Read Peter Benchley's Creature for Free Online Page B

his dog what appeared to be a rubber ball but turned out to be a perfect orb of sewage sludge.
    He looked over the stern at the rubber-coated wire that held the tracking sensor, and checked the knot on the piece of twine that held the sensor at the prescribed depth. The coil of wire on the deck behind him was three hundred feet long, but because the bottom was shoaly and erratic, they had set the sensor at only fifty feet. The twine was fraying. He'd have to replace it tonight.
    "You still see the shark?" he called forward to Tall Man.
    There was a pause while Tall Man looked at the screen. "She's up to about fifty," he said. "Just hang-in' out, looks to me. Signal's nice and strong, though."
    Chase spoke to the shark in his mind, begging her to come up, to show herself, not only for him but for Max. Mostly for Max.
    They had been tracking her for two days, recording data on her speed, direction, depth, body temperature—eager for any information about this rarest of the great ocean predators—without seeing anything of her but a white blip on a green screen. He wanted them to see her again so that Max could enjoy the perfection of her, the beauty of her, but also to make sure the shark was all right, had not developed an infection or an ulcer from the tagging dart that contained the electronic signaling device. It had been perfectly placed in the tough skin behind the dorsal fin, but these animals had become so scarce that he worried about even the remote possibility of causing her harm.
    They had found her almost by accident, and just in time to save her from becoming a trophy on a barroom wall.
    Chase maintained good relations with the local commercial fishermen, carefully staying out of the increasingly bitter controversy over limiting catches because of depleted stocks. Since he couldn't be everywhere at once, he needed the fishermen to be his eyes and ears on the ocean, to alert him to anomalies natural and man-made, like massive fish kills, sudden algae blooms and oil spills.
    His assiduous neutrality had paid off on Thursday night, when a bluefisherman had phoned the Institute (he'd had sense enough not to use his radio, which could be monitored by every boat in three states). On his way home, he told Chase, he had seen a dead whale floating between Block Island and Watch Hill. Sharks were already feeding on the carcass, but they were school sharks, mostly blues. The rare and solitary whites had not yet picked up the spoor.
    But they would, those few that still patrolled the bight between Montauk and Point Judith. And soon.
    The word would reach the charter-fishing boats, whose captains would call their favored customers and promise them, for fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a day, a shot at one of the most sought-after trophies in the sea—the apex predator, the biggest carnivorous fish in the world, the man-eater: the great white shark. They would find the whale quickly, for its corpse would show up on radar, and they would circle it while their customers camcorded the awesome spectacle of the rolling eyeballs and the motile jaws tearing away fifty-pound chunks of whale. And then, drunk with the dream of selling the jaw for five thousand or ten thousand dollars and blinded to the fact that they could make more money if they left the shark alone and charged customers for the privilege of filming it, they would harpoon the animal to death ... because, they would say to themselves, if we don't do it, someone else will.
    They would call it sport. To Chase, it was no more sport than shooting a dog at its dinner.
    He and scientists from Massachusetts to Florida to California had been lobbying for years to have great white sharks officially declared endangered, as they had been in parts of Australia and South Africa. But white sharks were not mammals, were not cute, did not appear to smile at children, did not "sing" or make endearing clicking noises to one another or jump through hoops for paying customers. They