Adam's ship. 10 years later.

'You'll soon see them.' patiently said Adam. 'They will light the control room in unison. But in reality, it would be difficult for you to even notice them.'

'Dad, can we have a countdown?' asked Jeremy with the sigh and imploring eyes that never failed to have his mother melt down, but not his father.

'Oh, I don't think it is that precise.' brushed aside Adam. 'But you'll have to ask Patricia.'

'Patricia, Patricia!' rushed Jeremy, 'Can you calculate the exact moment when the beacons will all light up together?'

'Well, that requires an extreme precision...' started off the ship's voice. 'A third of a second is a billion times smaller than a decade you know. So with time their internal clocks might have desynchronised a little and they won't appear within the same second. But I have seen them many times and I can anticipate that lag and offset it.'

'But that would be cheating,' noted Jeremy.

'That would be cheating, indeed...' admitted Adam. 'But that causes no harm and it is beautiful.'

'And you wouldn't even know it happened if I didn't tell you know that the first beacon started emitting while we were talking,' added Patricia.

'Stop. You're ruining everything,' complained Jeremy.

'Ok. Ok... I'll give you a countdown without time lag correction. But it starts... Right now! 17, 16, 15...'

The six year old child opened eyes wide with expectation, looked around the room fading into darkness and tried to remember where forward direction was. His foster father repositioned the kid so as to face Alpha Centauri and patted his shoulder with a confident smile.

'5,4...', in the background.

A first light shone at their back. Jeremy spun around but immediately double backed to see the front beacons.

'1,0!...'

'Wow...' said Jeremy spinning around endlessly, bathed in the blinking light of surrounding beacons. 'Is it natural colour?'

'It is...' confirmed Patricia, 'But the luminosity is increased tenfold.'

And suddenly the child stopped in shock. 'But there are only five!?'

'Indeed, admitted Patricia, 'I haven't received yet any signal from the last beacon.'

Adam turned around and saw the dark patch from where the beacon should have emitted. 'Patricia, you're not playing any trick, are you?' And without waiting for the answer. 'That's the diverging beacon isn't?'

'Yes, and the delay is far exceeding the likeness of an internal offset. The cause must be exogenous.'

'You mean, the ship that is following us destroyed that beacon.'

'Or just disabled it,' tempered Patricia.

'Anyway, they mean no good to us. Call Eve immediately.'

'Dad, what's wrong?'

'It's just the ship behind us. It proved to be a bad guy...' He hesitated. 'And so we'll have to watch out.'

'Adam!' said Eve anxiously. 'Patricia just told me. Do you think it's really that ship?'

'I do.'

Jeremy asked, 'Could it destroy the Real Frontier as it did for the beacon?'

'That, I don't know,' he acknowledged.

Patricia calmly answered, 'the beacon had absolutely no defence mechanism. I have some, but they have to be compared with attacking power of our pursuer.'

'What should we do then?' asked Eve.

'Nothing much for now, I'm afraid,' continued Adam, 'You stay in the nursery for the time being... Anyhow, how is our child?' asked Adam anxiously.

'The ultrasound scanning is normal,' Melody said answering instead of Eve.

'Does that mean that Eve is safe as well?'

'I'm fine. Don't you worry,' replied Eve.

'Ok, well. I'm on my way to the nursery now. We'll have to talk.'

'Just give me a minute will you? I don't want you to see me in this condition.'

'Come on Eve, I have seen you in other intimate circumstances.'

'No, you haven't.' She pointed out, raising her voice significantly. 'I'm puking all over the place. I'm fed up with puking, so to say. I can even reach the ceiling. I didn't sign up for this mess. It wasn't in the user manual. And all of this is your fault. You were not satisfied with raising a cryo-embryo, so you considered that the proper thing for us to do was to have a child the natural way. As simple as that. But let me tell you, I'm the one carrying the full burden of your little planning game. So, as of now, you don't decide anymore what's good or not for me. Is that understood?'

Adam deeply objected. Instead of simply replying 'loud and clear' and getting away with it, he honestly replied: 'But no, we decided together to keep the child, and we didn't plan it in the first place.'

'Oh! Don't you dare contradict me now.'

'But we loved each other. I didn't force you.'

'You didn't force me because I loved you. But you were not in love. You just wanted to experiment...'

'But Eve, I've always loved you. You can't tell me like that you don't love me anymore...'

'But I still love you too, honey. Why do you never listen to me? But I'm tired now. So come another time. Good bye.'

Adam was totally perplex and unable to think anymore. The nervous stimulus which finally ordered his mouth to close was an unconscious need for not drying out his tongue.

Melody decided to push him out of his torpor. 'You know, it is not uncommon during pregnancy to experience mood swings due to the significant hormonal variations.'

'What?' Adam refocused on his audition. And then he heard the sobbing on the background.

'Jeremy!', he thought aloud. 'Jeremy! Where are you? Come here.' He shouted pacing around the corridor. 'Don't worry. It's just a little fight between adults. Ah! Here you are... It's gonna be all right. I promise,' he said trying to hug his son.

But Jeremy fought out the embrace. 'No it's not! I hate you. I hate you.'

Adam stepped back, took a deep breath and tried to reason his adoptive son. 'Jeremy, I am not your biological father, but I love you all the same.'

The only answer from his son was to run away... Adam didn't move but listened to the quick fading steps. Realising there was little else to do, he kneeled down and wept in silence. He felt lame, failing to raise a family.