1980 SF novella, in the same world as The Outcasts of Heaven Belt
though set before the events of that book. In a system of
gradually-decaying asteroid habitats, two self-loathing people go
along on a rich man's self-promoting rescue mission.
All right, it's a bit better than that. But these days nobody
should need to be told that you don't get to be super-rich and
retain a pleasant personality even if you had one in the first place,
which you probably didn't.
In any case that mission is just the first half of the story, and the
second deals with the survivors and how they cope with what happened
there and what they did. (I believe this is a fixup of the original
short stories Media Man and Fool's Gold.)
There are lovely details, like the way the setup is gradually falling
apart; the remote manipulation gear for the power reactors isn't
working any more, so you can sign up to do an hour's work there for a
year's pay and a lifetime dose of radiation. And the way the radiation
hazard aboard ships has pushed women out of professions (because sperm
can be frozen and used years later, while eggs apparently can't) even
though there's blatantly no need for most of them to breed.
It's a very depressing story, with only slight hope at the end. But
it's very good.
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