Gateway Chapter 16: 46 Days for Nothing
Forty-six days.
That is how long Rob and his crew have been sitting inside a Heechee ship. Forty-six days of eating paste, sharing a tiny space with four other people, using a toilet with no privacy, breathing recycled air, and waiting. Just waiting for the ship to arrive wherever the pre-programmed course takes them.
And when they finally arrive, they find nothing.
The Big Empty
The ship drops out of faster-than-light travel and the crew rushes to the sensors. What do they see? A gas giant. Big, fat, useless ball of hydrogen and helium orbiting a star. One large moon nearby. No signs of civilization. No artificial radiation. No Heechee artifacts. No anything.
This is the nightmare scenario every prospector on Gateway knows about but tries not to think about. You spend months cramped in a ship the size of a closet, and the universe gives you nothing. No bonus. No discovery. No payout. Just gas and rock.
The crew is devastated.
Sam Kahane Has Ideas
Sam Kahane does not take it well. But instead of sinking into despair, he goes the other direction. He gets aggressive. He starts problem-solving. And his solutions are the kind that get people killed.
First, Sam suggests they land on the moon. Okay, that is not insane. They have a lander. The moon is right there. Maybe there is something on the surface that the sensors cannot see from orbit.
They land. They look around. Nothing. Just rock and dust and silence. No Heechee tunnels. No alien technology. No buried treasure. Just a dead moon orbiting a dead planet.
Most people would accept this. Bad luck. It happens. Go home, try again. But Sam is not most people. Sam looks at the sensor readings and notices something. There is a blue star nearby. Not the star they are orbiting. A different one. Close enough to suggest a binary system.
And Sam says: let us change course and go check it out.
The Worst Idea in the History of Gateway
Here is the thing about Heechee ships. Nobody understands how they work. You set a course from a pre-programmed menu and the ship takes you somewhere. When you are done, you set it to return and it brings you back to Gateway. That is the entire human understanding of Heechee navigation.
Nobody knows how to program new destinations. But people do know what happens when you try. Ships that change course settings do not come back. It is not a theory. It is a historical fact. Every crew that has tried to alter course during a mission has disappeared. No signal, no wreckage, no explanation.
Sam knows this. But Sam does not care anymore. He spent forty-six days eating terrible food in a metal tube, and he is not going home empty-handed. His logic is that the binary system means there might be planets around the blue star. Planets with Heechee artifacts. Planets that could make them rich.
His logic is also suicidal.
Rob Snaps
Rob’s reaction to Sam’s proposal is violent. Not thoughtful. Not diplomatic. Violent. He nearly attacks Sam. Physically.
This is interesting because Rob is usually the passive one. He is the guy who could not launch for weeks. The guy who freezes, who overthinks, who lets fear run the show. But when Sam suggests changing the course settings, Rob explodes.
Why? Because Rob knows exactly what changing course means. It means dying. And Rob did not spend forty-six days in this ship to die because Sam could not handle going home broke.
There is something deeper here too. The return trip is Rob’s safety net. It is the promise that no matter how bad things get, the ship knows the way back. Sam wants to cut that net. And Rob, who has been hanging from that net for forty-six days, is not having it.
Klara Brings the Logic
While Rob is ready to throw punches, Klara does what Klara does. She thinks.
She lays out the argument clearly. No ship that has changed course settings has ever returned to Gateway. This is not speculation. This is data. Every single crew that tried it is gone. All of them.
The survival rate for changing course mid-mission is zero percent. Not low. Zero.
Sam argues. He says those crews might have found something better and stayed. Maybe they are living on some paradise planet. He reaches for any explanation that lets him believe his plan could work.
Nobody buys it.
The Vote
The crew votes. Four against, one for. Sam loses.
But Sam does not accept it. He keeps pushing. He keeps arguing. He becomes increasingly desperate, increasingly unhinged. This is a man watching his dream of getting rich evaporate in real time, and he cannot process it.
Ham Tayeh, the big guy on the crew, has to physically restrain Sam. Not once. For the entire return trip. Every time Sam moves toward the controls, Ham is there. Sitting between Sam and the navigation panel. Making sure nobody does anything stupid.
Imagine that return trip. Forty-six days back to Gateway in a tiny ship with a man who has to be physically stopped from killing everyone. Nobody sleeping well. Nobody relaxing. Sam getting angrier and more broken with every passing day, while Ham watches him like a prison guard.
What Failure Looks Like
This chapter is Pohl showing us the other side of the Gateway coin. We have heard about the people who got rich. We know about the bonuses, the royalties, the science awards. But this is what it looks like when the coin lands on the wrong side.
Ninety-two days total. Forty-six out, forty-six back. Three months of your life in a metal box for absolutely nothing. No money. No discovery. No glory. Just wasted time and a crewmate who went crazy from disappointment.
And Rob still has to pay his per diem on Gateway. He still owes for air and water and food. He came back with less money than he left with.
This is the reality that the recruitment ads do not mention. Gateway is a casino, and the house always wins. You can study the odds, pick the best ship, assemble the best crew, and still come back with nothing. Or not come back at all.
The Damage
The crew survives. They get back to Gateway in one piece. But they are not the same people who left.
Sam is broken. Whatever dreams he brought to Gateway are gone, replaced by the knowledge that the universe does not care how much you want something.
Rob is shaken too. Not just by the failure, but by his own reaction. He almost hit Sam. He went from frozen to violent in a second. That is a man running on fear and survival instinct, holding himself together with tape and hope.
And Klara watched it all. She has now been on a mission with Rob. She has seen him at his worst. And she is still here.
Forty-six days for nothing. Welcome to Gateway.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
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