Gateway Chapter 26: Two Ships, One Mission, and Klara Is Back
The mission is getting real. What was just a name on a board and a number on a contract is now becoming an actual plan with actual ships and actual people who might actually die. And right when Rob thought he had the emotional landscape of his life figured out, Klara walks back into it.
This chapter moves fast. Briefings, crew assignments, a farewell party, and a surprise that changes everything. Pohl is building toward something big, and you can feel the tension ratcheting up with every page.
The Mission Briefing
Emma runs the briefing. Two Five-class ships. Same destination, at least in theory. Ship One launches first. Ship Two launches exactly thirty seconds later. Same course, but with minor variations in the non-critical settings.
The whole point is correlation testing. If you change things that should not matter, does the ship still arrive at the same place? This is real science. Not prospecting, not gambling. The Corporation has moved past “press button and pray” into “press button slightly differently and compare results.”
It sounds clean and logical when Emma explains it. Two ships. Thirty seconds. Same place.
But nothing on Gateway is simple. Nobody knows where “same place” is. Nobody knows what is there. And if something goes wrong, both ships are on their own. There is no rescue team in uncharted space.
The Crews
Ship One: Sess Forehand and two West African women. Experienced. Steady. The kind of crew you want going first into unknown territory.
Ship Two: Dane Metchnikov, his two lovers Danny A. and Danny R., Rob, and one more person. Rob’s pick.
And there it is again. The choice. Shicky or Susie.
We know how this ends because it ended the same way last chapter. Rob picks Susie. The Brazilian naval officer. The one with working legs and fresh energy and no emotional debt hanging over her.
But the guilt does not get smaller the second time. If anything, it gets worse. Because now it is final. The crews are set. The names are on the list. Shicky is officially not going.
Rob made the right call. He knows it. Everyone probably knows it. Susie is better suited for the mission physically. But “right call” and “good feeling” are two different things, and Rob is not experiencing the second one.
This is something Pohl does so well throughout the book. He gives characters choices where the logical option and the emotional option are different. And then he makes them live with the gap between the two.
The Farewell Party
Gateway does farewells like it does everything else. With booze, noise, and an undercurrent of fear nobody wants to acknowledge.
The farewell party is a Gateway tradition. People who are about to launch get a send-off. It is partly celebration, partly wake. Because everyone at the party knows that some of the people drinking tonight might not come back. The smiles are real. The fear underneath them is also real.
At the party, Rob meets Louise Forehand. Sess Forehand’s wife. And Louise has news.
She is rich. Not Gateway-average rich. Actually rich. She went on a mission and found weapons. Heechee weapons. And her share of the discovery came to $2.5 million.
Two and a half million dollars. While Rob was sitting around with his eight thousand, Louise Forehand hit the biggest score on the station.
And now her husband is about to launch into unknown space. She has $2.5 million and her husband is volunteering for a mission with no guarantee of return. Money does not make Gateway less dangerous. It just raises the stakes.
Klara
And then she shows up.
Klara. The woman Rob loved. The woman who left for Venus. The woman he has been carrying around in his head like a wound that will not close.
She is back on Gateway. She returned from Venus. And she is not just visiting. She is joining the mission. She will replace Sess Forehand on Ship One.
Rob’s reaction is exactly what you would expect. He is ecstatic. She is here. She is real. The universe, for once, seems to be giving him something instead of taking it.
But Klara is cautious. Not cold. Cautious. Whatever happened on Venus, whatever happened between them before, she is not falling back into Rob’s arms like nothing changed. She is keeping a little distance. A little wall. The kind of wall people build when they have been hurt and are not sure they want to risk it again.
Two people who care about each other, reunited, and one of them is already protecting herself. Because she has learned that wanting something does not protect you from losing it.
The Separation Built Into the Plan
Here is what makes the situation complicated, as if it was not complicated enough already.
Klara is on Ship One. Rob is on Ship Two. They launch thirty seconds apart. They go to the same destination, maybe. They arrive together, hopefully.
But they are not on the same ship. They cannot hold each other during the transit. They cannot talk. They are in separate metal boxes hurtling through space, and the only connection between them is a theory about Heechee navigation that might or might not be correct.
Thirty seconds of separation. That is nothing on a clock. But in space, thirty seconds might as well be thirty years. If one ship arrives and the other does not, thirty seconds becomes forever.
Pohl is cruel this way. He gives Rob exactly what he wanted, and then immediately puts a wall between them. A wall made of metal and thirty seconds and alien faster-than-light travel.
Avoiding Shicky
The next day, Rob does something cowardly. He avoids Shicky.
He knows he should talk to his friend. He knows he should explain, apologize, say something. But he does not. He stays away. He finds excuses. He takes different corridors. He eats at different times.
This is guilt behavior. Pure and simple. When you hurt someone, even if it was the right thing to do, sometimes you cannot face them. Not because you are a bad person. Because you are a human person.
Rob will have to live with this. He left Shicky behind. And he did not even have the guts to say goodbye properly.
The Launch Celebration
Eventually Rob joins the crew for the launch celebration. The final gathering before they seal the ships and go. Everyone is there. Metchnikov and his two Dannys. Susie. The crew of Ship One. Klara.
The mood is what you would expect. Forced cheerfulness layered over real terror. People drinking a little too much. Laughing a little too loud. Hugging a little too long.
Tomorrow they launch. Two ships. Thirty seconds apart. Into the unknown.
Rob has Klara back but cannot touch her. He has a million-dollar guarantee but might not survive to spend it. He has a crew of people he barely knows and a friend he abandoned.
Everything is in motion now. The pieces are set. The ships are ready. And Pohl is lining up something that, knowing this book, is going to be devastating.
Two ships. Thirty seconds. And whatever is waiting on the other side.
Book: Gateway by Frederik Pohl (1977) | Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award Winner
Previous: Chapter 25 - One Last Mission