Peter Benchley's Creature Read Online Free PDF

ship and examine the box and open it in the presence of a writer, an editor and a camera team from the National Geographic Explorer television series.
    Webber was devastated. He knew what would happen: his lighting setup would be destroyed; he'd be shunted aside, given a backseat to the TV team, ordered around by the experts. He'd have no chance to shoot enough film to have ample "outs"—pictures the Geographic wouldn't want and which he could sell to other magazines. The quality of his work would suffer, and so would his pocketbook.
    Yet there was nothing he could do about it, and worse, it was his own fault. He should have stifled his excitement and waited to inform the magazine about the discovery of the box.
    Now he shouted, "Shit!" into the evening air.
    "C'mon," the pilot said, "forget it. Let's go down to the wardroom; I got a friend there named Jack Daniel's who's dyin' to meet you."

    Webber and the pilot sat in the wardroom and finished the Jack Daniel's. The more the pilot groused about bureaucrats, the more convinced Webber became that he was being shafted. He had discovered the box, he had photographed it inside the submarine, he should be the one to take the first, the best—the only—pictures of what was inside.
    At eight-forty-five, the pilot pronounced himself stewed to the gills, and he staggered off to his bunk.
    At eight-fifty, Webber decided on a plan. He went to bed and set his alarm clock for midnight.

    *   *    *

    "That's Montauk Point," the captain said, indicating the outer circle on the radar screen, "and there's Block Island. If we had a calm, I'd anchor off Woods Hole and wait for daylight." He looked at the clock mounted on the bulkhead. "It's one-fifteen now; we'll be able to see pretty good in four hours. But with this easterly blowing like a banshee, I'm gonna take her into the shelter of Block and then go up the coast at first light. No sense getting everybody sick and maybe smashing up some gear."
    "Right," Webber said, nauseated by the pool of acid coffee that sloshed in his stomach as the ship nosed into a trough and then rose askew onto the crest of a combing wave. Pushed by a following sea, the ship was corkscrewing through the night. "Guess I'll go back and try to get some sleep."
    "Put a wastebasket by your bunk," the captain suggested. "Nothing worse than trying to sleep in a bed. of puke."
    Webber had gone to the bridge to see how many lookouts were on duty and had found only two, the captain and a mate, both in the wheelhouse, both facing forward. The stern was empty and unobserved.
    Back in his cabin, he put a finger down his throat and forced himself to vomit into the toilet. He waited five minutes, tried to vomit again, but brought up nothing but bile. He brushed his teeth, and, feeling clearheaded and more stable, he slung a Nikon with an attached flash over his shoulder, picked up and tested a flashlight and walked aft, out onto the stern.
    The wind was blowing twenty-five or thirty knots, but there was no rain, and the ship was moving with the wind at fifteen knots, which cut its bluster: walking across the flat, wide stern was no worse than trudging into a fresh breeze.
    Two five-hundred-watt lamps flooded the afterdeck with light. The submersibles squatted on their cradles like mutant beetles assigned to guard the gleaming greenish-yellow box that lay between them.
    Webber stayed in the shadows as he crossed the hundred feet of afterdeck. He crouched behind the portside submersible, checked to be sure no one was watching from the wings of the bridge, then shone his flashlight on the side of the box. .
    He had no idea how heavy the lid of the box was— hundreds of pounds, certainly more than he could hope to lift alone. If he had to, he could use the lifting rig from one of the submersibles, a big steel hook shackled to a block-and-tackle arrangement and powered by an electric winch. But perhaps the lid was  spring-loaded; perhaps there was a release latch or