Original subtitles

And, as you see, ladies and gentlemen, Fermi in Rome was the first to disclose

the possibility of man-made fission.

His most important experiment involved the attempt to manufacture

Neptunium, element 93.

His technique was to bombard uranium with neutrons and observe the electrons

emitted. Here is the reaction.

Will you take up the offer, Mary?

Will you go?

I haven't made up my mind yet, Sam.

I always said if I went to the States, it'd be the Ivy League way.

Well, Stanford isn't that exactly.

Post-doctoral research grants don't grow on trees.

I don't know why you want to go to America at all.

They swallow a physicist's hole there, don't you, Ed?

Especially the prettier kind.

Look, be sensible.

How long will you be away?

It's more a question of how far I could make the money stretch, isn't it?

Two years.

Hans, come and get your wine.

How will that all fit in with the family situation?

What? Well, unless you've stopped suffering from that mother of yours.

Stopped suffering from her?

Sam, I've got hers. Others have got dandruff or chronic asthma.

Talk about port noise complaint.

Every time I go home these days, it's the fluttering in the chest, the

mysterious swimming in the head.

And I can't escape, no matter what I do.

My father died years ago.

Oh. Emphasise the importance of marital togetherness, then.

I'm sorry? The family that drops together stops together.

Sir.

Well, I should know.

This wine is abominable. Where did you get it? It's best Bulgarian red hans.

You didn't defect to the British for their wine.

Who is that fellow out there? Am I five or six?

What is the difference between five or six, incidentally? I never learned. You

can get into six from the comprehensives.

Oh, you mackinsties. Is that all you can do? Sit around and tell bad jokes?

When I came to Whitebrook six weeks ago now, I said to myself, he's a scientist.

He will understand. He will perceive. Oh, yes.

Yes, you perceive, all right. You perceive my ability to teach elementary

physics to children.

But never once have you asked me why...

Hans,

something wrong?

No, nothing. Nothing in the world.

Hans.

I'm sorry, I don't know your name.

Ah, uh, Venables, Professor Daedalus.

I wonder, you let me take a bath or go to the lavatory alone?

Perhaps you don't. Perhaps you have cameras where you can't go personally.

Sir. I am not so very important, you know. They were very glad to get rid of

me out of East Germany.

We're sorry if you're inconvenient, sir, but our orders are to keep you under

surveillance for the time being.

Under surveillance?

For the time being.

How long is that? Ah, governments. They perceive all right, but it's all for

themselves. They take everything a scientist can give them. The atom bomb,

the hydrogen bomb. Hans, I think we'd better have a talk. No, you know it's

true, McKinstry.

Because governments are so greedy and self-interested, they perceive more than

anyone realizes.

They know all about the Midas syndrome.

Midas syndrome?

It's not exactly a picnic for us either, all this. You think he might see that?

Jean.

Jean says she most happy here, Mr. Perry.

Jean say to Klaus, you be happy too.

Yes.

Yes.

But does she forgive me? That's what I want to know.

Jean has message for you.

The accident, I mean. It was my fault.

It was.

I can't get that out of my head.

Message is... Message?

Message is...

Yeah back in three

Martin Scrooge.

Well, it looks like a straightforward cardiac arrest, Venables. No suspicion

of foul play.

Look, what's a major of intelligence doing hanging around on a job like this

anyway? You won't disturb anything in here, will you? I'll need to go over the

place pretty thoroughly afterwards.

All right, lads.

Unfortunate?

Yes, the only word for it.

Unfortunate. At least it happened ten minutes earlier.

I mean, he would still have been with us.

Oh, quiet, quiet.

Unfortunate. Vice-Chancellor, why do you keep saying unfortunate? No one's

suggesting it's an excuse for a booze-up, are they?

The Bursar and I happen to be engaged in some rather delicate negotiations with

the department just at the moment, Magistrate. A question of improved

facilities. What hopes we had rested on Daedalus's presence here at Whitebrook.

