Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW first printing: "Survival mission! With the Homeworlds wars over at last, Tom Hark and his crewmates had been sent to the long cut off colony planet called Islands, to repair the failing Artificial Intelligence left to aid in governing the planet seventy-five years earlier. But war and time had taken its toll not only on the Homeworlds but on Islands as well. Forced to make an unexpected emergency landing on Islands while searching for his missing captain and navigator, Tom discovered a world on the brink of ruin. For as the AI had slowly failed, it had left behind a legacy of insular cultures, rigid, feudal matriarchies in which men were less than even second-class citizens. On this high gravity world of cut-throat politics and barbaric customs, could a "civilized" man survive long enough to complete his colony-saving mission? Or was it already too late for both Tom Hark and the world called Islands."