His own Moon project at a standstill following the explosion on test of a prototype rocket,
Professor Quatermass has a new investigation. A hollow meteorite is brought to him.
A visit to the area of its fall leads him to a vast secret government production plant
and another incident - a meteorite falls.
It shatters, discharging ammonia gas and perhaps something else.
Captain Dillon is overcome, a curious mark appearing on his face.
But while Quatermass examines it, armed security guards arrive.
They take Dillon into the plant, apparently for treatment.
Quatermass is ordered away.
He goes through the bulldozed debris of the village that occupied the site a year before
and comes upon weathered remains of the supposed meteorites by the hundred.
Rebuffed by both civilian and police authorities,
he finds out from Fowler, a contact at the Ministry,
that the mysterious plant is to produce synthetic food.
But with evidence that the secret process is already being duplicated
in Central Siberia and in Brazil,
a one-man inquiry has been forced by Vincent Broadhead, a Member of Parliament,
into the affairs of the controlling commission.
When this resumes, he admits Quatermass as a witness.
Looking along the faces of those at the table,
Quatermass sees once again...
the mark!
- Can I speak to you for a moment? - Excuse me, gentlemen.
- Do you know him? Where he got that mark? - No.
I've seen it before. On a child who stumbled across a meteorite. She was made ill.
And the mark was on her hand.
And yesterday, Dillon. It began to appear when the guards took him away.
- I've seen other cases. - This man in the room?
He, at least. I swear it.
Professor Quatermass was concerned about the propriety of his presence here
while I put questions on other matters.
Now, as members of the controlling commission,
do you know of any external dangers to the plant?
There are no dangers!
There can be none!
- Perhaps even missiles directed at it? - That's not what I meant.
- Just get that stuff out. - Yes.
What Professor Quatermass is about to produce is something that fell two days ago
within a short distance of the plant.
There's a possibility these may be directed through the atmosphere to a specific point.
In this case, to or at your plant.
They may possibly constitute some form of carrier.
- Carrier? Of what? - Of poison gases.
- And also possibly... - Infection.
What I know of synthetic foods is that you're dealing with
delicate organic gels and cultures.
Now, these can be infected, naturally or artificially, and destroyed.
What I'm trying to establish is the possibility, no more than that, of a threat to your process.
- No. - It may be nothing, but it may be serious.
Now, first, we've got to free more facts from this monstrous web of secrecy.
- There has been no infection. - In the plant? You discovered nothing?
- Nothing like that? - I must ask you to take this matter seriously.
I must ask for your co-operation. A picture is beginning to form, however sketchily,
of a unique process which is no longer unique.
To extend these indications to their farthest limits, it may be in danger of destruction.
If this should prove to be...
- What's going on? - Yes, it's a model.
An accurate reconstruction, in plaster, of one of the meteorites as it fell.
You, sir! When did you come across a thing like that?
When did they come?
- If I could tell you... - This must not continue!
These questions must not be asked!
I agree.
I think you'd better leave now, Professor.
Please.
Now, gentlemen, I'd like to take up one or two points on the process itself.
You certainly stuck your neck out. You might have folded up the whole inquiry.
And you must admit the response you got was fairly indefinite.
Very well, on a level of simple fact.
- You're a scientist. Isn't that the only level? - No! How long have I been up here?
- 20 minutes. - Could you ring the inquiry?
- Well, erm... - Try!
Get me room 441, please. Mr Broadhead.
- Reason? - The last few minutes I was there...
- Seconds, really. - What?
- I was afraid, Fowler. - Afraid? Why on earth?
I don't know. Perhaps I'm discovering new depths in myself. Or streaks.
At any rate, I was suddenly sharply aware of...
...menace.
Here? In the Ministry?
Hello?
What? No reply?
No, it's all right.
Broadhead!
- What's wrong with him? - It's dispersed now, but...
- Ammonia gas! - What happened?
Look!
- You're sure? But how? - I don't know.
It was here with them. It must have been.
He's conscious. Broadhead!
- Broadhead... - What happened at the inquiry?
Inquiry's over.
I wonder what he found out.
Nothing to find out.
Nothing.
- I'll get a doctor. - You were making a report.
- You remember? - Hello? Hello?
Everything's... in order.
Everything's explained.
- Hello there. - All right, Fowler. They're here.
- When were you sent for? - A few minutes ago.
We happened to be passing. We came in.
- Say nothing. - What about you?
- I want your help. - Help?
I want to get to the plant. Inside it.
- I'll try. Give me an hour. - Where can we meet?
I know a place. One of the old coffee bars. Nobody goes there now. This way.
- Here you are, sir. - Thank you.
Nice to meet a gentleman who still appreciates a good cup of coffee. Sugar, sir?
Fine, thank you.
These new tea bars now, they've swiped all the trade. Fashion, that's all it is, really.
Just fashion.
Fowler.
- This is Rupert Ward. Professor Quatermass. - How do you do, sir?
- Two more coffees, please. - Right-o, sir.
- Any trouble since I saw you last? - No.