However, now that he... I don't think that now is the right time... Somebody

has to be the practical housewife.

Good God, I never could understand why a man of Daedalus's calibre wanted to come

to us in the first place. But granted that he had done.

I understand he tried to telephone you just before he died.

So the switch girl tells me.

Could we have a word?

Mackinstry.

Find out if you can how much longer he intends to remain in our midst.

It's worse than television crews.

Student union delegations.

Interesting question the Vice-Chancellor was putting out there.

Question?

Why a man like Daedalus should be content to slum it in a place like

Whitebrook?

Out of the swing of the sea?

Lawrence of Arabia had to downgrade himself to Aircraftsman Ross, didn't he?

Twenty years ago, you see, Hans Daedalus was a name to reckon with in the energy

research field. He reached back as far as V2s and...

Forward into fast reactors.

Then... I don't know, something changed.

Eventually, only a couple of months back, his defection on a routine group

trip to the West.

Who knows why.

It's a closed book now.

Yes, but, uh... Why did he try and call you in his final moments?

Technically, I was his boss.

Physics is my department at Whitebrook.

Did anyone know about his heart condition?

I wonder why he never mentioned it.

Well, there was a certain lack of communication.

He was a very private man.

About his work, too.

What? The work he left behind him.

What work?

A private man.

And the grave a fine and private place.

Yes, well, maybe that's where it ends, after all.

But I'll tell you something. We weren't just keeping tabs on Daedalus for

routine purposes. It was bigger than that.

Huh? We feared that he was going to be snatched.

Snatched? Who by?

These Germans.

Ock. Well, we'd, uh, information. Anyway, the tip was that Daedalus had

made an important discovery.

We don't know what sort of discovery.

In the energy field, presumably.

Still, I don't suppose the East Germans would have let him within sniffing

distance of the free world if there had been the least likelihood of anything

like that.

Only you could have informed us otherwise.

Me? Don't scientists sometimes confide in each other when they wouldn't dare

speak to those who are in authority over them?

I'm told they do.

Come. Ah, Mackinstry, good of you to look in.

I'd like you to meet Miss Eileen Gray, who lives in the town, and her friend...

Madge Baxter. Professor Mackinstry.

There it is. Well, the fact is, Mackinstry, Miss Gray, well, she's

brought us this.

Does it have any meaning?

I don't understand. Well, if it's nonsense, just say so.

Klaus said I was to write it all down and take it to the physics department at

the university, so that's what I did.

Klaus? Who's Klaus?

Oh, yes.

Perhaps a word of explanation.

Seems to be necessary here, McInstry.

Miss Gray is what is commonly termed, well, a medium.

Oh, please.

I've got psychic powers, that's all.

Oh, I don't go in for all that business of...

The light's going funny and moans in the dark, but I've been psychic all my life.

What Miss Grey is trying to tell you, gentlemen, is that she is a non

-professional sensitive.

You see, professional sensitives welcome all and sundry and take money for what

they do.

Miss Grey doesn't behave in that way. She only holds seances for friends.

She speaks with direct voice.

Consequently, she is open to all sorts of other paranormal phenomena.

Oh, quite.

And this Klaus you speak of is your spirit guide?

Is that the term?

Well, we've given you our message, so we'd better be getting going. Wait a

minute, Miss Gray, there's more to be said.

These signs and symbols that you've written down, they're comprehensible to

you?

Comprehensible? Oh, you mean, do I understand all that scientific stuff?

Yes. Oh, dear, no.

I only had a very ordinary education.

What do you do?

Well, at the moment, I'm assisting in a draper's shop.

And you say that this message came to you out of the ether?

From Klaus.

He said I was to take it to the physics department at the university.

When was this?

Last night. No, I mean, what time last night?

What's the time got to do with it? About 8.30.

It really was the most extraordinary thing.

