This inventive and fun science fiction short will be
enjoyed by fans of 'Star Trek', 'Blake's Seven' and other
space exploration series, as well as hard SF aficionados.
SALINE is the water world young Ben inadvertently finds
himself orbiting.
While engaged in the necessary research to gain his PhD,
pilot Ben is obliged to take a feckless navigator on his
two-person spacecraft. Only, the other guy has better things
to do, involving a female student, so he files the
flight plan and leaves Ben to it. One hazardous flight
later Ben has a damaged vessel, not much food and an ocean
world with nowhere to land.
An anomaly on the scanners turns out to be a much larger
vessel, from another culture, seemingly intact but drifting
in orbit without any crew, like a Marie Celeste in space.
Taking his life in his hands, Ben crosses to the other ship
and meets a very unusual 'person', Kira, a holographic
representation of a girl who tries to help him unravel the
mystery and secure both of their survivals.
The far-future tale presents a series of challenges and is
a vivid action-adventure, told in present tense. The
scenes jump around between past and present which may make
it difficult for younger readers to follow, but otherwise I
would consider it suitable for young adults to adults. Dick
Gillman was born in Sheffield, England and has a career as
a science teacher behind him. He has also written a series
of Sherlock Holmes novellas, currently available in a
bundle as 'The Sherlock Holmes Fireside Collection'. I hope
he writes more SF as well as SALINE, because anything this
much fun deserves repeating.
A navigational 'accident' finds Ben Grissam marooned around
the sea world 'Saline'. He boards an abandoned alien mining
vessel where, with the help of the hologram Science Officer,
he solves the mystery of the crews disappearance. However,
the intrigue continues when the crew's home world Hebros is
threatened by the warlike A'rath. Ben must find a way to
defeat them in order to save Hebros.
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