In the pit at Knightsbridge, three dead creatures, like huge insects, are removed from the sealed
compartment of the hull and are treated with preservative fluids against corruption that
has been delayed for five million years.
They are transferred to the museum, where Dr. Roney and Professor Bernard Quatermass
guess their place of origin as ancient Mars.
Later, called to the War Office to account for his activities, Quatermass has to make
another guess, that they have stumbled on one single instance of a vast Martian colonization
of the Earth, back in the Pliocene Age, using earthly apes changed by biological techniques.
And we are the descendants of those apes.
At Hobbs Lane, the bomb disposal squad quits the excavation, leaving the drill operator
Sladen to pack up the last of his gear.
The whole place was shaking and things were flying about, earth and stones and metal.
Yes, that's when you got hurt.
It was in there.
I heard it when I was coming down.
Sounds, screams and then he came running.
He ran past us up there.
Here Sergeant.
You saw that it was Sladen?
Yes, I suppose it was him, but...
But what?
Well, it was the way he moved, sir.
Look after Miss Judd.
The stones.
I knew something was going to happen.
What are you driving at?
It was before we packed up here. It got deadly cold.
Oh, my God, it still is.
It's the term of the year.
Why doesn't he hurry up?
All right, he heard you.
The lamps are smashed and the cable's torn.
Do you know the breaking strength of that stuff?
Yes, sir.
Where's Quatermouth?
He was called away on some sort of conference.
Could you find him?
I'll try, but first I'll get what I came for.
Those notes in the hut.
Stick with her. Take her wherever she wants to go.
Use the Land Rover.
And you, sir?
I've got to look out for...
Frosladen.
Renny!
He wouldn't listen.
Who?
The minister, of course.
Behind that smooth front, he's scared stiff.
Scared of the press.
Scared of being blamed for something.
Scared of his colleague.
All he wants are easy answers.
Easy answers.
How about these?
What did you try to explain?
Yes, of course I did.
Every word rang hollow.
Martians.
Biological experiments on apes in the Pliocene Age.
You realize what you're implying, he said?
That we owe our human condition to the intervention of insects.
Outraged.
A dignity affronted.
The moment I knew the sort of thing that Darwin said.
Coffee?
No.
So he wasn't satisfied.
On the contrary, he was.
With Colonel Breen's theory.
You may not have realized it, Ronnie, but that hull we dug up was a German propaganda weapon launched in 1944, and those are fakes.
If you look closely, you'll find a little swastika on it somewhere.
He swallowed that?
It appealed to his common sense.
So, Breen's busy on an official statement.
Meanwhile, all precautions are canceled.
The barrier's done.
Well, I suppose there's no actual harm in that.
Barbara!
My heavens, you're here.
You went to the excavation?
Yes.
When I got the...
Drop of... no, not coffee.
What's the matter with your head?
Something hit me.
Here, try some of this.
Thanks.
The entire place seemed to come alive.
Planks, cables, the earth itself being flung about.
And there were sounds.
Such sounds.
And then out of the hull, I saw this.
It was a drill operator. They said it wasn't. It must have been, but it looked like...
I think I'm frightened.
What happened to him? Where is he now?
Captain Boddy went to look for him.
This outbreak, it quietened down?
Well, after he'd gone, yes.
Well, this ought to make him think again.
I wonder.
Who's in charge at her manor?
Hello?
Hello, have you found him? Where?
Is that Potter?
The church.
I see.
Yes, all right, in about ten minutes.
I'll go there right away. I'll take it Potter's waiting.
Yes, let's go.
You?
I want to see Sladen.
See what he looks like now.
I must.
But look, you can't...
Rony, you wait here, in case anyone else tries to get in touch.
Hello, Miss.
Sladen?
Hello, Professor.
I'm Dr. Quidmath.
Mine's Gilpin.
I understand that you are this man's employer.
Well, I was, to death.
Do you know what caused this condition of his?
We were having a choir practice here tonight, and I happened to go out for a breath of fresh air, and I saw him.