You see, I had brought poor Mr. Perry along because... I don't think we ought

to betray confidences.

So, gentlemen, if we can't help you any more... Well, it is really extremely

kind of you to have come in like this today, Miss Gray.

Oh, I had a duty, Dr. Sherburne. A duty?

Fulfilled, fulfilled.

Oh, and we'll see your information gets the attention it deserves.

Good morning, Dr. Sherburne. Good morning.

Good morning.

Are you two on the booze or something this morning? I'm in the middle of a

lecture and you drag me up here.

Honestly, Mackenstray, I would simply have recommended the poor creature to

three weeks in a vacuum or a sanatorium at Chipping Sodbury, but Venables

here... Well, it was hard, that's all.

We'd have to be kicked around, see if there was anything going on.

Anything such as what?

God knows.

Messages from the great beyond, talkative spirits called Klaus.

Upon myself, we threw a lot out of the window when we threw out theological

discipline, didn't we?

Belief in the resurrection rather than this survivalistic nonsense.

It's all survivalistic nonsense when you come down to it, isn't it? I'm sorry,

Mackinstry. Like all so-called religious intellectuals, Dr. Sharbon, you take up

a position with both feet firmly planted in quicksand.

The private little RC heaven for you.

Survival by papal indult, cardholders only.

Not only is that a gross distortion of Catholic doctrine,

But it isn't even a good joke anymore.

The Catholic heaven has become too egalitarian by half.

It's worse than a university intake.

Captain Stray, does that mean anything?

It's a simple equation in conventional terms.

Nothing significant.

No.

Nothing significant at all.

Well, should I report you two? Me to Venables or the Rationals' Association?

Is Venables around?

No. Ah.

He's gone up to London.

It's on quest, rather.

It's afternoon.

Thanks. I keep forgetting I need all the help I can get.

Do you know, there is a woman in Battersea, or maybe Clapham, who writes

original works by Mozart.

Now, according to her, Wolfgang Amadeus dictates the scores from the great

concert hall in the sky.

Well, even the Rationalist Association can't deny that it's happening.

Thanks. But the lady in question understands music, presumably.

How does that tie in with your Miss Gray in physics?

How did she die, exactly, Sam?

What?

I've often wanted to ask.

Well, your wife.

I was only a graduate student at the time, not my place to be curious.

My wife?

Um, yeah, there was a doctor's balls-up, actually.

A brain tumour taken to be nervous headaches.

Even went away on holiday so she could rest up.

Depths of Wales when the agony started.

By the time I got poor Caroline to hospital, it was all over.

Father's screaming.

Tough luck.

Hardly the cleanest of tactics either.

No.

To be young, in need, and securely dead is an advantage no woman should be

allowed over another.

Well, for God's sake, Sam, it's about time we talked about it.

You seem not to want me to go to the States, but I can't make out if that's

all you want.

Have I asked anything?

Is it just the old wound throbbing? That's all I want to know.

Death can come to anyone, Mary. The best things in life are free.

Oh, knock it off.

You don't have a monopoly on pain and desolation.

Everybody has to take a few body blows.

In the end, they often decide it wasn't such a bad fight.

Fight the good fight with all your mind.

Well, isn't it rather more adjusted than tying yourself to a tombstone and

wailing about how cold it is outside?

I think you ought to know I've given up discussing my neuroses with girls with

mother fixations.

Again? Until they bring their note from mummy saying it's all right.

You realise what this equation's all about, don't you? Who cares about the

bloody equation?

What does it matter? It matters.

I could do.

Basically, it's an opacity equation.

It's about energy.

miss gray why professor mcinstry oh come in

um

do sit down would you like some tea no thank you oh well i

always make tea when people come for seances all right miss gray you

you have no training in physics

These symbols and figures, they're all moonshine, do you?

Please, I just sent the message to you like I was told to.

To you alone this time. You were told to send it to me alone?

Yes. Goodbye.