Ward's in public relations. He's been to the plant.
- What? - Several times.
- Top secret. How much will I say? - I'll answer for Quatermass.
- I gather you have odd notions about it. - I'd no time to go into details.
Does that mean anything to you?
No. Why, should it?
It's made of plaster.
Yes, it's a cast. No matter.
Ward is attached to the Special Section. Temporarily.
- How many visits did you make? - Half a dozen.
- Alone? - No, I took parties down.
- Quite a regular procedure. - Mostly politicos.
One or two outside people, press and so on. Some of them quite well known. Names?
- No matter. They were shown the plant? - Yes, but not by me. I'm no scientist.
I can't tell one of these places from another. I just handed my charges over.
- You left them there? - That was the arrangement.
I presume they came back with someone else.
Your coffees, sir.
Look here, you don't think anything happened to those people, do you?
Good Lord. They all turned up again.
There's no doubt about it. One hears of them.
- What were they shown? - There was nothing much in operation.
Except a sort of pilot plant. I didn't go into it.
- Perhaps you were lucky. - What?
Didn't this strike you as odd, with such a secret establishment?
PR routines can be rather odd. I don't make the decisions.
No, you're just a pleasant, sensible chap. No nonsense.
No suspicion would attach to you.
What on earth is he talking about? As if I was, well, guilty of something.
There are other chaps. Why not ask them?
- Have you still got your pass? - Yes.
You'll use it - today. You're going to take another party round - me and Fowler.
- He'll back you up. - But this is...
Finish your coffee. I showed you a model of something that's been falling near the plant.
I'm having them investigated... by my own people.
Damn and blast!
- Another blind alley? - Yes.
We're in a kind of mathematical lunacy.
Question: Did those things come like normal meteorites?
Did they come like rockets? Did they do this? Did they do that?
We have dozens of theories, all impossible.
I realise we've got to accept that wherever these things came from was...
beyond the atmosphere.
- But not so very, very far away. - No, I see that, too.
And for a year.
Why hasn't their point of origin, whatever it is, been located by every major observatory?
- Or spotted by every amateur with a telescope! - Yes.
It would be bound by physical laws to travel in set ellipses. A semi-major axis.
In a certain set rhythm. So we calculate and calculate and there's no sensible answer!
Oh, Leo! Five-minute break.
How much sleep have you had?
Send some more coffee up, would you? Observatory Three.
Too many machines, that's what we've got.
They spoil one from grasping a clear concept.
I joined your father as a mathematical genius.
That's not boasting. I was, once.
A calculating boy.
But these machines, they beat me. I press buttons.
- Why did you join him? - Looking for some kind of beauty, I suppose.
The mathematical kind.
The idea of making roads in space for rockets to travel. Four-dimensional roads.
Curved with relativity, metalled with best-quality continuum.
- These roads are two-way! - The brake's still on, Leo.
- Tell me about the calculating boy. - Ohh.
At the village school in Merioneth.
The teacher, old Miss Williams, used to set me enormous sums to do.
She loved to astonish herself, 'cause I always got them right.
"You'll go far, Leo, bach," she said. "You have the power to benefit mankind."
And now I press buttons. What sort of child were you?
- I was frightened of the dark. - Nice and normal.
It was very scientific. I had a special nightmare that I was in a rocket Father had made
going away and getting lost on the wrong side of the world, in the dark for ever and ever.
I used to wake up screaming.
Leo?
- That might be it! - What?
The... what do you call it? The Bieber Variation! A sort of fault in the laws.
A line drawn from the Sun to the Earth, extend it, you reach a point of equilibrium
where a body can orbit invisibly.
On the dark side of the Earth.
Hello? Hello, Stewart? Pugh here.
I want the radio telescope on a completely new setting. Come over here and bring Watson.
Take it away. I don't want it.
The Bieber Variation!
It took the most advanced brain on Earth to comprehend it, but to go further,
to put it to practical use, what manner of being could do that?
Frankie!
Wasting your time throwing stones in the water!
Why don't you give your father a hand? Frankie? Did you hear what I said?
Look at him, left to carry all them bottles down. Can you manage, dear?
Yes.
Was that somebody blowing a whistle?
- Over at that new works? - Yes.
- Perhaps it's their tea break or something. - Yes, dear.
Just the same time as us. Isn't that funny? Now, where's this cloth?
Frankie! Are you trying to go into the water? Remember your promise.
Silly of Uncle Tom to give him them rubber things when he can't swim.
Frankie!
Come on and have your tea now. It's all ready.
I do like a picnic. I always say there's nothing like the open air.
Here you are. Aren't you going to take that thing off your head?
- No. - Can't get over that village, though.
All them houses down. I thought we'd come the wrong way. Didn't I say?
- Yes, dear, you did. - Fancy pulling them all down like that.
- It was just like a picture. - This the meat, dear?
- Yes, that's right. Remember the tea shop? - Oh, yeah.
The one time we didn't have a picnic we went there. Miss Collins, wasn't it?
- Yes, dear. - It was so nice, pretty everlasting flowers...
