Sea Change, page 1
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 discontent ("I should have known," she had said, shortly after their arrival back in Sydney, "I should have known! All of our friends either dead or with one foot in the grave! And everything changed! And the fashions!") she was rather beautiful.
"It's a job," he said. "And not a badly paid one. I've skimmed through this newfangled Award of theirs. Four weeks on, rather hard running. Then two weeks off. And annual leave on top of it."
"I thought that it was temporary appointment."
"At the moment, yes. But the permanent master of Pulpster is going on his annual leave and it's not certain that he'll be returning."
"Retiring?" she asked.
"No. Bettering himself. The bright young men don't want to spend their lives crawling around the coast at fifteen knots, not even in the big bulk carriers. The hovercraft, roaring across the Tasman at ten times that speed, are the glamor ships these days."
"And I suppose the pay is higher, and the conditions better."
"Yes."
"Do you think that you . . . ?"
"No," he told her regretfully. "They'd be out of my class. I've a ten knot mentality, although I should be able to cope with fifteen."
"Still," she said a little more cheerfully, "you've got a fresh start. And you haven't got to begin again at the bottom."
"Insofar as rank is concerned, no," he agreed.
He rose early the following morning, showered, shaved (this newfangled depilatory cream was a blessing) and dressed. He said good-by to Jane. She had wanted to come down to the ship with him, and he would have liked her to have done so, but he knew that he would be far too busy in the brief hours between arrival and departure. He carried his baggage from the bed-sitting room to the elevator, rode down to the lobby in solitude. The sleepy night clerk ordered him a cab.
The driver, during the ride down to the harbor, was talkative. The breed had changed little, if at all, over the decades. Willis made a pretense of listening.
The first daylight was coming in when the cab drew up off Pulpster's berth. Her new captain paid off the driver, wincing inwardly as he parted with notes that, in the old days, would have represented a day's pay. He realized that his own salary was big only on paper. He stood beside his little pile of baggage, shivering slightly in the morning chill. He noticed that the linesmen were waiting along the edge of the wharf. A man in uniform—Willis recognized the Maritime Services Board cap badge—walked up to him. "Joining her?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Shouldn't be long now. She's just passed under the bridge."
"Good."
"And you're the new skipper?"
"Yes."
"Haven't seen you around, Captain."
"No. I've . . . been away."
The official gave Willis a curious look, then turned his head. "Here she comes now. Just rounding Miller's Point."
Yes, here she came—low in the water, rust-colored from truck to water line, with a high mast, sprouting antennae, that was a logical upward extension of the bridge superstructure a little forward of amidships, a green funnel (the one touch of color) protruding from a low house on the poop. She stood in through the wide opening where the Pyrmont Bridge had been in Willis' time—and then, just abaft her raking stem, there was a flurry of foam and another, more violent turbulence under her cruiser stern. Full astern and transverse thrust, thought Willis. Not having any more to rely on tugs which, sometimes, did as they were told and which, all too often, thought that they knew best. He was looking forward to handling this ship.
She came alongside beautifully, swinging short round under the influence of her propulsive and maneuvering screws, seeming, at the finish, to be moving laterally through the water. Weighted heaving lines were thrown from fo'c'sle and poop; that technique, almost as old as ships themselves, had not changed. But the mooring ropes that the linesmen manhandled ashore, casting the eyes over the bollards, were fantastically light. And so was the manning. An officer on the fo'c'sle head, with one rating only, and another rating on the foredeck to handle the forward backspring. An officer aft, with one man for the stern line and another for the after spring. With self-tensioning winches—and no featherbedding—that was all that was required.
He watched the hands coming off stations—making all fast fore and aft was no longer a time-consuming operation—saw the gangway mechanically extruded as somebody, somewhere, pushed a button, looked with interest at the connecting up of the shore pipe lines without all the fussing with nuts and bolts and flanges that he had been used to thirty years ago.
