Gateway Chapter 6: Welcome to Gateway - Contracts, Tunnels, and Zero-G Parties
After the intense therapy session of Chapter 5, Pohl switches gears completely. Chapter 6 is big, packed, and full of world-building. This is where we really get to see Gateway as a place where people live, work, gamble, and try not to die.
Welcome Aboard, Fish
Rob and the other arrivals get patted down by military noncoms from each of the national cruisers. Then a Corporation clerk takes over. She calls them “fish.” That is what new arrivals are called.
Each person gets a proctor. The proctor helps you find a room, answers questions, tells you where to go for medical exams and classes. Also, $1,150 has already been deducted from their accounts for ten days of life-support tax. You pay for the air you breathe on Gateway.
Rob’s proctor is Dane Metchnikov. Squat, pale, not much of a talker. He grabs Rob’s arm and starts walking. Rob wants to say goodbye to Sheri but Dane just grunts that they are all in the same area.
The Contract Nobody Reads
Within two hours, Rob has a room, a proctor, and a contract. He signs it immediately. Without reading it.
Dane looks surprised. “Don’t you want to know what they say?”
Rob’s logic: if he read it and did not like it, he might change his mind. And then what? Go back to the food mines? Being a prospector is terrifying. But going back to his old life is worse.
The Memorandum of Agreement says: everything you find belongs to Gateway Authority. They give you 50% of revenues until costs are covered, then 10% after. They can pool your discoveries with others. They can decide not to sell at all. If you get hurt or die, your problem.
Terrible deal. Everyone signs it because the alternative is worse.
Room 51, Level Babe
Rob’s room: Level Babe, Quadrant East, Tunnel 8, Room 51. About the size of a large steamer trunk. One chair, some lockers, a fold-down table, and a hammock you stretch corner to corner for sleeping.
His neighbors on one side are a family of four from Venus squeezed into one of these tiny rooms. On the other side is Sheri, but she has already gone exploring.
Dane hangs himself from a wall hook by his collar. That is how you relax in near-zero gravity. He mentions he has made six trips himself, and tells Rob to look around until 2200 when they will go out for a drink.
Getting Lost and Meeting a Man with Wings
Rob is alone on Gateway. And it hits him. The feeling is like being young with full medical coverage. Like a menu in the best restaurant when someone else is paying. Like an unopened gift.
But reality kicks in. The tunnels are tiny and lined with plants. The gravity is almost nothing. And the smell. Thousands of people have breathed this recycled air, and it never quite goes away.
Rob wants to see a ship. He pulls out his map and tries to navigate the maze of tunnels. Gets lost. Knocks on a door for directions.
The door opens and Rob meets someone he does not expect. A man with no legs. He has gauzy fabric strapped from wrists to waist, like wings, and flutters them gently to stay in the air. In Gateway’s low gravity, this works.
His name is Shikitei Bakin. Old face, white hair, kind eyes. He speaks excellent English and gives Rob clear directions.
This is when Rob understands Gateway statistics with his gut instead of his brain. About 80% of flights come back empty. About 15% do not come back at all. Only one in twenty finds something profitable. And if you get hurt far from Gateway, Terminal Hospital is good but you have to get there first. Months in transit with injuries can leave you like Shikitei. Or worse.
Can’t See the Ships
Rob finds Level Tanya and tries to get to the ship docks. A Corporation Police officer stops him. No English, but the guy’s size is convincing enough. Rob goes up, tries another route. Another guard. This one speaks English.
“You can’t come through here. You’ve got to have a blue badge.”
Rob argues. He just wants to look. The guard says no. You become flight crew when you sign on for a flight, not before.
But then the tunnel lurches and a blast of sound hits Rob’s ears. A ship launching. The guard shrugs. “I only said you couldn’t see them. I didn’t say you couldn’t hear them.”
Rob is thrilled. He does not care about the odds in that moment. He is on Gateway. Prospectors are launching into the unknown. This is real.
He gets lost again on the way back.
The Blue Hell
At 2200, Dane takes Rob to the Blue Hell. The nightclub sits in the spindle-shaped cave at Gateway’s center. Gravity is so low people weigh two or three pounds. No waltzing. You keep your feet in place and move everything else.
Dane has an ornate waxed beard that follows his jawline. Each curl moves on its own when he talks. He buys the first drink (custom), Rob buys the second, and when Rob also buys the third, Dane actually smiles.
The place is loud. Languages from everywhere mixed into pidgin. Rob dances with Sheri, with a woman wearing two blue bracelets (two missions), and with a tall woman with thick black eyebrows and pigtails that float behind her in the low gravity.
He meets Francesco Hereira, a Brazilian from the cruiser crew. Francesco speaks good English and buys Rob a drink.
The Casino
Dane says he is going to gamble. Rob follows and discovers a full casino next to the Blue Hell. Blackjack, poker, slow-motion roulette, craps with dice that take forever to stop, even baccarat.
Rob, drunk and showing off, says he might play baccarat.
Dane looks at him with respect. Then amusement. “Fifty’s the minimum bet.”
Rob shrugs. He has five or six thousand left.
“That’s fifty thousand,” Dane says.
Rob nearly chokes. Roulette is ten dollars minimum. Most games are a hundred. He realizes he cannot afford this place, including all the drinks he has been buying. Then he realizes how drunk he is. Chapter ends with Rob needing to get back to his room. Fast.
The World-Building Inserts
Pohl drops documents into this chapter between narrative sections. The full Memorandum of Agreement. A “Welcome to Gateway” pamphlet. A “What is Gateway?” info sheet. A life-support tax notice. And a piece about Sylvester Macklen, who discovered Gateway on Venus and died before help could reach him.
These inserts make Gateway feel real. Bureaucracy, paperwork, fine print. You are not just reading about an adventure. You are reading the forms and brochures that come with it.
What Matters Here
This chapter establishes Gateway as a lived-in place. Not a shiny sci-fi space station. A cramped, smelly, confusing asteroid full of desperate people from all over the world. Some are rich tourists at the hotel. Most are like Rob, gambling their last dollars on a chance to strike it rich or die trying.
The contract is unfair. The rooms are tiny. The air stinks. The gravity messes with everything. And people still come because the alternative is worse.
That is Gateway.
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