On the wide purple plains, William and his party were galloping at top speed. They had no time to see the beautiful violets and lavender at their feet, merely heading for the farm shown on the map. Meanwhile, they passed Checkpoint 21 and 22 and were delighted to see the words displayed on the screen,

Energy charge: 2.5%.

"Great." William was happy secretly, "If I can get the core, I can go home!"

But suddenly there was a voice in his ear.

"Really?" Sneered the voice, "Are you sure you can go back?"

For a moment he was in a trance. That voice had been with him for a long time, ever since he first came into this universe. Moreover, it seemed to be killing him, desperately preventing him from collecting the energy to return. Even William himself began to wonder if he would successfully return home, though he had said, after watching Rebecca practice not long ago, that he would not wonder any more.

In front of his eyes came a terrible vision -- a dark figure holding him in a tight grip and then pulling. He fell into the abyss and was smashed to pieces. He saw the energy core broken.

"No... Don't do that!" He cried, clutching his head in pain.

All those horrible feelings disappeared immediately, as if nothing had happened.

"Ah, are you all right?" Ranran witnessed the whole process.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." William stroked his still aching head and replied, "How far are we from there?"

"Almost there. Look, there's the sign."

So they quickened their pace and reached the farm. At this moment, the two mother stars were about to plunge below the horizon, staining the sky with a brilliant red glow. In the afterglow, the plants on the farm shone, all in a goodbye dance to the two mother stars. The party was greeted by a handsome firefly. He had two fluttering antennas on top of his head, two glittering wings on his back, and stripes of alternating red and yellow on his body. The back of his body glowed pale yellow against the light of the two mother stars.

"I know you," Said the firefly to Rebecca, "and I know why you came by me -- to participate in the endurance race."

"Wow, are you one of my fans?" Said Rebecca in surprise.

"Yes." Laughed the firefly, "And I saw a plane passing by me just the day before. He is blue-black with a flaming sign at the tip of his wings. He told me he was going to the race too, and that I might see a red plane passing by."

The scene went back to William's mind. "It must be Jackson," He thought. But he could not understand why Jackson would guess that Rebecca would pass by.

So he asked the firefly, but he didn't know either. The firefly said, "Well, I haven't introduced myself yet. I'm James, a retired pilot. I've won a lot of endurance championships. I just won the last race of my career four years ago."

William looked at him with immediate admiration. He introduced everyone else. "We come from another planet." He said.

"Oh, it's not like the old days. About three months ago there were a lot of alien visitors, but there are not many yet now." James said.

"Since you say you're a retired player, would you like to test how good Rebecca is?" Photon asked.

"That's certainly very good, but it's getting dark now. Shall we do that another day?"

Photon readily agreed. So the firefly took them to his room. He turned on the power supply and the warm yellow light lit up the room.

"Wow, you have a nice room." Ranran praised. James smiled shyly. "Never expect a firefly to be extravagant; they just need to be able to rest." He joked.

They had three minutes of silence as they watched the diamond-bright stars twinkle in the darkening sky. Then William broke the silence. "What you may not know, James," He said, his expression becoming a little heavy, "is that Rebecca must have made a deep impression on you when you were competing. But when she met strong opponents, she withdrew and spent two years under house arrest. It was our presence that re-lit the flame of her confidence."

"Oh, I see." James replied, "That means you have a tough job helping an airplane that hasn't been trained for two years win this year's race. This is indeed not easy."

"And it's not just Rebecca who has her own task. I too have." It was the first time William had spoken to the inhabitants of this planet about coming home. He said, "I want to go back to my own planet, but it seems that someone doesn't want me to go back. He even started convincing me that I couldn't do it."

There was silence again, and this time was more eerie than the last. Almost everyone could feel the mysterious force descending again, inching toward them.

Finally, James said to William, "If you think you can do it, and keep working, you will do it. That person is actually using psychological tactics. He is trying to make you lose confidence, lose will to fight as well as motivation, and thus fall into his trap. And the only way out of this trap is to have strong enough faith and never give up.

