Hobbs Lane, in central London, has been the scene of mysterious incidents for centuries past. Stories of hauntings and of strange apparitions abound... and now an excavation crew have discovered parts of a skeleton that contradict all previous theories of Man's ancestry.

Professor Quatermass is in London for top-level talks on a military project for the furtherance of space war—an enterprise to which Quatermass is violently opposed.
But his attention is drawn away from the battle with officialdom, when the Hobbs Lane site yields an even more startling find—a vast rocket made of a metal unknown to science.

And soon after that, the terror begins...