Bye, Klaus.

He's a well-connected chap, knows all the best physicists.

Don't make a joke of it.

It's all so different.

Usually Klaus gives me unimportant sort of messages.

He speaks...

Through me with direct voice, as they say.

But this is different.

He makes me write things.

Oh.

Just write things.

I'm sure you'd like some tea, really, Professor. It won't take a minute.

Let's concentrate on the facts, Miss Gray.

This equation is an advance on the original ones you sent me. Do you

realise that?

Well, it...

It represents a progression which I was unable to make, but which you seem to

have leapt to with professional expertise.

Miss Gray, I must know how you got hold of these equations.

I've told you. Klaus gave them to me. Klaus?

Who is Klaus? How can I believe in Klaus?

This is Klaus.

He was only 24 when he died in a concentration camp in Germany.

Must have been terrible for those people.

Bad enough for us here.

My mother got killed in the Blitz when I was just a girl.

But for them... I

remember the night he came to me.

It was a summer's night.

Oh, ten years ago now.

I'd just come to live in Whitebrook to get away from... well, unhappiness

elsewhere.

I was alone here in this room when I suddenly became aware of this

presence.

There was no mistaking it.

A young man.

Troubled.

Acquainted with pain.

A victim.

He told me his name was Klaus.

He even told me where I could find a picture of him.

His relatives had come to this house as refugees before it was turned into

flats, it seemed.

It was down in the cellar, in a forgotten box of old papers.

Can you believe that?

So I even knew what he looked like.

Poor Klaus.

Right, Mary, let's try it again.

Ready?

Right.

Electron emission?

Positive that time.

What? Yes, no doubt of it. Look, just a spill.

What on earth is all that?

Actually, it's a kind of laser outcome of that last equation from Miss Gray.

Heat, you see.

Absolute temperatures in excess of those to be found in the interior of the sun.

Well, that puts us in the laser field.

Then, hydrogen.

Where do you go from there?

Well, if you want to speculate on things like deuterium turning to helium,

then... Bingo. Before you can say fusion power.

Fusion power?

Isn't Venables back from London yet? No, he isn't. But McIntyre to make wild

claims about fusion power.

Who's making claims, Doctor?

Not I.

Oh, no. Not I.

Fusion power.

The world's coal and oil resources running out.

Conventional nuclear power.

Expensive. Dangerous.

With huge waste disposal problems. But fusion power.

Atoms combining instead of splitting up.

Clean and cheap, abundant, inexhaustible energy.

Did you know that somewhere towards the end of his life, Hans Daedalus was

supposed to have made a scientific breakthrough?

What? Venables told me that.

Do you believe it's true?

True!

Messages out of the void, true.

Equations floating on the night air, Klaus.

I simply don't know what you're saying, McInstry.

Are you maintaining that these messages from Miss Grey are now to be taken

seriously?

accepted as proceeding from a late colleague who, having attained eternal

rest from his labours, now seems curiously reluctant to rest.

You ever heard of the Midas syndrome?

Hans used the expression the night he died.

What do you associate Midas with?

The golden touch?

Well, there's more to it than that.

After he got rid of that, the gods inflicted asses' ears on him.

Well, one of Midas' servants couldn't keep the secret, so...

He went out and dug a hole in the ground and whispered the awful truth into that.

But reeds grew up out of the ground and whispered the secret to the wind. And

the wind carried it to the four corners of the earth.

And soon the whole world knew that King Midas had ass's ears.

Well, maybe there's some kind of natural mechanism works that way.

Kind of telepathy.

hands in dying wants to confide all before it's too late that releases

thought energy which miss gray as receptor picks up she has to

filter it out in her own way of course but it's been thought it's there

it can't be denied you can commit yourself to notions

like that

Someone.

Someone different here tonight.

Someone special.

Why you don't tell Klaus someone special come?

Just speak to her.

It's Klaus you're addressing now, not Miss Gray.

