White Shark Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 button.
    He emerged from the shelter of the submersible
cradle, crossed the deck and knelt beside the box.   Facing aft to shade the flashlight beam with
his back, he followed the lip of the lid form one end to the other.   On the far side, only a few feet from the
edge of the fantail, with the ship's wake boiling as it rose and fell beneath
him, he saw a design etched in the bronze:   a tiny swastika.   Beneath it was a
button.
    He pressed the button, heard a click, then
a hiss, and the lid of the box began to rise.
    He knelt, stunned, for a moment as he watched
the lid move up tantalizingly slowly, rising at no
more than an inch a second.
    When it was about half open, he got to his
feet, turned on his camera, raised it to his eye, focused it, and waited for
the beep signaling that the flash was ready to fire.
    The light was dim; the lid shadowed the
interior of the box, the view through the lens was shimmery and amorphous.   The box was full of liquid.
    He thought... was that a face?   No, not... but it was something, and face like .
    There was a sudden thrashing in the
liquid, and flashes of what looked like steel.
    For a fraction of a second, Webber felt
pain, then a rush of warmth, then a feeling of being dragged underwater.   And then, as he died, the bizarre sensation
that he was being eaten.
     

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    It needed to feed, and it fed until it
could feed no more.   It drank, sucking
ravenously, inefficiently, until its viscera refused to accept any more of the
warm, salty fluid.
    Once nourished, it was still disoriented
and confused.   There was motion and
instability and, when it rose from its box, an alarming lack.   Its gills fluttered, gasping for sustenance,
but found none until it submerged again.
    Nerve impulses fired randomly in its
brain, crossing barren synapses, unable to sort responses.   It was programmed with answers, but, in its
frenzy, it was unable to find them.
    It sensed that sustenance was nearby, and
so, in desperation, it emerged again from the safety of its box and sensed its
surroundings.
    There, just there.   The dark and welcoming
world to which it must return.
    It was bereft of knowledge but keen in
instinct.   It recognized few imperatives
but was compelled to obey the ones it knew.   Its survival depended on fuel and protection.
    It had no powers of innovation, but it did
have enormous strength, and that strength