Fish Fry

While deep-sea fishing off the Florida Keys, Carol Engelholtz expects the usual contest of patience and strength. Instead, his line delivers Hrodes, a four-foot, scale-covered visitor from the water world of Grenaria. Hrodes is no fish, but an extraterrestrial envoy whose vessel lies at the bottom of the sea—and without access to water, he cannot survive.

Carol is startled, skeptical, and thrilled by the chance to become humanity’s first contact with another planet. He hides Hrodes in his bathtub, wraps him in wet towels, and heads toward the nearest town in search of someone capable of handling a mission of interplanetary importance. Unfortunately, finding a responsible official willing to believe an impossible story may be harder than landing a sailfish. This lighthearted science-fiction adventure follows an ordinary vacationer as he tries to keep an extraordinary secret alive long enough to make history.