There should be no danger in catching a little sack time. Everybody was already out except Jeanette, and she was locked in. Of course, she was a sharp apple, and might figure some way of getting out. It would be better to crump her. She’d probably appreciate it, too. It would give him two plusses to start the next conversation with.
He pressed the button that controlled her, and then, avoiding the strip-tease chairs, rolled himself comfortably under the big board.
He awoke slowly and naturally; he had almost forgotten how it felt, after the popped-out-of-nothingness effect that the ships’ imposed awakenings produced, and for a little while he simply luxuriated in it. After all, there was no danger. The ship was his.
But it was unusually noisy this morning; a distant snarling of engines, an occasional even more distant murmer of voices
Voices! He shot upright in alarm.
He was no longer aboard the ship.
Around him was the sunlit interior of a small room, unmistakably barracks-like, with a barred window, furnished only by the narrow single bed in which he had been lying. He himself was clad in grey military-hospital pyjamas, and touching his face, he found that he was clean-shaven – his beard was gone – and had been given a GI haircut. A standard maroon military-hospital robe was folded neatly over the foot of the bed.
An aircraft engine thrummed again outside. Swearing, he ran to the window.
He was indeed locked up beside a military airfield – which one, he had no way of telling, but at least it was American. It was also huge. There was a lot of traffic.