My Outro For My 20th Birthday
His own moon project at a standstill following the explosion on test of a prototype rocket motor,
Professor Bernard Quatermast finds his hands full of a new investigation.
What appears to be 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.
His companion, Captain Dillon, is overcome, a curious mark appearing on his face.
But while Quatermast examines it, armed security guards arrive.
They take Dillon into the plant, apparently for treatment.
Quatermast 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 hundreds.
Rebuffed by both civilian and police authorities,
he finds out from Fowler, a contact at the responsible 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 Quatermast as a witness.
Looking along the faces of those at the table,
Quatermast sees once again the moths.
Can I speak to you for a moment?
Yes.
Excuse me, gentlemen.
Hello there, ma'am.
You sent for us this morning?
We've already got that mark.
I've seen it before, on a child who stumbled across one of these meteorites.
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 now?
He, at least.
I swear it.
Professor Quatermast was concerned about the propriety of his presence here
while I was putting questions on other matters.
And 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 of missiles directed at it?
No, Broadhead, that's not what I meant.
Didn't you understand?
Just get that stuff out.
Here.
What Professor Quatermast is about to produce
is something that fell two days ago within a short distance of the plant.
There's a possibility that 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 gel and cultures.
Now, these can be infected.
No, no, no.
Naturally or artificially, and destroyed.
Now, what I'm trying to establish is the possibility,
no more than that, of a threat to your process.
No.
It may be nothing, and 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, there's no infection.
In the plant, you've discovered nothing.
Nothing like that.
I must ask you to take this matter seriously.
I must ask for your cooperation.
A picture is beginning to form, however sketchily,
of a unique process which is no longer unique.
And to extend these indications to their farthest limits
may even be in danger of destruction.
Now, if this should prove to be the...
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 on him.
And you must admit the response you got was fairly indefinite.
Very well.
On a level of simple fact.
For you as a scientist, isn't that the only level?
No.
How long have I been up here?
Twenty minutes.
Could you ring the inquiry?
Well, um...
Try.
Get me room 441, please.
Mr. Broadhead.
The reason?
The last few minutes I was there...
Second, really.
What?
I was afraid, Father.
Afraid?
Why on earth?
Perhaps I'm discovering new depths in myself.
Or streaks.
At any rate, I was suddenly, sharply aware of...
Menace.
Here?
In the ministry?
In the ministry.
Oh.
What?
No reply?
No, it's all right.
Broadhead!
What's wrong with him?
He's dispersed now, but...
Ammonia gas.
Broadhead, what happened?
Look!
You're sure?
How?
I don't know.
It was here with them.
It must have been.
He's conscious.
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, Father.
Sir, here.
When were you sent for?
A few minutes ago.
We had to be passing.
We came in.
Say nothing.
It's impossible.
What about you?
I want to leave.
I want your 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?
No, thank you.
What's this?
These new tea bars now.
They've swiped all the trade.
Fashion, that's all it is, really.
Just fashion.
Paula.
This is Rupert Ward, Professor Quatermouse.
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.
It's top secret.
How much do I say?
I'm not to the Quatermouse.
I gather from Mr. Fowler that you have some rather odd notions about the place.
I've no time to go into details.
Does that mean anything to you?
No.
Why?
Should it?
Made of plaster.
Yes, it's a cast.
No matter.
Ward is attached to the special section only for temporary duties.
These visits, how many did you make?
A dozen.
Alone?
No, I took parties down.
It seems to have been quite a regular procedure.
Yes, they were mostly politicos.
One or two outside people, of course, 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.
Who left them there?
Well, that was the arrangement.
I presume they came back with someone else.
Your coffee, 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 reads and hears of them.
What were they shown?
Well, there was nothing very much in operation at the time,
except a sort of a pilot plant.
I didn't go into it myself.
Perhaps you were lucky.
What?
It is strikingly 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.
Look here.
What on earth is he talking about?
As if I was, well, guilty of something.
Look here, there are other chaps.
Why don't you ask them?
Have you still got your pass?
Yes.
You're going to use it today.
What?
You're going to take another party over the plant, me and Fowler.
He'll back you up if necessary.
But this is absolutely against all...
Let me explain something.
I'll finish your copy.
What I showed you was a model of something that has been falling near the plant.
I'm having them investigated by my own people.
Darrow lass.
Another blind, Daddy?
Yes.
We're in a kind of mathematical lunacy.
Question, did those things come like normal meteorites?
Did they come like rockets in a breaking ellipse?
Did they do this?
Did they do that?
We have dozens of theories and every one leads to impossibility.
I realize 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.
And why isn't their point of origin, whatever it is,
been located by every major observatory and spotted by every amateur with a ten inch 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 dear.
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.
With these machines they beat me.
I pressed 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 ways.
The break's still on, Leo.
Tell me about the calculating boy.
At the village school in Murray and Glass,
the teacher, old Miss Williams, used to set me enormous sums to do.
She loved to astonish herself.
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 a child were you?
I was frightened of the dark.
That's nice and normal.
It was very scientific.
I had a special nightmare.
I was in a rocket Father had made.
Going away and getting lost on the wrong side of the world.
In the dark forever 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? Stuart?
Hugh here. I want the radio telescope in a completely new setting.
Come over here, will you bring Watson?
Oh, 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?
It's not time for him to be thrown into the water.
