character A, muttering under breath: 'I wasn't expecting them to start trying to kill me so soon?'
character B: 'What was that?'
character A: 'Oh nothing, just muttering to myself under my breath'.
(which is more or less exactly what happens in a random Pournelle novel I read).
At the back it has an advert for Starweb, the heavily advertised PBM game. At some point decades ago I bought the rules. Somewhat to my surprise, it is still going http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/starweb.htm