_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 state of affairs for poor old Earth!_ _Let me have that line from the Globate Credo again:_ They came from the sky before our grandfathers were born, to a world torn by war; they settled our differences and raised us from the slime_--there's a bitter laugh, gentlemen_--giving us freedom. All we have we owe to the globes. _There's the whole tale in a nutshell. God!_ _Orbish language, Orbuary, Orbsday--nice job they did of infiltrating. I wonder what books they left you. I'd like a look at your father's library. Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, or Black Beauty, or something equally advanced._