Why don't you give your father a hand?
Frankie?
Hear what I said.
Look at him left to carry all those bottles down.
Can you manage, dear?
Yes.
I bet some did learn a whistle.
Is that new work?
Yes.
Oh, well, perhaps it's a tea break or something.
Yes.
He's got the same time as us, isn't that funny?
Now, where's the clock?
Frankie?
You're trying to go into the water.
Remember your promise.
It's silly of Uncle Tom to give him those rubber feet, saying, oh, well, he can't swim.
Frankie?
Come and have a cup of tea now.
It's all ready.
Oh, I'd do such a picnic.
I always say there's nothing like the open air.
There you are.
Aren't you going to take that thing off your head?
No.
Can't get over what's happened to the village, though.
All those houses down, I thought we'd come the wrong way.
Didn't I say so in the car?
Yes, dear, you did.
Yes.
Frankie's pulling them all down like that, and all so pretty and old, just like a picture.
This for me, dear?
Yes, that's right.
Oh, remember that tea shop the old lady runs?
Oh, fish teas, yes.
That's right.
The one time we didn't have a picnic, we went there.
Miss Collins, wasn't it?
Yes, Miss Collins, dear.
That's right.
And all those nice and polite, and all those pretty everlasting flowers over the...
What's that?
You blown 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.
Them noticed us.
Oh, sit down, dear, and have your tea.
Now, look, your mate will come here every summer, and I don't see anyone's got a right to try and...
Go.
Go now.
All of you.
Ah!
Don't you point that thing at my wife and my kid.
We're coming here peaceful like for a picnic.
We're not doing no harm to anybody or anything.
It's fine, Father, perhaps you'd better go.
No.
Now, look here, mate.
You stop shoving us around, or I'll write to the papers.
Shoving us around when we're behaving quiet and decent like?
Not doing no harm, not leaving any litter about the place?
No, never.
I don't know what this place is, and I don't care, see?
We're minding our own business.
There's no possible harm in that, you see?
See anything now?
Just a little car.
Looks like two of the guards.
Somebody's in trouble.
Shall we go back?
No.
But surely, Quatermass, if you consider that...
They may help us.
There's the gate ahead.
Are you ready?
Ward, have you got your pass?
Yes.
Say as little as possible.
Come on.
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 Dylan.
He has gone now.
Gone?
He was recovered.
He was not seriously ill.
He was not ill.
He...
Where did he go?
Away.
Well, don't mind if I look around 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...
Heart attack?
♪♪
If I'm right, this is where the chief component of the flute gets made.
Sounds like 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?
No.
Enormous voltage acting on the liquids inside.
What is it?
Might be the preparation of amino acids, basic proteins.
The product's pumped out of here, isn't it, 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?
Would one of them be ammonia?
Yes.
And the others?
Hydrogen?
Nitrogen?
Methane, perhaps.
Great pressure is 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.
That means to inhabit another planet.
Tell me if you can.
Production has begun.
How long ago?
It is on schedule.
And now?
And now!
The machine gun fire. They must have found out. I've got to see those pressure domes.
Don't be a fool. There's no time now.
Ward? Where's Ward? He's gone.
Ward! Where are you? Ward!
No sign of him here either.
That gun fire, do you think it's possible?
No. It's too far away. It's outside the plan.
I hope you're right.
I saw him move away from us to look at another part of the unit, I thought.
He must have gone out by himself. Why?
I can't guess.
No, we can't delay any longer. I must have a look at that main storage tank before...
Fowler! Look at this! There on the ladder!
Ward!
Ammonia! What's that black slime?
Don't touch it! He's soaked in it.
Oxygen.
He said he must have got it inside.
Keep a lookout.
Ward.
It's quite a mess. Did you get inside the dome?
Ward!
I... I had to know.
There's an airlock. And there...
What was in there?
The slime.
The tanks full of it.
I slipped.
Was there anything else in there?
In the airlock.
Please.
Don't go.
Don't go there!
Wait a minute! They're coming! Men with guns!
Get in the car quickly!
Ward!
Come on, out!
Ward!
They're the counts of the gunfire.
Oh, God.
Anyone following us?
No. What do we do? Go to the police?
Get back to the Rocky Group.
Fowler, somewhere in the back there's a box. Metal.
See if we can find it.
Open it and hold it there.
Something I want to get under analysis straight away.
What is it?
Don't touch!
Ward's collar and tie.
Professor Quatermass?
Lab here, sir.
They yielded just under five cc's 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.
A corrosive poison, deadly to any living thing on earth.
Then it could never have made synthetic food.
Food? I think it could.
But for what?
Father.
You hurt?
Yes.
Anything?
No.
I'm trying to bring up the game.
Not too much and I put the balance out.
Up there?
No.
Down.
I'm getting spots before my eyes.
Take over, Paula.
There's no sign at all of Jonathan.
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 what you're trying to trace?
An asteroid.
Not more than half a mile across.
Reaches nearest point of the earth every 48 hours.
Then they can come.
They?
Try to imagine a complete reversal.
An organism to 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, Paula.
Power to compel.
Leo, quickly.
Yes.
Yes, there it is.
Bernard.
If no doubt about this.
It's giving a clear signal.
The asteroid.
What's the distance?
Something over 500,000 miles.
Approaching the earth.
The asteroid.