CHILDREN OF THE STONES
- Would you do something for me? - Of course.
- Touch one of the stones? - What?
I just want to see if you're the kind of man I think you are.
And what sort of man is that?
And you just want me to touch it?
Yes, please.
Help!
You... ...you nutter!
Look at my bike!
You stupid old fool. Look at my jacket!
Go on. Swear a bit. Call me worse.
Oh no, the village idiot!
- Just my luck! - What do you mean?
Get out of my way before I wrap what's left of this bike round your scraggy neck!
You're... different then.
- What do you mean? - Not mindless like the others.
- What's your name? - Matthew.
Friends... are few and far between here, Matthew
If you want one... go to the sanctuary... and wait.
Dai will know. Dai will find you.
Adam? Adam. Adam!
Thank the gods you're alright.
It was stupid of me.
I had no idea, no idea, the reaction would be so violent.
Look, here's some water.
This isn't the time of day to be taking a bath.
In that cupboard you'll find a bottle of scotch and a glass,
...a large glass.
- Here. - Thank you.
- Have one yourself. - No. No, I don't like it.
I hate to ask but... what happened?
You don't know? You don't remember?
I'm not sure what I remember.
It was my fault.
I took you out to the circle and asked you to touch a stone.
To see if you're the kind of man I think you are.
- Yes. - What did that mean?
A man of... sensitivity...
- But I'm so confused. - You're confused?
Where's Matthew?
On his way back from school I should think.
- But sensitivity to what? - Well...
When I first came to Milbury, to take over the museum,
I read a fringe lunatic's book about the psychic force in standing stones.
A force that only certain people
perceptives, I think the writer called them - could feel.
Well, I touched that same stone,
and I felt something, a shock.
but nothing like the sort of shock you must have felt.
But that wasn't a psychic force,
that was electromagnetic energy, a perfectly natural phenomenon.
What, even though you were earthed, and so was the stone?
There must be some perfectly simple explanation.
- There is. - What?
Psychic forces don't obey the same laws as electromagnetic ones.
Come on, Margaret... There's nothing psychic about residual magnetism.
You don't have to have special powers to see the common garden electric shock.
Well, it was hardly common or garden.
You flew through the air with the greatest of ease.
Yes...
There was certainly a great deal of energy there.
I can't wait --
Matthew, are you alright? Are you hurt!
No, dad. I just fell off my bike.
You certainly made a mess of that bike, didn't you.
It was never exactly Tour de France.
Well it was on the cottage inventory.
You can pay for it out of your own allowance.
Maybe I could sell the wreckage. The Tate Gallery might buy it.
Dad, this stone doesn't look upright. Neither do the others.
What do you expect after four thousand years?
No, leave this, I'll do it.
Hey, give us a reading, will you?
Hey!
Come on...!
- Die! - Come on...
Good. Come in.
- What do you want? - I need your help.
You put that in my snare?
It seemed a good idea to use it as a postbox.
- You let my supper go? - Supper? Come in.
No rabbit for supper tonight, Dai. No coney for Dai.
That's prepared and that's it, or rooks.
Well how about a piece of chicken? Tomatoes?
Bread and cheese? Good cheddar, and fruit.
Got a bit of cider?
- Help yourself. - Sextant?
- Oh, theodolite. - What do you know about theodolites?
- Who cooked this chicken? - Mrs. Crabtree, what's wrong with it?
How should I know, I'm no vet. It's certainly dead.
Put it there. Proper support for a plain table.
Know anything about surveying?
Tell her, next time, bit of taragon under the skin,
white garlic, and an old potato inside. Keep it moist.
- Well, do you? - Yes.
I haven't forgotten. I used to be a miner.
- A coal miner? - Coal, gold, I've dug for everything.
Dug holes in the water for fish I have.
Dug holes in the earth for bones.
- What do you want to survey? - The circle. The stones.
Beware, don't meddle with the stones.
- Got any nuts? - No.
The stones all seem to lean slightly towards the centre.
My father reckons it's weather or subsidence.
But I was wondering, do they all lean at the same angle?
And if they do, what then?
I don't know, I'm not sure.
Just nosey, hey? Leave the stones alone.
But if they do align, it'll be too much to pass them off as coincidence, won't it?
And if they don't, if your father's right, what then?
Well... want to buy a home made theodolite, one careful owner?
What do you need to finish off your site machine?
Well, that's why I need your help.
I thought if we could bodge your telescope into it, dual lenses attached...
No! No chance of that! None!
Listen Dai, there's lost of important figures my father and I have to collect.
The only way we're going to get this particular set is if you help me.
Please...
- Just for a day or two, mind. - Thanks.
There's so much to do before we leave.
Leave? What do you mean?
Leave the circle? Leave Milbury?
- Yes. - Leave?
Leave the stones? You never will.
- What do you mean? - Nobody leaves the circle.
Nonsense. You leave, you come and go as you please.
Where do I go? The avenue, the sanctuary, the barrow.
Never get away from the stones.
Never get beyond their sight, boy.
Never out of their grasp.
Nobody ever leaves the circle.
Not until the day of release.
Hello, Matt. Come and have a look at this.
Rock.
The whole circle seems to have a rocky base.
An interesting thing is, there's a definite declivity towards the centre,
it's as if there were a giant dish under the ground,
with the stones marking the perimeter.
Are there any rock in the area?
Chalk. Chalk. Gravel. Shale.
Is it a natural outcrop?
I don't know. It's interesting though, isn't it?
And no previous report of the fact? No-one spotted the dish before?
The geological service don't go back all that far.
I should imagine by the time they started digging around here, the authorities
had the circle well and truly protected from the spade and wellies brigade.
