He drove like a madman on roads he had never seen before. The car's gears bellowed pain at their abuse, the tires screamed.
Chandler, prisoned inside himself, recognized that touch. Koitska! He knew who Rosalie Pan's lover had been. If he had been in doubt his own voice, raucous and hysterical with rage, told him the truth. All that long drive it screamed threats and obscenities at him, in Russian and tortured English.
The car stopped in front of the TWA facility and, still prisoned, his body hurried in, bruising itself deliberately against every doorpost and stick of furniture. "I could have smashed you in the car!" his voice screamed hoarsely. "It is too merciful. I could have thrown you into the sea! It is not painful enough."
In the garage his body stopped and looked wildly around. "Knives, torches," his lips chanted. "Shall I gouge out eyes? Slit throat?"
A jar of battery acid stood on a shelf, "Da, da!" screamed Chandler, stumbling toward it. "One drink eh? And I von't even stay vith you to feel it, the pain—just a moment—then it eats the gut, the long slow dying...." And all the time the body that was Chandler's was clawing the cap off the jar, tilting it—
He dropped the jar, and leaped aside instinctively as it splintered at his feet.
He was free!
Before he could move he was seized again, stumbled, crashed into a wall—
And was free again.
He stood waiting for a moment, unable to believe it; but he was still free. The alien invader did not seize his mind. There was no sound. No one moved. No gun fired at him, no danger threatened.