stars, trembling the shaded earth.
It tore at the roof with quick, hard fingers, quested under the house to hiss through floor-chinks. A whip of cold flicked Colt's legs.
"Get back, curse you!" He blundered away from a side door.
He ran from room to room, upstairs and down, switching on lights; and the wind watched him, moved with him. The house flamed with light, brilliantly garish amidst a whirlpooling night.
Colt stopped long enough, coming down the hall stair, to light his pipe. He made a rigid ceremony of it, trying to steady his fingers. The flame fluttered. A cold draft snuffed it out.
Colt tried again, succeeding. The pipe glowed. He blew smoke and the draft whisked it away in a quick billow.
The wind smote the house again and again. It fell, it leaned, it thrust. It whined through the screen door, but Colt made no move to satisfy it, so it jerked a screen off in a frenzy of strength, shattered it across the dark lawn.
A strong house, thought Colt, and he was glad he had ordered reinforcements for certain portions of it; new wood, new steel, new locks.
The harried trees were flung one way and another, riding whips cracked by a Jovian fist.
Back in the living room, before the warming electric fire-log, Colt picked up a book. One of the books he had written on hurricanes, typhoons and other colossal forces. He thumbed through it, stopping at the dedication:
"This book is written by one who has seen, but who has always escaped. It is dedicated to those who lost the game of elements. . . ."
Always escaped? No—not always. Tonight . . .
The printed page misted, flowed, garbled. Colt's pipe went out. When he tried