He picked up his briefcase and his sextant case—he hoped that the A.B.s of this day and age did not consider it beneath their dignity to carry the master's gear on board—and walked up the metal gangway, the self-adjusting threads rattling ever so slightly under his feet.
Captain Harlow was a tall man, dark of hair and complexion, neat in his sharply creased khaki, possibly in his mid-thirties, if not younger. "Welcome aboard, Captain Willis," he said. "Old Dalby condescended to let me know that I was being relieved this time in. Sit down, Captain. Make yourself at home. After all, this is your home now."
Willis seated himself in one of the two easy chairs, looked around the day cabin. It could have been worse, much worse. The bulkheads were textured plastic paneling, the uncarpeted deck was covered with softly resilient tiles in contrasting and complementing colors. On the desk stood a small-screen television set. And on the low coffee table, between the two chairs, was the inevitable silver tea service, with a large plate of hot buttered toast. This had been brought up by one of the two stewardesses—a pleasant young woman whose
"Sorry I've no time to show you around properly," Harlow said. "But it's always a mad rush in Sydney. And at the other end. By the time that we've taken care of the legal side of the hand-over it'll be sailing time. But the mate'll show you what lives where, and what it does."
"Captain Dalby put me in the picture," said Willis. "Two hundred and seventy feet over-all. Fifty-foot beam. Three thousand tons deadweight—but a couple of dracones just in case they want us to tow a few tons extra. Turboelectric drive. Nuclear power. . . ."
"You have been doing your homework."
"When one has been away from the job for thirty years, Captain Harlow, one has to."
"Thirty years? You're joking."
"I'm not."
"Then . . . then you're a resurrectee?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Cheer up. You'll find this job a piece of cake. There's precious little new in the way of navigational equipment—this isn't, after all, one of the trans-Tasman fliers. And the officers all have recent certificates—the chief officer has his mate's, and the second and third both have second mates'. They'll put you wise to anything you aren't sure about. And now I'll get showered and changed, and then we'll have breakfast."
During the meal Willis met his officers. There was Darryl, the mate, who looked to be about Willis' own biological age, a short, swarthy man with lank, thinning hair and a perpetual scowl. Taylor and Brown, second and third officers respectively, could almost have been twins; both were tall, thin-featured, and with almost white hair. Carter, the engineer, pale-skinned and black-bearded, looked more physicist than mechanic. Miss Wendover, the electrician, was a rather bulky and brawny brunette, who, Willis guessed, would look and feel more at home in her overalls than either in uniform or a civilian dress.
These were the only officers, and apart from them the crew was a small one. There was the plump, motherly Mrs. Livermore, the chief stewardess, and the neither plump nor motherly Miss Lewisham, her blond assistant. There were no cooks; the ship was well stocked with deep-freeze meals. As for the rest—there was a leading hand, three general purpose ratings and a deck boy. There was little work to be done aboard this automated ship, not even the perpetual scraping and painting that had kept the hands busy when Willis had been last at sea. The steel from which Pulpster was built had been allowed to rust while she was still on the stocks—and that rust was the protective coating against further corrosion.
Harlow was anxious to get off the ship and to sign clear. Willis accompanied him ashore and, after his name had been put on the register at the customs house, was driven round to the shipping office to sign the articles of agreement and to make the necessary entry in the official log. Then, with these documents in his briefcase, he returned to the vessel. It was almost sailing time. He changed hastily into his new khakis, picked up his binoculars, and then climbed the companionway to the combined wheelhouse-chartroom. He overheard the tail end of a conversation before his three officers were aware of his presence.
"What gripes me," the chief officer was saying, "is that my certificate, although it's only a first mate's ticket, is worth a damn sight more than his. He passed for master way back in Captain Cook's day, before electronic navigation had been dreamed of. But his precious piece of paper is still valid—and I'm qualified to sail only as mate ...
Willis backed quietly down the companionway, and then made quite a deal of unnecessary noise coming back up.
