Juserin now looked at Lisa with new eyes. He'd never imagined she was such a skilled, insightful sapient. This Waymaster, Bath, kept exceptional company.

"If that's true, then how do I change my visualization?" Juserin was eager to learn. He'd ever even thought he could be taught anything about being a kursi; he'd assumed it was all instinctive.

"How do their shells look like when they come close to each other?" Lisa asked.

"They simply grow closer to their bodies. If they're intimately close, their shells will cover their bodies like a second skin."

"Then, what I think you need to do is believe, as strongly as you can, that their shells aren't going to decrease in size. Instead, as they come closer, their shells are going to touch one another. When this happens, the little whorls of water you mentioned before are going to flow from one shell to the other.

"That's what you're going to envision."

Juserin's head swam. "Okay, I'm going to give it a shot." He looked intently at his servants and ordered them to move farther away and then closer together over the course of a few minutes.

In the end, he inclined his head with a sigh.

"I don't think I've made any progress," he admitted dejectedly.

Now Lisa was feeling a bit bad for him. "Don't worry; this kind of visualization technique is something that needs to be practiced often for a long period of time. You need to reteach your mind how to think, after all," she explained with a consoling tone. "After a few months or years, I'd expect you to see improvements if you meditate on the scene I described to you earlier."

Juserin nodded. "An interesting proposition. Well, we'll see if anything changes. But, now that I think about it, why is it important to visualize shells influencing one another?"

Lisa laughed. "Because, when they're connected like that, you only need to influence one shell rather than two."

Juserin's face appeared neutral, then quickly turned a darker blue color as he began to understand the implications of what Lisa said. "One becomes two...how far can this stack?"

"Indefinitely," Lisa said cooly. "Just think about that."

"And you claim that kursi on Earth have this kind of shell visualization?"

Now Lisa was a bit uncertain. Certainly she had this way of visualizing shells, but didn't know if the same went for other humans.

"You can see for yourself when we come to Earth," Lisa replied flippantly, as though the question didn't merit a proper response.

Juserin nodded slowly. "Very well."

Lepochim was silent over by the cushions. However, he had been listening very attentively to the end of Lisa's exchange with the Waymaster. 'Visualization techniques...' he thought to himself. Like Juserin, he'd never imagined what Lisa was saying to be possible. Each entity was their own, separate individual; they didn't influence one another by virtue of proximity.

What Lisa was saying was something Lepochim had never heard of before.

Bath himself was pleasantly surprised with the way Lisa had clearly psyched out the Waymaster. He didn't quite understand the implications of what Lisa had been saying, but did understand that Lisa had a superior visualization technique to the Waymaster. He wasn't sure how important visualization techniques were, but apparently what Lisa could do with hers was enough to shock both the Waymaster and Lepochim, whom Bath saw watching Lisa attentively.

Bath was already very proud of Lisa, and this only served as further justification for placing his faith in her.

'My little conqueror,' he mused to himself, thinking of Lisa and her renown ten years, fifty years, one hundred years from now. Little blips in time. He didn't even try to guess where they would all be in one thousand years, but figured it would situations beyond their current capacity to imagine.

"Lepochim, what are you doing with the television?" Bath queried from his swivel chair.

"Trying to configure it to the outside world so we can see where we're going." Because of its incredible durability and capacity to change form, the voyager didn't have any windows to the outside.

"Oh, that?" Juserin said as he looked over at Lepochim. "Just hit that green button on the remote."

Lepochim gave him an exasperated expression. "There are four different remotes; which one?"

Lisa thought it hilarious that both Earth and worlds beyond had issues with consumer electronics.

"The only one with a green button," the Waymaster replied snidely.

Scowling, Lepochim found the remote and pressed the green button. Then, on the screen, the passengers saw the outside world. They were currently rocketing over a planet with vast, sandy deserts and a few green seas. They were actually starting to slow down as they dove towards the planet's surface.

"Good timing," Juserin noted. "We're approaching the second gate."

"Already?" Bath asked, curious. The ship had passed through the first gate on Illudis only twenty minutes after departure. If the ship was almost already at the next gate, they'd make insanely fast time as they proceeded forward. Why had Juserin said the trek would take a week to get to Earth?

"Don't be fooled: this planet was a breeze. The upcoming planet has a gate that's located on an asteroid off the surface of the planet. We'll actually have to enter space and try to locate it manually. I reserved two days for finding it."

Bath's mouth popped open. Space? The gate was in outer space? His eyes darted to Lisa and Lepochim. Bath had no faith in his ability to enter outer space. More than anything, he was terrified of going out into the void and being trapped there, unable to move and spinning out helplessly into the void.

He never would have expected that the gate was on anything other than the planet itself. Of course, their gate map would have informed them of this fact as soon as they landed on the planet, but they would've been unable to actually reach the gate upon arrival.

Bath realized for the first time that things weren't potentially as easy as he expected.

"Waymaster Juserin," Bath began suddenly, "is it common for gates to be located off the surface of a planet?"

Juserin shook his head. "It's almost unheard of. I actually suspect that a foreign power carved the gate out of the surface of the planet and tossed it out into space. Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond me. Thankfully, the voyager can handle short outer space travel."

Bath felt a feeling of relief, though couldn't shake fear budding up inside his Center. 'I need to find a way to deal with the space issue,' he said determinedly to himself. 'This is a new personal goal.' A few ideas flashed through his head, but he resigned himself to thinking deeply on the matter later.

Finding the asteroid took a day and a half. They proceeded on to other worlds, taking around 2/3 a day for each. Many of the planets they visited were quite treacherous and required the voyager to travel through harsh storms, slowing progress considerably. As the voyager traveled to Earth, Bath watched intently the television screen to gain a better understanding of the worlds for when he returned to them. Bath, Lisa, and Lepochim learned a few verdora games from Juserin. They spent a good deal of time asking questions about verdora society and Illudis while Juserin asked many questions about life on Earth.

The time passed fairly quickly, and on the fifth day's evening, Juserin informed them that they would reach Earth within the next four hours.

"Prepare yourselves," he said warmly, having grown fairly close to his guests over the duration of the voyage. Lisa, he found, was incredibly easy to talk to. Lepochim was a bit of a tart, but fine all the same with interesting observations to contribute to the conversation.

In all honesty, Juserin still didn't know what he thought about Bath, which only made him more curious to reach Earth and see the kind of influence he'd carved out for himself on his home planet.

The four hours came and went. Then: "Passing through the gate," sounded throughout the voyager. Everyone looked at each other in anticipation.

Juserin grinned. "We've arrived."

"Home," Lisa sighed amiably.

"Earth," Lepochim murmured under his breath, feeling a sense of disdain towards the planet.

Bath's closed his eyes, then opened them after a moment. They now shone steely with resolve. He focused his gaze on the television screen currently displaying the form of a pitch-black gate. Just five seconds more until the voyager's tip crossed the threshold...one second...

Bath sighed, a complex expression on his face as the screen displayed the inside of the Ritus headquarters.

"I've returned."

---

END PART 3