ards who'd sell
out to the extraterrestrials for glory and profit ... yeah, your gentry
sound like another type of sell-out, traitors to their race and their
world ... describe those squires' costumes again, will you?... Holy
cats, eighteenth century to a T! Not a thread changed, from the sound of
it! And a lower class, you call it the ruck, which is downtrodden and
lives in what might as well be hell...._

_Yep, it sure sounds like hell and ashes. The globes; then, as is
natural to a conquered country, the top dogs, priests in your case, who
run things but are run by the globes; then the privileged gentry--I'll
have a look at those books of yours in a minute, honey--who pay some
kind of tax, in money or sweat or produce or_ something, _for being what
they are; then the ruck (I know the word, son, you've just enlarged its
meaning) who have been serfs and peasants and vassals and thralls and
churls and hoi polloi and slaves since the Egyptians crawled out of the
Nile. The great unwashed, the people. Let 'em eat cake. I'm sorry, Mink,
go on._

_Your gentry sound about as lousy a pack of hellions as the eighteenth
century squires! Too bad you don't know about tobacco, they could carry
snuffboxes and_ really _act the part...._

_My God! Even the fox hunts--with people hunted. Anyone but miners? Open
days, eh? Ho-oly...._

_Glad to know you, Rack. Don't know as I'd care to have you on the other
side, you look like Goliath. So you just saw the light when the gods
started to die? You are lucky you saw it, big man; brother against
brother is the nastiest form of war, especially if mankind's fighting an
alien power...._

_Your rebels sound familiar, Mink. They had 'em about like you in
Ireland, a hundred or so years ago--I mean before I went bye-bye....
Always romantic, unbelievable, unfindable, foxes with fangs...._

_I wonder what your globes wanted? Power, sure, if they're that humanoid
in concept, but it must have been more. Maybe their own planet blew up.
Maybe they ran out of something. Tell me, do you have to give them
anything? Any metal, say?_

_Diamonds? Are those small hard chunks of--yes, I guess diamond still
means what it did. By gravy, I'll bet I know! They were just starting to
discover the terrific potential of energy of the diamond when I went to
sleep in 2084. I_ wonder _how long ago that was? Anyway, I'll wager these
globes of yours run their damned saucers--buttons--on diamond energy.
Maybe their pl