The Thera and the Ophelians

"We owe our entire economy to the Thera, don't we?" she asks. "Inventors who discovered what the osmotic sack could do to recycle food and water on long journeys turned the heart stars that sustained the Thera into the starlet engine that gave us the galaxy." The heiress says it's a bad quality in a spacer but you forgive these things when they inhabit a person you love.