Centuries in the future, humanity has discovered the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. Approached by a friendly alien race known as the Mxtel, Earth soon finds itself a member of the Confederated Sentient Planets, or CSP, with an exploratory arm known as the Federated Fleet. When the Fleet scout ship Lorili finds itself in distress near the planet Mootoa and its engines and engineers lost-among them the captain's wife-the grieving Captain Jacob Grimm must approach the CSP member planet in hopes of gaining assistance and finding replacements for their lost crew members. Mootoa is very much like Earth. The people look human-although they definitely aren't-and they even speak English. Their social structure, however, is very different from what the crew members of the Lorili know. Mootoan women outnumber men three to one, and common thinking on the planet holds that men aren't smart enough to do anything other than breed. Only time will tell how the mixed-gender crew-and the male captain-will get along on the matriarchal planet. In this science fiction novel, a scout ship crew from earth finds itself stranded on a matriarchal planet, and its male captain finds himself navigating a new world of gender politics.