On the deck. The tiles were cold under his arm and his hip and his knee. Cold air traveled over bare skin. He was half out of his clothes. His skin stung, raw with scratches.
He moved, panicked at the queasy sensation of coming out of jump, and knew he shouldn’t be loose like this… a ship exiting jump might have to take emergency action, he wasn’t belted, he could break his neck… he didn’t know where he was, room was a meter too wide as he rolled over, but he scrambled on his knees, saw the bunk and the restraints and scrambled in, breath hissing between his teeth as he struggled to get the first belts fastened, instinct in a spacer-brat as sure as the fear of falling.
Snap. Lock fastened, upper legs, snap, the one across his chest, snap. He was all right then, hard-breathing, at least telling himself he’d beaten disaster if it came.
Except it wasn’t Sprite. Except it wasn’t his quarters he was in.
Bars beyond his feet. Walls he remembered, now, in dismay.
Corinthian.
Heart started a dull, leaden panic, telling him that his danger wasn’t past. And he didn’t know what could have happened to put him where he waked, against the wall, except maybe they’d exited subspace before this and he’d unbelted too soon… he still felt the last racketing of sex through his blood and brain, last echoes of a bad trip and a nightmare to end all. His skin felt raw, coveralls mostly unzipped, he didn’t know how he’d done that, either, but he’d gotten up, maybe started to go to the shower and fallen.
Hell of a dream. He lifted his head to look at himself and saw red scratches all over his chest, his pale blue coveralls had bloody specks, from a subspace hallucination.
Healed and half-healed scratches, and lately-made ones? Not all recent.
Scratched himself, was what he’d done. He felt embarrassed as hell, and hoped to God there wasn’t an optic spy somewhere, or a tape record.
He couldn’t face it, if there were. He let his head fall back, just to let his blood flow back to his brain and let the walls stop rippling in his vision. He’d exerted too much just now in getting back to his bunk. He’d broken into a clammy sweat, and the air circulation felt cold, stinging salt in the scratches.
Worse, he felt a wave of nausea and told himself he’d been a double fool, first exerting himself to get back in his bunk and then not getting to the nutri-packs on priority, because sneaking up his veins right now was the grandfather of all sick headaches.
He triggered the e-panel one-handed. He clawed the packs out of the wall-storage onto the mattress and ripped one open, hands shaking, fumbled out the sipping tube, valved so you didn’t have to raise your head to use it, thank God. By the small time it took to do that much, the pain that wasn’t quite pain yet was building up as pressure in his temples and behind his eyes, an old, old acquaintance. And to keep it company, his stomach was behaving under its own precarious rhythm, as if some bone-deep jolt out of hyperspace hadn’t left his consciousness, or quit running over his skin in waves of fever heat and clammy sweat.
Sweat had soaked his clothes. Sometimes you got the brain stem confused, pushing too much, too fast. Sometimes the confusion could go into arrhythmia, breathing disorders, serious business if you were by yourself and you didn’t get medicals, which he was, and wouldn’t get, and nobody was going to be walking down the corridor out there looking to take care of anybody until the ship had dumped down to system speed—wholly unlike a Hawkins fool he could name who’d unbelted, thinking he was in his own cabin, got up and fallen on his ass. Thing to do until help was available was calm down, breathe deep, drink the fluids and keep it down. Ship wasn’t his friend. But they didn’t want him dead.
Three swallows. Long period of deep breathing. Three more swallows. Somebody would eventually check on him. Just hold on.