Gateway Chapter 22: Sheri Gets Rich, Rob Loses Everything
This is the chapter where Rob Broadhead hits rock bottom. And rock bottom on Gateway is a very long way down.
It is a long chapter. Packed with events. But the arc is simple. Rob starts the chapter envious and ends it desperate. Everything in between is just the details of how a person destroys their own life when they cannot handle the gap between what they want and what they deserve.
Sheri’s Fortune
Sheri is back, and she is rich. Very rich.
Her expedition found Heechee repair tools. Not just any artifacts. Repair tools. The kind of thing the Corporation has been looking for since Gateway opened. The base awards alone come to roughly seventeen and a half million dollars. Plus royalties. Plus whatever else comes from the research that follows.
Sheri is set for life.
But the cost was enormous. Two members of her crew died. The mission went wrong. They overstayed at their destination. The oxygen ran low. During the rescue attempt, things got desperate. People suffocated. People died while trying to stay alive just a few hours longer.
Sheri survived. She is in the hospital when Rob visits her. She is alive and wealthy and damaged. She tells Rob the details. How they rationed air. How they watched their crewmates fade. How close it all came to everyone dying.
This is the reality behind every big score on Gateway. The money is real. The trauma is also real. And the dead crewmates are the price that someone else paid for Sheri’s millions.
The Color Code Fails
Remember Metchnikov’s color code? The system that was supposed to predict which missions were safe and which were deadly? The system that gave Gateway its first taste of real science, of calculated risk instead of blind gambling?
It turns out to be unreliable. Sheri’s mission was supposed to be in the safe range. Two or three color bands. Manageable risk. And two people died.
The color code is not worthless. But it is not the guarantee everyone wanted it to be. Gateway is still a casino. Metchnikov’s system just made the odds slightly better. Slightly is not the same as safe. And the dead crew members on Sheri’s mission are proof.
Envy Eats Rob Alive
Rob visits Sheri. He listens to her story. He sees her in the hospital bed, bruised and exhausted and richer than he will ever be.
And he is consumed with envy.
Not sympathy. Not concern. Not relief that his friend survived. Envy. Pure and toxic and ugly.
Rob has been on Gateway for months now. He has done one mission and came back with nothing. He has spent money he does not have. He is burning through savings and borrowing time. And now Sheri, who left around the same time, comes back a millionaire.
The unfairness of it eats at him. He cannot be happy for her. He cannot see her luck as anything other than a reminder of his own failure.
This is one of the most honest things Pohl writes in the whole book. Because envy is not a villain emotion. It is a human one. Everyone has felt it. That moment when someone close to you gets the thing you wanted, and you cannot stop the bitterness from flooding in, no matter how much you want to be a better person.
Rob is not a better person. Not in this chapter.
The Party and the Morning After
Sheri throws a farewell party. She is leaving Gateway. She has her money. She has no reason to stay. The party is loud and messy, the way Gateway parties always are. People drinking too much because they might be dead next week.
Rob gets drunk. Very drunk. And he wakes up in bed with Klara.
This should be a good thing. Rob and Klara have been drifting apart, and here they are together again. But the morning is awkward. They talk about therapy. They talk about Dane Metchnikov.
And then Rob finds out that Klara has been with Metchnikov. Not just friendly. Involved. Intimate.
The detail lands like a punch. Metchnikov, the scientist who cracked the color code. The smart one. The one who actually contributed something to Gateway instead of just sitting around being afraid. Klara chose him.
Central Park
What happens next is the worst thing Rob does in the entire book.
He confronts Klara. In Central Park, the green space on Gateway where people go to pretend they are not on a space station. And the confrontation turns violent.
Rob beats her. He hits her hard enough to knock out a tooth. This is not a push or a shove. This is a man losing control and hurting a woman who cannot fight back.
There is no excuse for it. Pohl does not try to excuse it. The text does not soften it or frame it as understandable. It is violence. It is assault. And it is the thing Rob has been building toward since the knife incident with Sylvia that we learned about in the last chapter.
The pattern is there. Violence toward women he cares about. Rob said he murdered “her” twice. And now we watch him do it again, not literally, but violently enough that the metaphor feels close to real.
Klara leaves. She takes the next ship to Venus. She runs from Rob, from Gateway, from whatever they had together. And you cannot blame her. Not even a little.
The Spiral
After Klara leaves, Rob falls apart.
He sells everything. His belongings, his supplies, whatever he has left that is worth anything. He takes the money and gambles it away. Not slowly. Not carefully. He throws it into the casino like a man trying to burn through his own existence as fast as possible.
This is self-destruction. Calculated and deliberate. Rob is punishing himself. He drove away the woman he loved. He hurt her physically. He watched Sheri get rich while he got nothing. He heard himself scream “I murdered her twice” in therapy. And now he is emptying his pockets and his life because he believes, on some level, that he deserves to have nothing.
The Solo Mission
When the money is gone and the room is empty and there is nothing left, Rob walks to the assignment board. He looks at the available missions. And he signs up for a One-class ship. Solo mission. Just him and an alien ship and wherever it decides to go.
One-class ships are the most dangerous option on Gateway. A Five at least gives you company. A Three gives you someone to talk to. A One gives you nothing. Just yourself and silence and the void.
Rob chooses it because he has nothing left to lose. He is not brave. He is not adventurous. He is broken. This is not a hero’s journey. This is a man who has hurt everyone around him, spent everything he had, and decided that the only option left is to climb into a metal box and let the universe decide if he lives or dies.
Rock bottom.
The Weight of This Chapter
This chapter is hard to read. Not because of the space stuff. The space stuff is almost secondary. It is hard because Rob becomes genuinely unlikable here. He is envious. He is violent. He is self-destructive.
But Pohl does not let you look away. He makes you sit with Rob through all of it. The envy at Sheri’s bedside. The fist connecting with Klara’s face. The money disappearing into the casino. The pen signing up for a suicide mission.
This is what makes Gateway more than a science fiction novel. It is a novel about a broken man doing broken things. The Heechee ships and the alien station are just the setting. The real story is happening inside Rob’s head, in the gap between who he wants to be and who he actually is.
Rob signs up for the solo mission. The next chapter will tell us what happens out there.
Whatever it is, it will be the thing Rob has been hiding from Sigfrid for the entire book.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
Previous: Chapter 21 - Murdered Her Twice