He was lying on the path.
He was in evident terror.
It occurred to me that he looked as if...
As if what?
As if he was seeking sanctuary.
So I called Mr. Edwards, our choir master, and together we brought him in here.
He was quite exhausted, but agitated in a dreadful way.
Did you send for a doctor?
No.
When I saw those, and heard those sounds, I asked Mr. Edwards to go to dismiss the choir.
I knew I had to stay with this man.
I was sure that he'd been in contact with spiritual evil.
But you were able to quieten him.
I think I helped him.
And then, after a time, this officer came.
I'll have to question him.
Must you?
Yes, he was alone when it happened.
Whatever it was.
Perhaps tomorrow.
There may be danger in waiting. Danger to others.
More cocoa, Sladen?
Sladen.
Can you remember what happened in the excavation tonight?
Do you remember being there?
You stayed behind to dismantle some equipment.
Did you see her there? That girl?
She was hurt by something that moved.
Did you see things flying about through the air?
Run! Run!
Get away!
They were coming!
Stearns? Pieces of metal?
They! They!
Sladen, what?
No more.
I remember. It started. And then...
And I couldn't see anything but them.
Like you took out of the hole.
With your eyes. And the horns.
You saw the creatures.
And they were alive!
Alive?
I've been running. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.
And through. I was one!
A rat?
Jumping. Leaping.
Leave him alone.
Where?
In and out. In big places.
In and out of them. Huge.
Right up into the sky.
The sky?
What colour is it? Blue?
No. Dark. Dark. Purple.
It was like that down there. But far louder.
What fell? These?
I saw them jump out.
It was cold there like this?
Yes.
You should have left him alone. He's not free of it yet.
Perhaps it was always in him.
What do you mean?
Perhaps it's a faculty that's dormant in all of us.
An inheritance, if you like.
Yes, I'd have expected that from you. You're a scientist.
Are you going to try to explain this away in fashionable terms?
Call it suggestion? Hysteria?
On the contrary. I agree with you.
You agree?
What has been uncovered is evil.
It's as anciently diabolic as anything ever recorded.
I'm afraid I don't understand.
I believe that what he has just told us was a vision of life on Mars five million years ago.
I'll have to take this further.
No.
All right. Not now.
Sladden, I want to make an experiment.
Soon I want you to come to the excavation with me and show me exactly what you did tonight and the order in which you did it.
What purpose would it serve?
I'll have apparatus there to record anything that may happen.
Even though it means putting this man in peril?
Sladden, will you?
Hey, Gav. It's a queer do, isn't it?
But you're right. It is me. I can feel it.
When?
Tomorrow. I'll be careful. I promise you.
Would you come?
Yes, of course, if you want me. But I must advise you...
Okay, prof.
Where does this door lead?
To the church. Why?
There's somebody in there.
Full of love. What brought you here?
What brought you?
To assist in identifying the machine, the West German federal government has agreed to make new searches.
Colonel Breen, the news agencies are asking again. Will there be any further statement tonight?
No, there will not until tomorrow.
Meanwhile, they have that short denial, which seems to have turned the trick, by the way.
First edition supplied by courtesy. Space machine war hoax. German fakes official.
What the devil?
I'm sorry, sir. I have something to tell you.
I wonder what Captain Potter's chances are of getting them to retract.
Zero.
You're probably right. Once they put out an official denial. Did you read it?
No.
As fat and bald as the minister himself. That's what set me on the trail again.
You realize this thing was never properly completed. It's still experimental.
Can you get it working?
Oh, goodness knows.
When did we run it last?
About six months ago. We made some tests.
Oh, I remember. Some tests. Hardly showed a thing.
Are these correct?
What is it?
He calls it an optic encephalograph.
Good word. Sort of suggests all that tangle of... What does it do?
Nothing.
It's designed to locate visual impressions inside the brain.
By the eye sees or hallucination, whichever dominates at the time.
The original aim was to use it on primitive types.
The trans-conditions they fall into so easily.
It'll take a couple of minutes.