Klaus.

Klaus, I...

My name's Professor Mackenstray.

Now, these messages you've been sending me, they're very unusual

messages. Did you know that?

Most strange messages.

Most strange old man.

Old man?

So anxious, so upset.

Always talking, Klaus.

Telling Klaus, give messages.

Does this old man tell you a lot?

Has he told you other things?

Things you haven't told me as yet?

Klaus, answer me, please.

I must know the rest.

What you've given me so far isn't enough. There's more to come. The most

important part.

Isn't that so, Klaus?

Klaus!

Message. New message.

Please stop that.

Stop that laughing.

Caroline is dead.

Who told her about my wife? How does she know?

Are you listening to me?

Klaus, Miss Grey, whoever you like to pretend you are.

That came here with the truth and I'm going to leave it without it.

Klaus, give good message here, Professor.

I don't believe in your damn mumbo-jumbo. You'll be hurt now. You

suffer. We're talking about Hans Daedalus. His information, his

equations. Now, you know them all. You write them down.

You write!

Stop it!

The dead are the dead.

Death is where it ends, Miss Gray.

Sane people all agree on that.

Why do you have to pretend otherwise?

Caroline doesn't exist anymore.

Klaus never did exist.

Klaus?

Why?

For pity's sake, why?

A victim.

Someone to put your pain on to.

But this is no martyr, the concentration camps. It's an old newspaper photograph,

God knows of who, taken in this country.

You know then.

You know that survival is idiocy.

Klaus is a lie.

Klaus. An illusion.

Say it.

I think you'll find this warrant is in order, Miss Gray.

Stop that.

That's my good China. Leave it alone.

It won't hurt anything. Don't worry.

It's about these messages that you've been conveying to Professor Mackinstry.

I didn't think this sort of thing could happen in England.

Ten years ago, before you came to live in Whitebrook, you were a clerk in a

government office. Is that right?

The old Ministry of Power, Atomic Energy Authority Section.

Why do you want to know about that?

Oh, all sorts of things I need to know in my trade, Miss Gray.

You'd be surprised.

So, you've been keeping newspapers with articles on Professor Daedalus. I

haven't. Not deliberately.

Those papers were just there.

They were just there?

And you left the Atomic Energy Authority ten years ago under a cloud?

No.

Oh, that's quite the wrong way to put it. Well, why did you leave then?

Does it matter?

You were sacrificing employment prospects, pension, everything.

Miss Gray, during the last few days I've been up in London checking up on you.

Now, there are mysteries.

For one thing, you didn't have such a bad education after all. You even went

to a grammar school for a while where you showed a bent for science.

My mother got killed in the Blitz and I had to leave school to look after my

father. Oh, your father wasn't in the forces then?

No.

Essential work.

And later you passed your civil service exam without too much difficulty.

That was very elementary stuff at my grade of work.

Miss Gray, during the time that you were with the Atomic Energy Authority, some

confidential decisions of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate found their

way into the hands of Russian intelligence.

What? Oh, yes, Miss Stannis, no doubt about it. There was a direct leak and

plenty of evidence for it. What are you saying now, for goodness sake?

That Miss Gray was responsible for it? Mary, I'm not sure that we should... Oh,

look, it's absurd, Vice-Chancellor.

What's any of this to do with Hans Daedalus and the equations?

Major Venable seems to be saying Miss Grey is some kind of spy.

I resigned from my position at the Atomic Energy Authority because there

was unhappiness.

I came to Whitebrook to get away from all that.

But you can't, of course.

You can't get away from unhappiness.

Not if you've been marked out as a victim.

Yes.

Yes.

And of course, I mean, there was no reason in the world why anybody of the

Atomic Energy Authority should suspect you, was there?

What are your political commitments, Miss Gray?

Or shall we have to get in touch with Clough's to find out about them?

Miss Grave, wait.

