It also provides an incentive to invest small fortunes in travelling to Gateway. The hope to be one of the lucky few keeps the majority on task. The tiny handful who return with something valuable are lavishly rewarded. Some come home having found nothing of interest. Many die of starvation, infection, radiation, and worse. Many prospectors venture out to the stars. There is no known way to predict whether a given trip will take two weeks or two years. Attempts to use the ships in their original state often end badly. Since humans have no idea how the ships work, attempts to modify them often end badly. Sufficiently brave or desperate volunteers have been boarding the ships to see where the ships take them. Despite their age, many of the starships still work. Discovered twenty years earlier, Gateway is a half-million-year-old alien artifact, a converted asteroid with nearly a thousand starships inside it. He chose to spend his quarter million on a ticket to Gateway. Winning the lottery meant Broadhead had choices. If not for a lucky lottery win, Broadhead could have looked forward to years spent underground until the inevitable day a mishap or health crisis ended his expendable life. It’s important work - 10% of the world’s twenty-five billion depend on food grown from Wyoming’s hydrocarbons - but it’s not work that pays well. Robinette Broadhead has wealth and status, so why is he so miserable? The answer lies in the past, in the source of Broadhead’s money: the alien starport humans call Gateway.īroadhead was born into poverty and seemingly destined to spend his life working in Wyoming’s shale mines. 1977’s Gateway is the first novel in Frederik Pohl’s Heechee series.

Gateway series pohl