A Gift from Earth

A Gift From Earth is a science fiction novel by the American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1968 and set in his Known Space future. It first appeared as a magazine serial called Slowboat Cargo.

The colony is on Plateau, a world in the Tau Ceti system whose surface is a hot, dense and poisonous atmosphere, and whose only habitable ground is the top of one mesa, Mount Lookitthat, which reaches forty miles up into air that can be breathed. The first colonists arrived on slow ships and spent the journey asleep, and while they were under, the crew signed an agreement with them called the Covenant of Planetfall that handed the crew and their descendants permanent control of the new world.

Three hundred years later the arrangement has become a whole society. Medical treatment on Plateau means transplanting organs, and it is available to Crew; justice means execution for any crime, after which the offender's organs are donated, and only Colonists are executed. A dissident group called the Sons of Earth has formed in response, and the novel follows an ordinary miner, Matthew Keller, who is drawn into their orbit by an evening he did not intend, while something arrives from Earth carrying cargo the government decides to hide.