his plans for the colonisation of the Moon are to be taken over by the military, with plans to establish ballistic missile bases in space. He gives a cold reception to Colonel Breen, who has been assigned to Quatermass's British Experimental Rocket Group. When the bomb disposal team call for Breen's assistance, Quatermass accompanies him to the site. Breen concludes the buried object is a V-weapon, but Quatermass disagrees. When another skull is found within a chamber of the "bomb", Quatermass and Roney realise that the object itself must also be five million years old. Noting the object's imperviousness to heat, Quatermass suspects it is of alien origin, but Roney is certain the apemen were terrestrial. Roney's assistant, Barbara Judd, goes to the site with Quatermass. She becomes intrigued by the name of the area, recalling that "Hob" is an old name for the Devil. A local policeman tells them the legend that the bombed-out house opposite the station is haunted. All three go there to investigate. The policeman is so spooked that he has to leave. A member of the bomb disposal team witnesses a spectral apparition of Roney's apeman appearing through the wall of the object. Quatermass and Barbara find historical accounts of hauntings and other spectral appearances going back many centuries, coinciding with disturbances of the ground around Hobbs End. An attempt to open a sealed chamber in the object using a Borazon drill fails. A few moments later, however, a small hole is seen, though the drill operator, Sladden, is certain he is not responsible for it. The hole widens to reveal the corpses of three-legged, insectoid creatures with horned heads. An examination of the creatures' physiology suggests they came from Mars. Quatermass and Roney note the similarity between their appearance and images of the Devil, while Quatermass believes the spaceship is the source of the spectral images and disturbances. Quatermass and Roney reveal their findings to the press, attracting the ire of a government minister who has not sanctioned their statements. Quatermass theorises that the occupants of the spaceship came from a dying Mars. Unable to survive on Earth, they sought to preserve some part of their race by creating a colony by proxy, by significantly enhancing the intelligence of and imparting Martian faculties to the indigenous primitive hominids. Quatermass theorizes the highly advanced alien insectoids used medical and surgical techniques that were far more