A. Bertram Chandler - Sea Change

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SEA CHANGE

by Bertram Chandler

John Willis sat uneasily on the hard bench that ran along one wall of the Federal Employment Bureau.

Now and again he tried to read the newspaper that he had bought (and could he afford the fifty cents? he

had asked himself) on his way to the bureau from the Transients' Hostel. A colony on the Moon. . . .

Men on Mars. . . . A manned laboratory in orbit about Venus—and none of it front page news. The big

hemlines had been reserved for the Fourth Test Match between Australia and the U.S.A., currently being

played in Melbourne. And rightly so, he thought with wry humor. Americans taking up cricket, of all

games, was far more fantastic than the facts of the astronauts.

Somebody was calling his name, "Captain Willis!" He got to his feet, bundling up the morning paper.

He walked to the counter. He found it hard not to look at the firm, fully exposed breasts of the girl who

had summoned him.

"Yes?" he said. "Yes?"

"Your personal data has been processed, Captain. It so happens that there is a vacancy for a master

in one of the paper pulp tankers operated by the Ministry of Timber Products. You will report to their

Dock Office at 1045 hours this morning."

"But, Miss. . . ." He looked down at the little sign on the polished surface of the counter in front of

her. "But, Miss Vitelli, there must be a mistake."

"The Computer never makes a mistake," she told him severely.

"But, damn it all, I'm nearly eighty years old."

"Legally speaking," she said, "you're forty-five."

Legally speaking—and biologically speaking. He could see his reflection in the mirror-like finish of

the counter. He looked just as he had when, having won the first prize in the Opera House Lottery, he

and Jane, his wife, had decided to make another gamble. The doctors had told him that he had only a

year to live. But, in the U.S.A. there were already the facilities for stasis, the so-called Deep Freeze. Jane

had accompanied him—to America, and then into the cold and dark that might well be eternal. But it had

been only a little more than thirty years.

He looked younger now than he had when the decision had been made. His face was still rugged, but

the wrinkles had vanished from about the blue eyes, which had lost their faded quality. His hair was still

dark—and, in fact, the first streaks of gray had disappeared.

Even so. . . .

"But you don't understand," he told the girl. "I passed for master way back in 1945, during the

Second World War. Even at the time when I was . . . suspended, in 1967, there was so much new,

electronic navigation and the like, that was not covered by my certificate."

"Nonetheless," she stated, "you were sailing as master then, in 1967. And your qualifications were

valid. And still are. And if the Computer says that there is nobody else immediately available for this

job—that's all there is to it. Of course, if you don't really want it . . ."

"I'm afraid that I do. The first prize was a lot of money back in 1967—but it was whittled away.

Storage charges for two—and the operation. We aren't quite paupers—but we're not far from it."

"And this is the only sort of job that you're likely to get." The girl handed Willis his papers in a big,

plastic envelope and said, very definitely, "Good morning, Captain."

Back in the cramped, temporary apartment that would have to do until he and Jane found something

better he unpacked, bringing out from the suitcases the clothes and other possessions that, like their

owner, had been in cold storage for a third of a century. The clothing was useless, most of it, although he

put to one side the uniform cap with the golden laurel leaves on the visor. He would have to change the

cap badge—but the dull, well-weathered artificial foliage would be preferable to something glaringly new.

Then there was his sextant. He would want that. And his reduction tables ...

"I must go down to the sea again ..." quoted Jane, rather bitterly. She was a tall girl, slim, darkly

auburn, with a mouth too wide and features too strong for conventional prettiness. But, even in her

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A. Bertram Chandler - Sea Change

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