Gateway Chapter 14: 46 Days in a Tin Can with Five People
Rob finally did it. He is in space. After all the waiting, the fear, the parties, the frozen paralysis, he is actually sitting inside a Heechee ship heading somewhere unknown.
And it is absolutely miserable.
The Crew
The ship is a Five. That means it was designed for five passengers. The crew is Rob, Klara, Sam Kahane, Ham Tayeh, and Dred. Five human beings packed into a space that was designed by aliens who were probably smaller than us, for a trip that could last weeks or months.
Right away, you should know something. A Five is not roomy. Think of a small studio apartment, except you cannot leave, ever, and you share it with four other people. There is no privacy. You hear everything. You smell everything. You see everything.
For 46 days.
Acceleration and the Unknown
The ship launches and accelerates beyond light speed. Nobody understands exactly how Heechee drives work. You set the coordinates, press the button, and the ship takes you somewhere. Maybe somewhere good. Maybe somewhere that kills you. You find out when you arrive.
During travel, there is a constant pseudo-gravity from the acceleration. It is not Earth gravity. It is not zero gravity. It is something in between that your body never fully adjusts to. Everything feels a little wrong. Your inner ear argues with your muscles. Your stomach argues with both of them.
And there is nothing to do about it. You just live in it.
The Petty Hatreds
Here is where Pohl gets really honest about human nature. Because when you put five people in a small box for weeks, the small things become big things. The little habits that you would barely notice on Earth become unbearable in a Heechee ship.
Rob starts to hate his crewmates. Not for good reasons. For stupid, irrational, totally human reasons.
Ham Tayeh is too big. Physically, the man takes up too much space. In a ship where every square centimeter matters, Ham’s size is an offense. Rob cannot help noticing it. Every time Ham moves, every time he shifts in his seat, it bothers Rob.
Dred is hostile about smoking. And on a ship with recycled air, that hostility is not exactly unreasonable. But Rob does not care about reason. He cares that Dred keeps giving him looks. That Dred makes comments. That Dred has turned cigarettes into a moral issue in a tin can where there are no morals, just survival.
Sam Kahane smells. Not terribly. Not dangerously. Just enough. In a normal room, you would never notice. In a Five with recycled air and no windows, you notice everything.
And Klara eats asparagus. That one might sound like a joke, but spend three weeks in a sealed container and then tell me how you feel about someone’s food choices.
Rob knows these hatreds are irrational. He says so himself. He is self-aware enough to understand that the claustrophobia is making him crazy. But knowing it does not help. The hatred is still there, sitting in his chest, growing a little bit every day.
How You Pass the Time
They play games. They make music. When you have 46 days and nothing to do, you find ways to fill the hours. Card games. Word games. Whatever instruments someone brought along.
And they pair off.
In a Five with mixed crew, intimate relationships happen. It is not romantic. It is not Hollywood. It is five people stuck together, terrified, bored, and needing human contact in the most literal sense. Bodies need to touch other bodies. Brains need to feel connected to other brains. It is biology and psychology crashing into each other in a very small space.
Rob and Klara find each other.
Rob and Klara
This is the big one. We have been hearing about Klara since Chapter 1. Rob cannot say her name without his voice breaking. Sigfrid keeps pushing him to talk about her. Something happened between them that destroyed Rob, and we still do not know what.
But here, in Chapter 14, we see the beginning of it. And the beginning is beautiful.
Rob and Klara spend long hours together. They talk. They are quiet together. They learn the shape of each other’s silences. In a ship where there is nowhere to hide, they find a kind of privacy in just being close.
It is not just physical, though it is physical too. It is the kind of closeness that happens when two scared people decide to be scared together instead of alone. When the universe outside is terrifying and the ship is tiny and the destination is unknown, and someone puts their hand on yours and it is enough.
Pohl writes this tenderly. For a book full of cynicism and dark humor, the Rob and Klara scenes have a warmth that catches you off guard. You can feel why Rob will never get over her. You can feel why, sixteen years later, he still cannot talk about it.
Something bad is coming. We know that because of how the book is structured. We know that because present-day Rob is broken. But right now, in this chapter, it is just two people falling in love in the worst possible place, and it is wonderful.
Day 23: The Turnaround
On day 23, something happens. The golden spiral on the control panel flickers. In Heechee navigation, this means turnaround. The ship has reached the halfway point and is now heading toward its destination.
This is a big moment. Because until the turnaround, there is always a question: does the ship have enough fuel? Enough air? Enough food? Will the supplies last for the full trip, or will they run out somewhere in the middle of nowhere?
The turnaround means the math works. They have enough. They are going to arrive somewhere. They might not know where, and that somewhere might kill them, but at least they will get there.
The mood on the ship shifts. The constant low-level terror gives way to something like relief. Not happiness, not confidence. Just the absence of one specific fear. The fear of running out.
The Nightmare Scenario
But Pohl does not let you relax for long. Because Chapter 14 also talks about what happens when the math does not work.
There have been missions where supplies ran low. Where the food was not going to last. Where five people had enough air for four, or enough water for three. And when that happens, the crew has a protocol.
They draw cards.
Lowest card loses. And “losing” means you get eliminated so the others can survive. You die so your crewmates can eat your rations, breathe your air, drink your water.
This is never presented as dramatic or heroic. It is presented as math. Cold, simple math. Five minus one equals four. Four can survive on what is left. Five cannot.
The fact that this protocol exists tells you everything about Gateway. These missions are not exploration in any noble sense. They are survival gambling. You get in a box, you fly somewhere, and you hope the box has enough inside it to bring you back. If it does not, someone dies.
Rob’s crew does not have to draw cards. The turnaround comes on schedule. The supplies are enough. But knowing that the protocol exists, knowing that your crewmates have thought about it, knowing that somewhere in the back of everyone’s mind there is a calculation about who would go first. That changes a crew.
Professor Hegramet’s Notes
The chapter also includes some academic material from Professor Hegramet about Heechee physiology. Based on the design of the ships, scientists can make guesses about what the Heechee looked like. The seat sizes. The control panel heights. The corridor widths.
The Heechee are still a mystery. Nobody has ever seen one. Nobody knows where they went. But their ships tell a story. They were smaller than humans. They built things to last. And they left behind a network of ships and tunnels and stations that humans are still trying to figure out.
It is a nice bit of worldbuilding that reminds you this is not just a story about Rob’s feelings. There is a larger mystery here. An alien civilization disappeared and left its tools behind, and humanity is using those tools without understanding them. Like a child playing with a loaded gun.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 14 is where Gateway stops being a book about a guy who is afraid to launch and becomes a book about what happens after you launch. The fear does not go away. It just changes shape. On the station, Rob was afraid to go. In the ship, he is afraid of where he is going.
But he also falls in love. And that changes everything. Because now the stakes are not just about Rob surviving. They are about Rob and Klara surviving together. And in a book that opened with a broken man who cannot say her name, we know that survival is not going to be simple.
Forty-six days in a tin can. Five people. One love story. And somewhere out there, a destination that nobody chose and nobody understands.
Welcome to prospecting.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
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