Planetstuck
Novelette 9,385 words Recommended by 3 award/anthology sources
"Llopa gave me leave for the first time in basically forever, so I hopped twenty-six gates across three systems to Menelik Station intending to spend a solid solar day in its legendary mile-square waterslide labyrinth—laughing through an endless looping rush of water as warm as blood, through tubes that at their thickest were six slim inches of clear myco-plastic between me and the vacuum of space."
Quasar links out; the story lives on Asimov's, where the author gets the click.