Photographer Paul Forrester decides to photograph an erupting volcano when he is caught in the eruption and killed. At the same time, the Starman has returned to seek Jenny Hayden and their child. He clones the dead photographer's body and finds his son, whose name is Scott and is living in an orphanage. George Fox has decided that the Starman's initial visit was a reconnaissance mission for a potential invasion, and believes that he will return. He sets up a department and begins the hunt.
Deciding that hitch-hiking is too inefficient a method of travel, Paul and Scott decide to buy an automobile, and after making the purchase pick up a mother and daughter who have car trouble. After dropping off the car at a garage and finding a hotel, Paul and Scott discover that the police are after their friends as well.
Forrester and Scott decide to lay low at an airfield. He meets a woman who along with her father were designing a new plane but when he suffered a stroke she tries to do it on her own. She doesn't even try talking to him. But with the sphere, Forrester is able to communicate with her father, who tells him some flaws with the plane which he tries to tell her about which she doesn't believe.
Scott erroneously uses the sphere to make some lights appears in the sky. And when a deputy sees them and he tells everyone about it, they don't believe him. But Fox upon hearing about it heads to investigate.
When Forrester gets sick he ends up in the hospital and the doctor treating him has no idea what's making him sick or how to treat it. At the same time Fox has been relieved of his duty because of his failure to come up with tangible proof of "the alien's" existence.
Forrester gets a letter supposedly from Forrester's mother inviting him to come home for Christmas. When he arrives she claims that she didn't send him a letter. And it seems that Forrester was not exactly a good son and neither his mom nor the rest of the town like him. But he and Scott try to make it a good Christmas for her because she's dying.