"Well, if it will only take a minute--" The instructor followed Billy into the back yard. At the rear was a shed with an open window. A plot of grass separated the shed from the house. On the second floor of the house, a window had been shattered. "There's something up there in that broken window. If you will come here, sir, you can see it better." "Um. Ah! Oh, yes." The instructor's back was to the open window of the shed. He stared upward at the house. Two brown-coated arms came out of the window of the shed and clamped a fierce grip around his throat, jerking him backward against the wall. He grabbed frantically for the _Thor_ gun. The face of the brown native appeared in the window of the shed. "Get that gun, Billy!" Billy Kasker was already in action. He snatched the gun from the instructor's flailing hands. The brown native leaned from the window. Muscles bulging in his powerful arms, he lifted the instructor upward and through the window. A thump came from inside the shed. Billy Kasker, _Thor_ gun ready for use, went through the door. The instructor was writhing on the floor. The native had a knee on his chest, a knife in his hand. "This is for the race you _think_ you've conquered!" the native said. He plunged the knife into the instructor's throat. Green liquid spurted from the wound. "Green blood!" the native said. "One of the chemical differences." He came to his feet. The dying instructor was forgotten. The native's hand went out. "Billy, am I glad to see you. I was afraid you wouldn't recognize me in spite of the tune I was whistling as I walked past you on the street." "I wouldn't forget," Billy Kasker said. "But, Billy, it's been twelve years since I traded you, as a kid of five, for one of their brats--changing the bracelet as I changed you. Many times since then I've thought you had forgotten, or that I wouldn't live to see the day when you came back here with a graduating class." "I don't forget," Billy Kasker said. "I'm even class president!" The words burst out of him as if he was still having trouble understanding what they meant. "That's wonderful, Billy. You're accepted as one of them, but you're one of us all the time. You're in with them, you're set. You have done a wonderful job and I'm proud of you." The glow in the native's eyes was a wonderful sight to behold. In it there showed the hope of the future for all the conquered natives of this lost planet that had once been called Earth--the faith, the sure knowledge that they would rise again ... indeed, that they were already rising. "Thank you! But--" Billy nodded toward the body of the instructor, then spun hastily as a sound came from the rear of the shed, the _Thor_ gun coming to focus. A trap door was rising there. Three natives were looking up from under it. "They're all right," the brown native said quickly. "They're with us."