Barbara, clear that junk out of the table, will you, please?
Are you going to use it down there tomorrow?
On a subject?
That hull or missile or whatever you call it,
have you any idea how it works?
It's not inert. It does work.
Oh, yes. Yes, it works.
I think it's activated by vibrations.
Perhaps electricity. Any source of energy.
Then it has these effects on people.
Fuller Love, how long have you been a journalist?
Reportedly.
All right, then, a reporter. How long?
12 years, come Michaelmas.
You must have noticed them often.
Reports of mysterious movements of objects.
Yes. Lead flung through roof. Boy denies he did it.
Mysterious sounds continue. It's the same as at Hobbs Lane.
Poltergeist story.
Telekinesis. It's an odd faculty.
Faculty?
You may have it. We may all.
The dormant ability to twist our energies
into supernormal channels outside ourselves.
Do you want to know where it came from?
Plus another old, strange talent.
Second sight.
Clairvoyance.
That filled Sladden's brain tonight with a vision of ancient Mars.
I've felt things in my head when I've been near the hull.
So have I.
It may be that there are vestiges of it remaining in all of us
from the time when they colonized this Earth at second hand.
Their experiment must have failed, collapsed,
got lost in a reversion to savagery,
but something remained.
The occasional poltergeist outbreak with alarms of street, myths,
perhaps even witchcraft itself.
Those signs in the hull.
That's right.
So as far as anybody is,
we're the Martians now.
Well, that just about does it.
Now we need a subject.
Well, follow along. You'll be able to write about the experience.
Here, sit here.
Is that all right?
Is this safe?
Look at that lamp there.
Now, Quatermas.
Damn.
There, that's better.
The lamp through his eyes.
It works. By God, it does.
Rony, you're a genius.
Well, it's rough, rough as can be.
And that was an easy test.
Well, maybe if you go over the circuits with me, we can make something of it.
Let's do that.
Well, Mr. Gilpin?
It all seems quiet and harmless,
but there are those occult signs.
There's no doubt about them.
May I ask what you've got there?
Well, I thought, if perhaps it seemed wise to attempt exorcism.
Bell, book and candle, eh?
Yes, that was tried in 1341.
What can you see?
The house up there.
Steady.
Now, close your eyes.
Good. Good, that's it. I think we'll do.
Ah, Sladden.
The first thing you did was cut the generator, right?
That's right.
Well, then when I give the signal, you do it.
Oh, don't worry about us. We've got our own batteries.
Do I have to go in there?
No.
I'm going to try to do roughly what you did.
If I go wrong, you shout.
Okay, Prof.
The current from the generator must supply the energy,
and then when it's cut, the hull reacts.
Recording gear is all set up.
Right.
Let's begin.
Nothing, not a damn thing.
Rennie. Rennie, I'm not getting any impression.
Only a kind of confusion.
Rennie. Rennie, it's not working through me.
I'm not the one. It's not operating through me.
Barbara, get away from there. Get away!
I can see. I can see.
Rennie, come here quickly.
Let me do it.
All right, all right. Get this thing off me.
It's getting something now.
We can't let them do this. They're madmen.
Don't leave me. Don't leave me.
Oh, God.
Help!
Barbara, you're all right.
But you must have seen.
I saw them too.
What you made these two people endure, oh, you will be answerable.
He was different this time.
Doing different things from what I've seen last night.
Oh, they're killing.
What's happened to her?
What have you done?
Well, crater mass, what have you done?
Potter told me about some insane experiment.
Let's get out of here.
I think I've got something to show you.
Rennie.
What you're about to see is a memory.
A memory stored for millions of years in that house.
A machine whose complexity we can only guess.
And now picked up by the susceptible brain of a young woman.
You'll have to excuse the technical quality.
Our apparatus is less subtle than that thing in the pit.
You don't mind my saying so, Rennie.
What do you claim it shows?
The wild hunt.
The what?
The wild hunt.
It appears in legends the world over.
The phantom ride of witches or devils.
