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Jack, by this time, had showered, shaved, and put on a clean uniform in which to visit the port admiral’s office and report in person that Roth had been turned over to the dry dock. On the shuttle over to the Navy’s portion of the base he checked his email; a mail courier had arrived during the night, refilling his inbox. The orders and notices were each labeled below C-2 in importance, so he deferred reading them until he was seated before the larger screen of his computer. All of the messages were official, he noted with a pang; no personal emails had come in.
At the port admiral’s office he reported the Roth in dry dock two, giving the secretary his room number at the barracks and asking if the port admiral had given any additional orders. He had not, and Jack returned to the barracks, intending to sort through the new orders.
The first thing he saw on waking his computer, however, was his half-written email to Jevons, still unfinished from last night, and he reread it. The tone was wrong, he decided: too whiny. He deleted it, starting afresh by briefly describing his near-disastrous entry to hyperspace, and the port admiral’s request that he remain on base while the damage was repaired. In a new paragraph he noted that Doctor Russ had been appointed acting surgeon of the Roth.
The tone was still wrong, false now, particularly in avoiding mention of his quarrel with Stephen, but he could not see how to improve it, and after making several inconsequential changes he clicked ‘send’.
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