“I don’t know,” replied Judy. She didn’t need Jesse’s MTPH-enhanced senses to tell her that the terrified passengers who were being poured into the enormous plastic bubble in which she floated were close to panic. They tumbled inexpertly in the zero-G space, gazing wide-eyed, through the clear plastic walls of the dodecahedron, at the stricken body of the Deborah lit up by nauseous green searchlights. A few last tiny bubbles were crossing through space, bringing the remaining humans to safety. Judy watched as one of the little bubbles touched the wall of envelope and discharged a tumbling passenger through its protective wall into safety.
—I reckon they’ve now saved about half of us, said Jesse.
“Who has?” asked Judy.
“Who has what?” asked the nervous woman. She looked around. “Who are you speaking to?”
“Never mind. Have you noticed that there are no facilities in here?” remarked Judy. “No beds, no toilets. Nothing. Just a lot of people floating in a great bubble.”
A voice rang out in the great space.
“Passengers of the Deborah .”
The floating passengers quietened immediately.
“This is the Free Enterprise —part of DIANA. We noted your distress and made all haste to rescue the Deborah . We are just in the process of bringing the last few of you aboard. After that we will be making the jump clear of the region of Dark Plants, en route for Fraxinus.”
“Fraxinus?” said the woman, gripping Judy’s arms tightly. “Oh, Watcher save us. Where’s Fraxinus? Is that a safe place?”
“DIANA?” wondered Judy. “I wonder what’s in it for the Free Enterprise, in this rescue? The old companies never did anything that wasn’t going to turn them a profit.”
“What do you mean, what was in it for them?” asked Maurice. “You were in danger and they rescued you. What more is there to say?”
Ask Saskia, thought Judy, noting the other woman’s hungry look. Edward dropped a pan onto the cooktop in the kitchen.
Judy answered Maurice’s question. “The Free Enterprise lives by a way of thinking that was rendered obsolete long ago. It was built by AIs that jumped from Earth on the first Warp Ships, AIs built by organizations like DIANA that saw everything in terms of financial transactions. It saved us, it wanted something in return.”
“What?”
“Venumbs. The Free Enterprise wanted some of the knowledge gained on Fraxinus. And it got it, too.”
“So the passengers all made it to safety?”
“Yes. The Free Enterprise took them to Fraxinus and made a deal. We were saved through the power of old-style capitalism. The Watcher was supposed to have killed that off, but it’s making a resurgence.”
Just look at your ship.
“We’ve traded with Fraxinus, you know,” said Saskia. “You would have seen two of their genetically modified ash trees in the large hold. Those wooden dinosaurs.”
Maurice wasn’t going to be distracted.
“So what about you?” he asked Judy. “What are you doing here?”
There were eventually nearly five hundred humans floating in the plastic bag grown by the Free Enterprise, most of whom were unused to zero gravity. It was unnerving at the best of times to find yourself in a space where nothing was fixed; add to that the fact that you had only just survived an encounter with the Dark Plants, probably losing friends and family in the process, and it was no wonder that the sound of crying filled the bubble. Most of the passengers had formed themselves into loose circles; they gripped each other
