Frozen in her seat on the Saranyu, Leesa McCaffrey was unable to do anything except endure the transit—and think. You never knew how long a Starlock transit was going to take. Impossible to measure in real time, there was only each person's perception of the event. This one seemed to be taking longer than usual, but perhaps that was only because she knew they were travelling further than anyone had ever gone before.

She tried to focus her thoughts on something positive—the promise in Asaro's smile—but, as if her brain had been programmed, her thoughts returned to her past. The year she turned fifteen, when her father left home to board the Erebus.

She remembered him standing in their kitchen, carrying the one kilo of personal luggage he was allowed, full of excitement and trepidation. "I'll be fine," he had reassured her mother. "They're confident they've found a solution. The latest trials have been very promising and Dr Carlson is as sure as he can be that this new drug will work. I've had all the treatments and I'm as ready as I'll ever be. This is important, Pheebs. Just think what it will mean to us all if—when I'm successful!"

Her mother had clung to him, trying desperately to hide the fear in her eyes.

"We're only going in to the 'lock and coming straight back out again. I'll be home before you know it." Her father had smiled, full of confidence. Only Leesa noticed the way he clenched his eyes as he kissed her mother for the last time.

"Of course you will," her mother said bravely.

He came home just a fortnight later, but he wasn't the same man who had left.

Leesa found out later from the ship's medic that her father had survived the first transit through the Starlock, with no apparent problems. Everyone had been jubilant, celebrating with a glass of sparkling wine and a slice of her father's favourite sweet, a classic cake filled with cream and known affectionately as a "twinkie."

Then the Erebus made her return trip. The transit had gone smoothly, the female crew feeling no ill-effects, but Leesa's father had come out the other side a drooling idiot.

Nobody knew exactly what created a Starlock, nor even whether they were naturally occurring or created by an unknown, more advanced species. From a distance, they looked like a small star, full of white light but emitting no heat. It was only when you drew close that you could see how tiny they were compared to a real star. About a kilometre in diameter, a ship could circle one in a matter of moments. However, enter the Starlock and you found a pathway, a channel leading from one section of space to another. A faint resemblance to Earth's ancient boatlocks had inspired the name.

So far, humanity had discovered seven 'locks scattered throughout the galaxy, acting as portals to distant star systems. When Leesa tried to describe the process to her mother, the nearest image she found that made any sort of sense was that of a folded piece of paper with two dots on it. Measure the surface from one dot to another and the distance was large, but pinch the sides together and the distance was infinitesimal. Entering a Starlock was like folding the paper. Then it was up to the pilot to 'align the dots', and determine their course.

Once inside the Starlock, the pilot's brainwaves would controll the ship's destination. Only a very few people could meet the specialised requirements to take a ship through the Starlock. To be a pilot, a person required an extremely strong ability to concentrate, a genius level knowledge of mathematics, and as near as possible, an eidetic memory. Oh, and just one more thing. The person had to be female.

Perfectly capable of piloting ships in normal space between planets, or in and out of a space station, something about the male brain simply fried when men went through a Starlock. Male brainwaves appeared to be incompatible with the very phenomenon that was enabling humanity to travel the galaxy.

A frightening number of men had destroyed themselves while testing this theorem, unable to believe it could really be true, before the Federation clamped down and determined that women only would crew ships travelling into deep space.

"We have to find a solution," Leesa could remember her father saying. "Our inability to send men through the Starlock is crippling our future. We can't send proper families to settle new worlds. We can send only women, and embryos less than five weeks old, then wait twenty years for them to grow up to start creating a balanced society! Families torn apart. Mothers bringing up children on their own and fathers who will never see their sons. In fact they'll never see their daughters either unless they come back on a spaceship. What sort of a life is that for people?"

Leesa bit her lip as her mother tenderly wiped away the drool trickling down her father's chin. "I don't know how you can bear it!" she burst out.

Her mother smiled sadly up at her. "I still love him, Lee. I remember the man he was... he had such high hopes. This is the least I can do."

"You're a stronger woman than I am, Mum," Leesa said, giving an involuntary shudder. She could remember him too, which was why she couldn't bear to witness what had become of her strong, brilliant father. This shell of a man, huddled in an electronic chair, every bodily function handled by a machine.

Brain wipe. That's what they called it.