When Joe is thrown out of his 3-way marriage by his wife and husband, he loses his visa and instantly becomes an unemployed, undesirable element on the space station. There’s a shuttle leaving in twelve days but unless he spends them in a coma, his air rations will run out before then.
This story explores a lot of issues in a short timespan: polygamy, the rights of divorced parents, vagrancy, prostitution, life on a space station where the very air you breathe is a commodity, … It does so in a succesful manner and ties everything together with a very effective ticking clock plot. And maybe it’s just my imagination but the story also reads to me as an interesting commentary on some of Heinlein’s work.