Really, gentlemen, that is the legend.
What you're about to see is the fact.
You're going to see a race purge.
A cleansing of the hives.
Videotape ready.
Most curious.
Notice those insect creatures.
Arthropods, like those we found.
Notice that they were killing and being killed.
I think that what we've seen is a ritual slaughter to preserve a fixed society ridded of mutations.
You find the same sort of thing on earth among termites and wasps.
Now, my concern is that this stored memory of killing should be coupled with another power that that thing in the pit seems to have.
The power to redirect human energy.
Power to redirect human energy?
Yes, and to force beyond control.
You mean that commotion down there today?
Not only today.
This young woman turned out to be highly susceptible and so did Sladen.
But we've all felt it at some time.
You have yourself.
Nonsense.
A few vibration effects.
How can you say that?
Because I'm...
Gentlemen, please.
There's really no need for this.
We are looking for rational explanations.
I think there is one.
Dr. Roney, this truly amazing apparatus of yours was designed to detect, was it not, hallucination?
Well, originally, yes, but we've advanced...
Hallucination.
Exactly, sir.
I think you hit it.
It's worthless.
Let's call it a mental image.
The lady clearly has imagination and she's overwrought.
She had seen these creatures, which Colonel Breen insists are fakes.
So, what more natural...
But you can't dismiss it like that.
You'd rather I dismissed Colonel Breen's theory.
But if you'd been there, if you'd witnessed what had happened...
Professor Quatermass, I believe that you are wrong in this matter.
Ridiculously wrong.
You are going to admit people to that excavation tonight.
The press, radio and television personnel.
But you must not.
We all have a duty to relieve the public mind, which has been wantonly alarmed.
And I demand of you, as a loyal government officer, complete cooperation.
The generator, really?
Set up in the street.
A lot of stuff here.
All these lamps and cameras.
Not to bother.
Our Jenny will take all that load.
Can you run an extra cable over there, to the house?
What, inside?
Yes, the TV boys want to get some shots inside.
We'll do our best.
Go on, Ted.
Last three weeks I've done floods, frogmen and down a sewer.
Hey, Chief, what time do they switch the juice on?
Any minute, what time's the program?
Seven o'clock.
You'll be all right.
I hope so.
We're leaving everything till the last one.
This place won't do my bad leg any good.
Hey, isn't that, uh, you know, what's-her-name, Quasimodo?
Ah, good use.
That'll warm you up a bit.
The West German Federal Government has agreed to institute new searches of existing wartime material...
in order to assist in identifying the machine.
Thank you.
Copies of the statement here.
Now, any questions, gentlemen?
Yes.
What convinces you that your V-weapon theory is correct?
My experience, madam.
Don't you agree that this propaganda plan you've uncovered...
shows the Nazis had no idea of the true British spirit during the Blitz?
Uh, well, I...
Colonel Breen, this morning I made some inquiries of my own.
Do you know that the highest officials of German wartime rocket research deny that any such weapon existed?
I think you must have lost time.
Let him answer.
Mr. Fullerlove, a day or two ago, you were inquiring into the activities of ghosts and demons.
Did you get their opinions, too?
I demand an answer.
This is far too serious a matter for you to judge.
Next question, please.
I've got a question.
Is Colonel Breen an imbecile or a coward?
Go on, give it to him.
What do you mean by that?
How dare you?
Just a second.
Professor Quintermass, I thought it was clearly understood that you were...
I asked the question.
Is Colonel Breen afraid of something?
So afraid that he resorts to the thinnest rationalizations?
I say what I know and what I believe to be the truth.
Well, then tell them what you've seen here and heard.
Tell them what happened to West and Sladen.
Potter, you were a witness.
You tell them what happened.
Colonel, for God's sake!
Catch it! Catch it!
Hey, is it still in there?
Potter, be careful.
The Colonel's heart is chafing.
I didn't mean that.
What happened?
Quick.
He's alive, cavely.
He must have slipped.
He dead?
Yes.
Potter, do you see anything else in there?
No, nothing.