"In fact, when I first entered the race, my idea was very similar to yours. I knew that my opponents and I were both strong, but I didn't know who could play the best. The only thing I could do is to keep telling myself that I am the best and I will win the championship. As expected, I performed very well under such a hint. Combined with the extreme performance of the airplane, I finally had a good start. Since then, I have told myself this over and over before every race. As a result, I won most of the races. When I retired, I made a short speech on the podium and shared my secret to success with everyone present.

"Now, I share it with you. That's exactly the first sentence I said. Because I also know a lot of opponents who are sometimes not confident. But they are able to adjust their mentality in time, facing each race with full spirit. My observation is that every time they won they were full of confidence, and every time they lost it was due to lack of faith.

"So, I hope that you and your Rebecca will always keep hope and never give up. Your most powerful enemy is not anyone else but yourself. Actually, I think it is you who don't want you to go home, and it is Rebecca who isn't sure whether she's going to win this race. And when you defeat your most powerful enemy with confidence and hard work, success becomes much easier."

The others listened attentively to everything he said. "I can't agree with you more." Ranran said, "We've seen William wavering a lot along the way, and each time we've done our best to encourage him and help him regain his confidence."

"When we met Rebecca," Natalie added, "we changed her by encouragements."

James said, "Keep going, then, and don't be discouraged. Quit is not in my vocabulary, and I hope it is not in yours either.

"I used to think about what I could do to achieve the value of life. I soon found out that I had a gift for flying. Although I can fly myself, this low altitude and low speed flight is far from satisfying me.

"Each of us must think about what we can achieve, or we will waste our lives."

"I've done an almost impossible task before." Natalie continued -- she meant racing at Capsule Laboratory with the 5,000-horsepower sports car, "I knew the odds were stacked against me, but my faith kept me going. Therefore, Master, your task is not easier than mine, then you should be firmer in your faith and never waver. Don't let You-Know-Who get to your head."

"I will," Said William. Never before had his eyes been so determined. When he looked out of the window, he saw something magical: the stars in the night sky formed a fist pattern. Then they became the words "Come on!".

"Wow! The stars move by themselves!" He exclaimed. James interrupted with a smile, "No, those are fireflies. It's just that their luciferin is different from mine, which makes them glow like stars. That's why you mistook them for stars."

"Oh, I see." William smiled, and so did the others.

"Do you want a rest? I think you are very tired." James asked when he saw Ranran yawning.

"Er... We can use one thing to stay awake." With that, Natalie asked the little robots in the backpack to pull out the sleep capsules and handed one to James. He ate it and felt invigorated. "It's nice." He said, "This will give you more time to train."

"Yeah, after all the game is coming up and it's important to train fast. But we're almost at the end of our training and Rebecca has got it pretty good." Photon said.

"That's nice. I could already see Rebecca standing at the top of the podium and hear the applause and cheers from the spectators." Said the firefly, "In that case, I'll show you something." He signaled the others to follow him.

They went outside and, after a short walk along a well-hidden path under the stars, saw the steps that led down to underground. In the flowers on either side, the crickets were singing and the spiders were waiting for their prey. A few birds fluttered through the air now and then, but the forest was still quiet. The river flowed slowly. There was no noise of the day here, only the quiet of the night. The flowers lowered their heads slightly to rest so that they could embrace the fiery mother stars again a few hours later.

After going down the steps, the dark front suddenly had a glimmer of light. William could see the signs of fireflies under his feet, and they would glow when he stepped on them. With the help of these faint lights, they moved on slowly. Photon studied the picture on the wall -- the scene of James the firefly flying his plane to victory.

The road disappeared and a green door blocked them. "That's what I'm going to show you." The firefly said, "Now, get ready. We are going in. Well, don't be this nervous." he said as William unconsciously clenched his laser gun, "Don't worry, there's no danger."

He twirled the door handle and a weak gravitational pull drew them in. Then the door closed.