sort.
Instead there was a placid tolerance, a spirit of friendly good will,
an ingenuous complaisance that grated on Matson's nerves like the
screeching rasp of a file drawn across the edge of thin metal. He
shivered uncontrollably. It was hard to be a free man in a world of
slaves.

It was a measure of the Aztlan's triumph that only a bare half-dozen
police 'copters patrolled the empty skies above the parade route. The
aliens had done this--had conquered the world without firing a shot or
speaking a word in anger. They had wooed Earth with understanding
patience and superlative guile--and Earth had fallen into their hands
like a lovesick virgin! There never had been any real opposition, and
what there was had been completely ineffective. Most of those who had
opposed the aliens were out of circulation, imprisoned in correctional
institutions, undergoing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation! a six bit
word for dehumanizing. When those poor devils finished their treatment
with Aztlan brain-washing techniques, they would be just like these
sheep below, with the difference that they would never be able to be
anything else. But these other stupid fools crowding the sidewalks,
waiting to hail their destruction--these were the ones who must be
saved. They--not the martyrs of the underground, were the important
part of humanity.

A police 'copter windmilled slowly down the avenue toward his hiding
place, the rotating vanes and insect body of the craft starkly
outlined against the jagged backdrop of the city's skyline. He laughed
soundlessly as the susurrating flutter of the rotor blades beat
overhead and died whispering in the distance down the long canyon of
the street. His position had been chosen with care, and was invisible
from air and ground alike. He had selected it months ago, and had
taken considerable pains to conceal its true purpose. But after today
concealment wouldn't matter. If things went as he hoped, the place
might someday become a shrine. The idea amused him.

Strange, he mused, how events conspire to change a man's career. Seven
years ago he had been a respected and important member of that far
different sort of crowd which had welcomed the visitors from space.
That was a human crowd--half afraid, wholly curious, jostling, noisy,
pushing--a teeming swarm that clustered in a thick disorderly ring
around the silver disc that lay in the center of the International
Airport overlooking Puget Sound. Then--he could