Raycasting with LayerMask gives me a bce0023

hello again: I have a problem casting a ray, looking up other bce0023 seem mostly caused by typo erros, but i cannot find what is wrong with the following script. i even tried creating the ray and all the variables inside the case, but it gives me the same error:

Assets/_Weapons/Scripts/PlayerControls.js(80,44): BCE0023: No appropriate version of 'UnityEngine.Physics.Raycast' for the argument list '(UnityEngine.Ray, System.Type, float, int)' was found.

 if(Input.GetMouseButtonUp(0)){
     var ray : Ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay (Input.mousePosition);
     var hit = RaycastHit;
     var layerMask = 1 << 8;    //ignoring all but the gui clickable layer
     switch(mouseState){
         case MouseState.select :
             soundPlayer.PlaySound(soundClick,0,0);
         if (Physics.Raycast(ray,hit,Mathf.Infinity,layerMask)) {
                     if(!hit.transform.tag=="Environment"){
                         selected = hit.transform.parent.transform;        //assigning clicked object
                     }
                     else{
                         Instantiate(deselectParticles,hit.point,Quaternion.Identity);
                         selected = null;    //deselecting since we hit environment
                     }
                     UpdateGUI();
         }
             break;

I am always happy if you have a better way of coding this. I am trying to handle all the user input via switch and a mouseState that can change to different actions, depending on what the mouseCursor is.