It's crazy, isn't it, the whole thing? Crazy?

Trying to make out that just because you were white... Oh, no, it's true, you

know. I was a Communist Party supporter after the war, yes.

Very active for a time.

Well, it seemed to me that the Communists were fighting the awful evils

of poverty. I'm saying it's meaningless.

You still haven't been accused of anything, have you? I didn't persevere

as a party member, of course.

I came to see that... Lasting answers...

And don't lie in political systems.

Only in yourself.

Deep in yourself.

You're so sure of everything, aren't you?

There isn't anything. There can't be anything outside what you see, hear,

touch. And so you'll destroy anything that doesn't fit in with those strict

ideas.

You've murdered Borg, Klaus.

He'll never come back to me now.

Victims.

I knew the awful evils of poverty.

My mother sickly.

My father a drunkard who used to beat up my mother and me when he was drinking.

Then the war.

Left alone with my father.

Left alone with a man of his character.

Don't you see there is?

There needs to be a world beyond.

Beyond.

Miss Grey, wait.

Please, there's more to say.

Professor.

What's going on?

Miss Grey.

Publicity. God, between us and the gutter press and publicity stunt, we've

been made to look ridiculous, Mary.

Academic life has been called into contempt.

What sort of an intelligence man does Venables call himself not to have

suspected something like that?

I've had such comfort from coming here, Miss Gray, truly.

It's splendid, so many people coming for the seances now. Well, I like to feel

I'm healthy.

Oh, thank you. Oh, excuse me.

I hope

I'm not intruding.

May I?

Thank you.

Look, be fair.

The espionage bit had to be checked out.

It was possible that Miss Gray was an East German agent, trying to find out if

we'd learned anything from Daedalus before he died.

What, by setting up as a medium?

Claiming to be providing us with information rather than soliciting it?

Of course, I sprat to catch a mackerel.

Oh, venables, really.

None of those equations was beyond the wit of a good research department to

have dreamed up.

We've had stranger cases.

Oh, yeah.

There was an agent once who actually performed an operation sooner than allow

his cover as a surgeon to be blown.

Cheers.

Oh, no-one's compelled to contribute, Professor Mackinstry.

Oh, no, no.

But there are expenses, of course.

Why did you go to the newspapers, Irene?

Why did you have to cheapen it all?

Oh, Mrs. Ludgate, I'm so glad you... Of

course,

I understand why he had to destroy Miss Gray's beliefs.

Or I think I do.

It would have meant the possibility of a life for Caroline outside of him, you

see. And he couldn't endure that.

No, enduring things is the name of the game, isn't it?

Enduring.

Look,

somehow, God knows how, you know it all.

Everything Hans Daedalus ever thought.

Well, it's not too late.

I can accept Klaus.

I can.

I'll go along with anything you say.

Please.

You're very arrogant, Professor Mackinstry.

Fifty years ago, it was my sort of people who would have been thought

prejudiced, blind.

Strange how the world changes.

So strange.

Shall we all be seated?

Oh, really, Mary. You can't pretend

to believe that if we'd gone along with Miss Gray and her spiritualism, new

physical knowledge would actually have emerged.

You've got a theological block.

That's your trouble.

And Sam's got a materialist one.

We have trouble all round.

Leave me out of it, Dr. Sherborne.

The only spirits I know about come in a glass with ice and soda.

Now we must all concentrate so that I can make contact with my spirit guide,

Muni Lau.

Concentrate, please.

It's really impossible for the dead to communicate with the living.

It's outside scripture, tradition, common sense.

Didn't Samuel come back for a word with King Saul?

Christian saints to encourage Joan of Arc?

I suppose we really should have had a go where those equations were concerned.

You can say that.

You! With hindsight, Miss Danish, I wonder what would have emerged if we'd

just, well, played along.

Concentrate. We must all concentrate.

Munilal.

Munilal.

Can you hear me?

Answer me.

Mooney love, answer.