Gateway, though, just teems isn't the right word, because when dread starts teeming, it pretty much stops being dread. Better to say the novel is coated in dread: even in the scenes that aren't set on the unsettling alien space station from which it takes its name, you can smell the feeling. And most of those scenes take place years in the story's future, in the safe, comfortable office of a friendly robot psychologist the protagonist is voluntarily seeing.
Said protagonist is Robinette or Bob Broadhead, who was born poor on an Earth that's slogging its way toward a whimper, rather than a bang. It's overpopulated, and a big chunk of the world's food comes from slimy bacteria grown on shale mined in less-than-ideal conditions. Jobs are hard to come by, and though medical technology has made some great strides, it's only available to the wealthiest people. Formerly a food miner, Bob is now one of those wealthy people, living in Manhattan (which is a controlled environment sealed under a big bubble).
He got rich by going to Gateway, a space station formerly inhabited by an ancient, mysterious alien race humans have dubbed the Heechee. Here is what we know about the Heechee: almost nothing. We've found a few of their artifacts and deciphered some of their technology, but we're not sure what they look like, what their culture was like, or what happened to them.
Gateway is a rock about ten kilometers wide at its longest point, honeycombed with tunnels and riddled on the outside with bumps and holes. The bumps are the hulls of Heechee ships. The holes are where Heechee ships used to be. Human scientists have figured out how to make the ships run sort of. Other humans, usually poor ones, spend their life savings to become prospectors, and fly Heechee ships out of Gateway on preset courses to they-know-not-where, hoping to strike it rich finding traces of the alien civilization.
About a third of the ships come back. And the people inside aren't always alive when they do.
That's as best I can convey what makes Gateway such a dreadful book. Human beings clamber into small spacecraft that passeth understanding there are parts of the control panel, particularly a golden coil, that bewilder everyone who tries to determine their function and shoot off into the void at faster-than-light speeds, not knowing what their destination is, how long it'll take to get there, whether their food will last the whole trip, and if they're going to a habitable planet or if they'll end up burning alive inside the corona of a star.
They just know their chances are less than one in three. And they pay big money for the opportunity Bob wins the lottery on Earth, and spends his winnings to get to Gateway because things are bad enough back home to make it worth the risk.
