Free Devil to the Belt (v1.1) by C. J. Cherryh

beam.”
    “Yeah,” he said. He was confused again. He thought that Bird had said that would be some time yet. But he’d given up knowing where they were. He hung there, nowhere for a while, listening to Bird move around. He heard hydraulics working, heard that series of sounds that meant a sail deploying. He thought, So we’re going in. He didn’t really believe it. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t possible any longer. He couldn’t come back from this. He just kept seeing the shower wall, the watch on his arm, perpetual loop, maybe because he was dead…
    Bird came back with an armful of blankets and jammed one between his head and the pipes, one at the small of his back. “Don’t lose that,” Bird said, and took a bit of webbing and tied it around him and the blankets and the conduits, telling him he had to, it was for his safety, but he had stopped believing Bird. He thought about Sol Station. Mama coming home from work. Cory meeting him at Refinery One dock. Hi, there, she’d say. I’m Cory. And a person who’d been a lot of letters and a lot of postage would be flesh and blood…
    If he could get to dockside, if they brought him that far, she’d be there… if he could get to the 12th he could get there again…
    He’d run out on his mother, Cory had run away from hers. His mother just let him go. Cory’d sent those letters that would always be stacked up in her mail-file and waiting for her… He’d say, Don’t read them, but Cory would. Then she’d be down with a guilt attack for days, and go off by herself and spend hours at a rented comp writing some damn letter home—but he wouldn’t. There was a lot he should have said when he’d had the chance. But it was Cory that didn’t get any more chances, and that wasn’t fair.
    “Stand by,” Bird yelled up at him. “Dekker? Hear me? We’re about to catch the beam. You all right up there?”
    He thought he answered. He was thinking: We’re not going home. We’re not ever going home again. There’s going to be all these letters stacked up and waiting for Cory, and Cory won’t ever read them. They’ll just tell her mother… and she’ll kill me…
    “Dekker! Dammit, pay attention!” Ben’s voice. “Answer!”
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “Dekker!”
    He said it louder. The acceleration pressed his body against the blankets Bird had tucked between him and the pipes. The tape cut off circulation and his fingers on that hand went numb. He began to be dizzy: the ship was going unstable—all of it came back, the explosion and the ship tumbling, things flying loose—
    “Cory!” he yelled; or maybe that was then. He had no more idea. Someone told him to shut up and he remembered that he had been rescued, but he had no idea where they were going or whether he was going to live.
    Finally the pressure let up and he hung there with his head throbbing and the feeling slowly returning to his hands. Pressure in his sinuses and behind his eyes built to a blinding headache when he tried to wonder what was happening or where he was.
    “What time is it?” he asked, but no one paid attention to him. He asked again, his voice cracking: “What time is it?” and Ben sailed up into his vision, grabbed him by the knee, grabbed him by his collar and hit him across the face.
    “Shut up!” Ben yelled at him. He tried to use his knee and turn his face to protect himself. Ben hit him again and again, until Bird came in from below and pulled Ben off him, yelling at Ben to stop it. Bird said, “Go back to sleep, Ben.” And Ben yelled back: “How can I sleep with What time is it? What time is it, God, I’m going to strangle him before the hour’s out—I’m going to fuckin’ kill him!”
    “Ben,” Bird said quietly, taking Ben by the shoulder. “Ben. Easy. All right.—Dekker…
shut the hell up
!”
    After that, it could have been next day, next week, a few hours, he wasn’t sure. Ben came floating up to him, carefully took him by the collar and