För det mesta verkar du beskriva Gateway av Frederick Pohl, en del av Heechee-serien som består av fem böcker . Gateway är både en Hugo och Nebula Award Winner och en populär ID-fråga på den här webbplatsen, efter att ha blivit ombedd här .
Från Wikipedia-beskrivningen kan vi se många av de element du kommer ihåg:
There are nearly a thousand small, abandoned starships at Gateway. By extremely dangerous trial and error, humans learn how to operate the ships. The controls for selecting a destination have been identified, but nobody knows where a particular setting will take the ship or how long the trip will last; starvation is a danger. Attempts at reverse engineering to find out how they work have ended only in disaster, as has changing the settings in mid-flight. Most settings lead to useless or lethal places. A few, however, result in the discovery of Heechee artifacts and habitable planets, making the passengers (and the Gateway Corporation) wealthy. The vessels come in three standard sizes, which can hold a maximum of one, three, or five people, filled with equipment and hopefully enough food for the trip. Some "threes" and many "fives" are armored. Each ship includes a lander to visit a planet or other object if one is found.
och
once back on Earth as a wealthy man he seeks therapy from an artificial intelligence Freudian therapist program which he names Sigfrid von Shrink.
Hela serien består av:
Gateway (St. Martins, 1977)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (Del Rey, 1980)
Heechee Rendezvous (Del Rey, 1984)
The Annals of the Heechee (Del Rey, 1987)
The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway (Tor Books, 2004)