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.