thing.

There were unending ripplings crossing and recrossing through the
convolutions. To Thurston there was suddenly a sickening likeness: the
thing was a brain from a gigantic skull--it was naked--was
suffering....

* * * * *

The thing poured itself across the sand. Before the staring gaze of the
speechless men an excrescence appeared--a thick bulb on the mass--that
protruded itself into a tentacle. At the end there grew instantly a
hooked hand. It reached for the black opening in the great shell, found
it, and the whole loathsome shapelessness poured itself up and through
the hole.

Only at the last was it still. In the dark opening the last slippery
mass held quiet for endless seconds. It formed, as they watched, to a
head--frightful--menacing. Eyes appeared in the head; eyes flat and
round and black save for a cross slit in each; eyes that stared horribly
and unchangingly into theirs. Below them a gaping mouth opened and
closed.... The head melted--was gone....

And with its going came a rushing roar of sound.

From under the metallic mass shrieked a vaporous cloud. It drove at
them, a swirling blast of snow and sand. Some buried memory of gas
attacks woke Riley from his stupor. He slammed shut the windows
an instant before the cloud struck, but not before they had seen,
in the moonlight, a gleaming, gigantic, elongated bulb rise
swiftly--screamingly--into the upper air.

The blast tore at their plane. And the cold in their tight compartment
was like the cold of outer space. The men stared, speechless, panting.
Their breath froze in that frigid room into steam clouds.

"It--it...." Thurston gasped--and slumped helpless upon the floor.

* * * * *

It was an hour before they dared open the door of their cabin. An hour
of biting, numbing cold. Zero--on a warm summer night on the desert!
Snow in the hurricane that had struck them!

"'Twas the blast from the thing," guessed the pilot; "though never did
I see an engine with an exhaust like that." He was pounding himself with
his arms to force up the chilled circulation.

"But the beast--the--the _thing_!" exclaimed Thurston. "It's monstrous;
indecent! It thought--no question of that--but no body! Horrible! Just a
raw, naked, thinking protoplasm!"

It was here that he flung open the door. They sniffed cautiously of the
air. It was warm again--clean--save for a hint of some nauseous odor.
The