anet ran out of diamonds. By god! what a yarn!_

_You'll have your hands full, but maybe I can help. There's a way to
bring those saucers down out of the sky in a hurry.... They won't give
up easily. They obviously have atomic bombs, and the lush intoxication
of power won't be a cinch to give up, not for anything that sounds as
egotistic as the globes...._

_Dolfya? We called it Philadelphia. Kamden, Camden, yeah.... Woods
lions, wow! They must be mutants from zoo or circus lions that escaped
during the atom wars; or maybe someone brought 'em to the U.S. The
Tartarians had tame lions, I remember._

_Six or eight brains? Well, Mink, I wouldn't argue, but I think you are
confusing certain functions of one brain with--oh, do go on!_

_Let me see that gun. My Lord, what a concoction! Blunderbuss muzzle,
shells, yet no breech-loading; ramrods to shove in shells! My sainted
aunt! A fantastic combination...._

_He eats dandelions, parsley, grass, eh ... chlorophyll, obviously. And
the globe rests on his chest and puts tentacles into his mouth and
nostrils. It's feeding, sure; look at the title of this book you've got
here. This is a bastard English but close enough. Certainly your father
wrote it, Miss. Some of your gentry must have preserved the art as a
secret._

_Look here: I'll make it as plain as I can. The globes are from another
world. They came here for diamonds to run their buttons with. Got that?_

_Now here's what I deduce from the little I've read here. Talk about
Pepy's Diary! Hadn't anything on this chronicle. Your father and the
other gentry have to feed the globes periodically. Evidently they draw
nourishment out of the human bodies--all that chlorophyll makes me think
it's a definitely physical nourishment, rather than a psychic one.
That's what your people pay for being privileged powers in the land.
They stand the disgrace and the pain, if there is any, the draining of
their energies, in return for plain old magnetic_ power.

_So that's the source of life, strength, what-have-you, of the aliens!
They must have gotten pretty frantic out in the space wastes, looking
for a planet that could afford them a life form that was tap-able._

_Evidently it has to be voluntary, from these books. I guess the
ancestors of the ruck had their crack at the honor and declined, thus
dooming themselves and their offspring to servitude; while those that
assented became the gentry. What a--Judas Priest! What a sordid sta