But it's only with our sonics that we can get that deep.
At least within the circle.
What about alignment? Anything on that?
There's another interesting thing. Most stone circles
are aligned either to the sun or the moon, right?
Summer solstice, winter solstice, or both. I mean, for instance Stonehenge
is aligned for both solar and lunar predictions, but...
...this one isn't.
What about other major stars? Planets?
Well, these are only early figures, I'd like you to check the calculations.
But there's no obvious point of alignment.
- Puzzle puzzle. - Exactly.
No stone circle was constructed at random.
I'm afraid I've come up against another dead end too.
- What's that? - My own invention.
I've got the telescope from that old nutter Dai.
Ingenious.
I thought the stones were leaning, remember?
They may be sesalted, yes.
It's crude, but serviceable.
I thought I was on to something, but I was wrong.
The stones are actually upright.
Dead upright, 90 degrees.
- All of them? - Counted 23 of them, gave up after that.
- Perimeter stones? - Yes.
All pointing in one precise direction. but upwards.
That may be it. You may be on to something, Matt
I don't believe it.
No other circle has a consistent 90 degree alignment.
If the dish was designed a a receiver for those psychic forces of yours,
then it follows that the signals must come from a source directly above it.
Almost like radio waves.
And they designed all this in Neolithic times?
- The mind boggles. - It does indeed.
To think that the circle could be construc- ted with that degree of sophistication.
Four thousand years ago?
What we have here is a primitive jodrule bank,
immovably aligned with something up there.
- The question is why? - Let's worry about that later.
Let's see what the observatory can tell us first.
There is nothing charted on that alignment path.
- Nothing? - Nothing.
Even I won't believe that all this was designed
by some Neolithic archpriest to do nothing.
Well, it is conceivable there's some obscure power source up there.
That may be best left alone.
Where would science be if we didn't ask questions?
Now I've asked a friend of mine in Mount Palomar to help me.
How?
By charting the alignment path accurately.
- Will that take long? - Not if it's catalogued.
Matt's cabling the coordinates to them now.
- You can't send this, dear. - Why not?
- It's to America, the USA. - Mount Palomar observatory.
- Why can't I send it? - You just can't, that's all.
- That would be far too expensive. - Here.
Can I have an ice cream with the change? Vanilla?
Well, I don't know... young people...
Sorry I've been so long. Did you get that telegram sent off?
- Good. What's that? - The alignment path.
It seems to be within the constellation of the Great Bear.
- But there's nothing there. - I told you.
- Could it be a void? - Who knows!
That reminds me, did you get any supper?
- I had a sandwich. - What sandwich?
Ham and banana... ...with gherkins and honey.
Oh, yuck!
You let me eat school dinners.
Heavy period coming up.
- How are you getting on at school? - Alright.
Apparently Miss Clegg is a maths expert.
- Should be right up your street. - Yes.
Well, it's not too difficult for you, is it?
I could do the stuff I was given.
- So what's wrong? - Oh, nothing.
- I mean, it's all too easy for you... - Oh it's not that.
- Well what then? - Well...
There seems to be two lots of children.
Some are ordinary, others are...
- ...extraordinary? - Yes.
- In what way? - Well, they're brilliant.
I mean really brilliant. Some of them are younger than me,
yet they are doing problems I couldn't begin to understand.
- Really? - And there's something else.
The brilliant ones are so...
- ...quiet. - Compared to you, you mean.
No, I mean, they don't seem like schoolboys at all.
- Because they're well-behaved? - Because they're not natural.
Well I've heard some complaints in my time,
but grumbling because your mates are too quiet, that's a new one.
- I wish I had your problem. - You'd be bored out of your mind.
I'd like to try it.
- You alright for a drink or two? - Hello hello hello...
I'm taking Margaret to the pub for an hour.
So the anorak did the trick, then?
Don't wait up.
- Dad? - Yeah?
Do you reckon there's anything in this leyline business?
You mean this sort of international grid system, cables conducting psychic energy?
It's all very unscientific.
- Interesting, though? - What is?
I've been reading up about them.
Milbury claims to have more leylines than anywhere else.
Fifty-three.
So if there is a system, this village could be the centre of it.
- So? - So where's the centre of the centre?
- I'm sorry, Matthew, you've lost me. - Come and look at this.
I copied these from the map in the museum...
But... I replotted the leylines.
The leylines are supposed to touch the circle at a tangent.
That is, not go inside it.
But these lead directly up to the stone, and then stop.
- As if they were... - Cables...
- Well, yes. - Go on.
So if they are tangents, the circle they touch
has to be smaller than the stone circle.
You mean a circle within the circle?
- Right. - Right, let's see where that takes us.
- A house! - Highfield House.
It belongs to Hendrik.
Highfield House belongs to your landlord.
Really? I wonder if he knows.
About the leylines? Oh, I should think so.
He's pretty well informed about the local phenomena.
Or was that why the house was built just there?
It's Elizabethan, but it was built on the site of earlier houses.
He's a bright boy, your Matthew.
I can't think where he gets it from.
- Come on... - Oh, we can't.
That's why I called for you here. The pub was closed when I got there.
- Closed? - No-one 'round the back.
In fact, the whole village seems empty.
So now you know. Now you know what I meant about being alone.
Dai! Dai!
The same thing happened about a month ago.
One night, everyone just disappeared.
My guess is they turn into werewolves.
At least there'd be an explanation.
The only people about last time were doctor Lyle and a farmer called Browning.
They both got sons at school with Matthew by the way.
We were at the farm, just having dinner together, getting to know one another.
- Well, what did they make of it? - They had no idea.
- I mean, they were just... - They were what?
Margaret? They were just...?
They were recent arrivals too.