a station on earth actually receiving those messages and sending back some of their. own. It seems to be located somewhere in a remote area near Redlands. They decide to unravel the mystery without outside help. The first seemingly obvious receiving station they break into turns out to be a United States Government tracking post monitoring the Russian space program and headed by Becker-man (LEW AYRES), The less obvious one impossibly appears to be a convent, familiar to us from the opening of our picture.

St. Catherine's is run by Father Pergado and some kindly nuns. They make the Borans feel welcome, but Sylvia suspects something is eerie about them, and when Andrew. back at his computer, intercepts another message going into space which actually describes him and his wife, there can be n~ doubt in his mind. He and Sylvia, unbeknown to his superior, decide to return to the convent and get the truth. H is a bitter one they discover:

Zindar and the nuns are aliens from another planet. They have taken on the features of the real priests and nuns of St. Catherine, using a cloning process, and destroyed their victims in their vain attempts to return to their distant home through a timewall. The fact is they are stranded on earth since large disruptions have moved it away from their re-entry pattern. and they need the highly guarded variance crystal Andrew Boran has perfected in order to correct the return circuit. They hold Sylvia hostage while Andrew is ordered to break into the restricted area of his plant, remove thecrystal from it, and bring it to them for their use. In a series of deadly accurate bursts of destruction, Zindar's powers help Andrew in his mission, but hot without the sacrifice of Andrews close friend Davis (MACDONALD CAREY), who guarded the ultra-secret lab in which the variance crystal was kept.

In a dazzling turnabout after Andrew successfully installs the crystal in the convents lab, deep in a subterranean basement, the final truth is revealed to him and Sylvia as the nuns:' one by one, now successfully cross the time-wall back to their planet. Only Zindar is left and he tries to induce the Borans to follow him with an astonishing revelation: the mission he and the aliens were sent on was to destroy the earth, and they are finally about to accomplish this-an over-abundance of its man-made diseases has contaminated the universe, and the earth must now be eradicated in order to save millions of other planets. At first Andrew refuses, and Zindar regretfully disappears through the time wall. But then as each lab monitor focuses on a number of distant points of the globe, he sees the actual destruction begin as various parts of the planet disintegrate before his horrified eyes.

In a last minute decision, they agree to escape through the time-wall into an unknown which can mean survival at the very least and at best, a new beginning of all life.