Whatever's that?
- You blowing that whistle at us? - He's got a gun! Frankie!
- You must not be here. - What?
- It is forbidden. - I told you there'd be trouble.
Sit down, dear. Have your tea. Nobody's got a right to try and...
Go! Go now!
- All of you! - Don't you point that at my wife and my kid!
We come here peaceable for a picnic.
- We're doing no harm. - Father, we'd better go.
No. Now, look here, mate, you stop shoving us around or I'll write to the papers.
Messing us around when we're quiet and decent,
not doing no harm, not leaving any litter about.
I don't know what this place is and I don't care. We mind our own business. No harm in that.
See anything now?
- Just a little car. - Looks like the guards. Somebody's in trouble.
- Should we go back? - No.
- But surely... - It may help us. There's the gate ahead.
- Are you ready? Ward, got your pass? - Yes.
Say as little as possible.
Official. Anybody here now?
- Receiving treatment? - No one.
Perhaps from yesterday?
- No. - We understood there was a man here.
A young man. He had to be brought in by the guards. Name of Dillon.
- He has gone now. - Gone?
He was recovered. He was not seriously ill. He was not ill. He...
- Where did he go? - Away.
You don't mind if I look round the premises?
It's quiet. Is construction work suspended today?
- Suspended. - The gangs are laid off for some reason?
- Let's go. - Thank you.
- Do you feel it? - What?
Ever since we entered this place, there's a sort of... lull.
If I'm right, this is where the chief component of the food gets made.
Sounds as if it's in full operation. Come on.
This is official.
- Are you in charge here? - Yes.
We have to see the process in operation, if you don't mind.
Is that an inspection door?
It's an enormous project. A liquid's inside.
What is it?
Might be the preparation of amino acids, basic proteins.
The product's pumped out of here along these pipes.
Where does it go? To those external storage tanks?
The big domes out there?
Yes. They're built to take great pressure.
What else is pumped into them?
Gases?
- Yes. - What sort of gases?
Could one of them be... ammonia?
- Yes. - And the others? Hydrogen?
Nitrogen? Methane, perhaps?
Great pressures, low temperatures.
You see, I'm curious.
I've seen structures like this somewhere else.
They remind me of... experimental plans that I've...
seen somewhere.
As means to inhabit another planet!
Tell me if you can.
Production has begun?
How long ago?
It is... on schedule.
And now?
And now?!
Machine gunfire!
- I must see those domes! - No!
There's no time now! Ward! Where's Ward? He's gone!
Ward! Where are you? Ward!
No sign of him here, either.
- That gunfire. Do you think it's possible? - No, too far away. It was outside.
I hope you're right. I saw him move away from us to look at another part, I thought.
- He must have gone out. - By himself? Why?
- I can't guess. - I must look at that main storage tank before...
Fowler - look at it! There on the ladder!
It's Ward!
- Ammonia! What's that black slime? - Don't touch it! He's soaked in it.
He must have got it inside. Keep a look-out.
Ward? It's Quatermass. Did you get inside the dome?
- Ward? - I... I had to know.
There's an airlock. And then...
- Oh! - What was in there?
Slime...
The tank's full of it.
- I slipped. - Was there anything else in there?
In the airlock. These.
- Don't go... Don't go there! - Quatermass!
They're coming! Men with guns!
- Come on! - Aargh!
Ward! Come on, out!
- That accounts for the gunfire. - Good heavens!
- Anyone following us? - No. What do we do? Go to the police?
Get back to the rocket group. Fowler, somewhere in the back is a box, metal.
See if you can find it.
Open it and hold it there.
- Something I want to get under analysis. - What is it?
Don't touch! Ward's collar and tie.
Professor Quatermass? Lab here, sir.
They yielded just under 5ccs of the substance.
Yes, plenty for testing.
There were some neutral constituents, but I'd say there's absolutely no doubt.
- Not in that concentration. - I see.
Right. Details as soon as you can. Thank you.
Corrosive poison. Deadly to any living thing on Earth.
- It could never have made synthetic food. - Food? I think it could.
But for what?
Father...
You heard? Anything?
No.
I'm trying to bring up the gain. Not too much. It might put the balance out.
There!
No, damn it!
I'm getting spots before my eyes. Take over, Paula.
There was no sign at all of Johnny?
- I'm sorry. - It's bad, isn't it?
Yes.
Could it be... the same as before?
- The first rocket? - No, that's not it. I'm certain.
- Any clear idea of what you're trying to trace? - An asteroid.
Not more than half a mile across. Reaches its nearest point to the Earth every 48 hours.
Then they can come.
- They? - Try to imagine a complete reversal.
An organism for which oxygen is not a necessity of life, but a destroyer.
Unable to survive in our atmosphere for more than a few seconds. Safe only in a shell,
a shell of stone.
But with power, Fowler.
Power to compel.
Leo, quickly!
Yes! Yes, there it is! Bernard!
There's no doubt about this. A clear signal.
- The asteroid? - Distance?
Something over 500,000 miles.
Approaching the Earth.