Professor Quatermass is resisting the planners of a rocket project known as the Dead Man's Deterrent. Meanwhile excavation is going on at Hobbs Lane, long the site of reported imps and devils.

Uncovered, they discover that the interior of the object is empty, and a symbol consisting of five intersecting circles, which Roney identifies as the occult pentagram, is found etched on an interior wall which appears to hide an inner chamber.

The shell of the object is so hard that even a borazon drill makes no impression, and when the attempt is made, strange vibrations cause severe distress in the people around the object. Quatermass interviews the local residents and discovers that sightings of ghosts and other poltergeist activity have been common in the area for decades. Meanwhile, a soldier is carried out of the object in hysterics — he claims to have seen a dwarf-like apparition walk through the wall of the artefact, a description which matches a 1927 newspaper account of a ghost sighting.

Following the drilling attempt, a hole has somehow opened up in the wall which allows Quatermass and the others access to the interior chamber.