"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961, and partly based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It is collected most recently in The Rediscovery of Man. It details the methods by which the Norstrilians (or "Old North Australians") of Smith's fictional "Instrumentality" universe maintain their monopoly on the precious immortality drug stroon. The story details part of the background to the novel Norstrilia (which references the Kittons once in its introduction as a sure method of death). The story has been alluded to in Charles Stross's Glasshouse. Source: Wikipedia (en)