Jin awoke with a start at the sound of a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“Who’s there?”

Jin peered around his sleeping pod, searching the shadows given off by the soft glow of the walls. He was much too old now to be scared of night creepers and the like, but still it was better to be safe and feel foolish than to have your insides turned to goo, he thought. Once convinced he wasn’t going to be dragged off into the void, or worse, he rolled out of bed and began to dress.

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 08, 2009).]

[This message has been edited by axiom333 (edited June 08, 2009).]
 

Jin appears to have been statled awake by his own dream, then gives his surroundings a quick survey and gets up.

Softly glowing walls of a sleeping pod are the only clue to a SF genre, or at least a speculative story about a future or distant setting. There isn't really much else in these 13 lines for a hook.

Is Jin's age important? Reference to night creepers could be literal or could be the fear of a child.

There's also no clue what Salvation is: a planet, a region, a concept like religious redemption?

Since this is a novel, there is some more time to answer questions like this, if the reader or editor is interested enough to get past the first page.

Is that the sort of critique you're looking for?
 

In the same sentence, the 'your' might be better changed to 'his' to maintain pov, unless you really want the narrator talking directly to the reader. ie both observations could be massaged in as:

Much too old now to be scared of night creepers and the like, he still thought it better to be safe and feel foolish than to have his insides turned to goo.

The other observation is that the story fairly quickly establishes - to my eye, at least - a religious overtone, through the title (Salvation), the first words (I am) and, I suspect, the characters name. Depending on your audience this may be a turn-on or a turn-off. I may be in a minority here, but personally, I would not read on. I quite enjoy religious allegory, but am wary of dogmatic polemic. Consequently, when I run across an opening with overt religious overtones I've (perhaps unfairly) subconsciously pigeon-holed the story in that category and am likely to move on to something else.

I'm not suggesting changing your story at all. But if it helps in understanding one of many ways it can be read, then perhaps it's useful in some way.
 

The only thing that made me stumble a bit was the very last clause. It feels just a bit too casual given what's just happened. If I'd been startled out of sleep like that, I'm not sure I'd just roll out of bed and start dressing. But maybe Jin would. :-)