disfigured area on his shoulder and notices changes in his face, suggesting some sort of mutation of the underlying bone structure. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard Inspector Lomax has undertaken investigation of the other two men's disappearance and, having surreptitiously fingerprinted Carroon as a suspect, alerts Quatermass that the prints are like nothing human. At Judith's insistence that Briscoe is not helping her husband, Quatermass agrees to have Carroon transferred to a regular hospital, under guard. Marsh, meanwhile, has developed the film from the rocket's interior view camera, and Quatermass, Lomax and Briscoe watch it. The crew are seen for a time at their duties, then suddenly, something seems to heavily buffet the ship. After that, there is a nightmarish wavering distortion of the cabin's atmosphere, and the men react as if something frightening, yet not visible, is there with them. One by one they collapse, Carroon being the last. Quatermass and Briscoe determine from the evidence that something living in outer space has entered the spaceship, dissolved Reichenheim and Green in their sealed spacesuits, and evidently entered Carroon's body, who is now in the process of being transformed by this unknown entity. Not knowing any of this, Carroon's wife, Judith, hires a private investigator, Christie, to break her husband out of the secured hospital. The escape is successful, but not before Carroon smashes a potted cactus in his hospital room, which fuses to his flesh. In the lift he kills Christie and absorbs the life force in his body, leaving a shrivelled husk. Judith quickly discovers what is happening to her husband. Carroon disappears into the London night, leaving her unharmed, but completely traumatized. Inspector Lomax initiates a manhunt for Carroon, who goes to a nearby chemist's shop and kills the chemist, using his swollen, crusty, cactus-thorn-riddled hand and arm as a cudgel and leaving a twisted, empty man-husk to be found by the police. Quatermass theorizes that Carroon has taken select chemicals to "speed up a change going on inside of him". After hiding on a river barge, Carroon encounters a little girl, leaving her unharmed through sheer force of will. That night he is in the zoo, barely visible amongst some shadowed bushes, now with far less of his human form remaining. In the morning, scattered animal carcasses are found, their life forces having been absorbed, with a slime trail leading away from the zoo. Among the bushes, Quatermass