Chapter One
An odd vibration roused Perry Bergman from a restless
sleep, and he was instantly filled with a strange
foreboding. The unpleasant murmur put him in mind of
fingernails scraping down a blackboard. He shuddered
and threw off his thin blanket. As he stood up, the vibration
continued. With his bare feet on the steel deck,
it now reminded him of a dentist's drill. Just beneath it
he could detect the normal hum of the ship's generators
and the whir of its air conditioning fans.
"What the hell?" he said aloud, even though there
was no one within earshot to provide an answer. He'd
helicoptered out to the ship, the Benthic Explorer, the
previous evening after a long flight from Los Angeles
to New York to Ponta Delgada on the Azorean island of
San Miguel. Between the time zone changes and a long
briefing about the technical problems his crew was experiencing,
he was understandably exhausted. He didn't
like being awakened after only four hours of sleep, especially
by such a jarring vibration.
Snatching the ship's phone from its cradle he punched
in the number for the bridge. While he waited for the
connection to go through he peered out the porthole of
his V.I.P. compartment on his t ... read full excerpt from Abduction ebook