Willis managed. His Sydney pilotage exemption was still valid, and the renewal of his Hobart exemption—which expired after five years if not used in that period—presented no great problems. And there had been no major changes in either port, looking at them as seaports, since his withdrawal from circulation. Sydney still handled conventional vessels—although most of them were either container ships or bulk carriers. Bate Bay, to the south of the oil tanker port of Botany Bay, was the hovercraft port for New South Wales, and there the traffic from "the farm," the islands that were now called North Zealand and South Zealand, roared inland with hardly a diminution of speed.
But the hovercraft were no concern of Willis', neither were the huge bulk carriers nor the big container ships. He shuttled back and forth in his little Pulpster, with his long pilotage at the Port Huon end and his short, but rather more wearing, pilotage at the Sydney end. But this was far easier than it had been when last he had worked the port. Now there was a television screen in the wheelhouse, and on it was presented an over-all aerial picture of the harbor. Now he could see what was on the other side of every corner before he started to turn it.
Insofar as the other electronic gadgetry was concerned he was reasonably happy. Radar he was already familiar with, and gyro compass, and automatic steering, and echo sounding. He liked the met. screen in the chartroom that, at the push of a button, would show either an up-to-the-minute meteorological chart of any selected area or—but this, although fascinating, was of little practical value—a TV picture of the Earth's atmosphere transmitted from whichever satellite was best sited to provide the coverage. He was rather sorry that his ship, being only a coaster, was not fitted with the equipment required for navigation by artificial satellite—he would have liked to have been able to play around with it—but yet he sneered at the Decca Navigator as a useless luxury. (That, of course, had been in existence before he was put into his cold sleep, and he had been one of those opposed to the establishment of a chain of Decca stations around the Australian coast.) "You're just putting yourself at the mercy of a single fuse. . . ." he told his officers and, rather to their distress, insisted on doing his own navigation, the old-fashioned way, with sextant, chronometer, ephemeris, and reduction tables, when crossing the stretch of open water between the mainland and Tasmania.
The ship handled well, very well, and it had not taken him long to get the feel of her. The only fly in the ointment was the unavailability of any other master to relieve him for time off when he had his four weeks in. Officers came and went and returned, as did ratings, but for Willis it was watch on and stay on. With a discharging time of only six hours he rarely saw his wife, especially after she returned to her old trade as a designer. He did see the apartment which she had taken for them, but was never able to sleep there, was rarely able to enjoy a meal there.
But, as she pointed out, it was a job, and a reasonably well-paid one, and the time off not taken was accumulating.
And then it happened.
It was in the small hours of the morning, and the ship was fifty miles south of Gabo on her northbound voyage. It was the alarm bells that awakened Willis—but if they had not done so the cessation of engine hum would have aroused him. He had pulled on his dressing gown and was on his way up to the bridge when he heard his telephone buzzing. He ignored it. It would only be the second mate trying to tell him that the engines had stopped.
The combined wheelhouse-chartroom was in pitch darkness. Everything was dead—steering compass repeater, the dials of the Decca Navigator, the radar display unit, the clock of the Chernikeeff Log, all the pilot lights that had reminded Willis, more than once, of Christmas tree decorations. He saw the second mate, a shadowy figure standing by the intercommunication telephone. But that had worked. It should have done, anyhow. The system, like the alarm system, was battery-powered.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I . . . I don't know, sir. The engines have stopped. . ."
Willis bit back a sarcastic rejoinder. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. All that he said was, "Don't ring the chief. It always annoys engineers to be pestered by the bridge when they're up to the neck in trouble. He'll let us know, in his own time. But where are we?"
The second officer found a torch, and by its light Willis examined the lattice chart. The ship was in no danger, and the rising westerly wind would blow her out into open water. But, now that she had lost her steerage way, the motion was becoming uneasy.
The intercom telephone buzzed. Willis groped his way to the instrument, pulled the handset from its clip. "Master here."
"Chief here, Captain. I needn't tell you that she's stopped."
