This is the Packet. Here are this week's soundings.

· · · three soft bells · · ·

Evening. The watch is yours. This is the Packet, and here are this week's soundings. I have you, crew.

We are thirty-one days outbound, and the deep is flat and dark and quiet. A quiet deep is the only kind the grey-hairs trust, and the grey-hairs are usually right.

Below decks the chief had the forward coil in pieces again tonight. Found nothing wrong with it. Again. Put it back together humming to himself, and that, crew, is how the wise among you know all is well in the belly of this old ship.

Word came down the long relay this watch, and it is good word. They have topped out the second pillar over Cythera. There was singing in the yards for it, and the founders are putting it about that the third will stand before the year is out. A fine season to be alive. A finer one to be building.

And one last line came down the relay that I cannot read for the life of me. So I have set it on the board, the way I always do, for cleverer heads than mine. First of you to read it true gets a name spoken on the next watch.

That is the watch. Keep the keel lit, and your buddy closer. I will have you on the next bell.

· · · three soft bells · · ·