Part I
Ballard checks out Renaldo's anti-gravity device.
The Control Voice: In the troubled places of the world, the Devil's Hunter finds rare game. For man-made savagery is only the instrument for a secret terror stirring from its dark place of ambush...
After four soldiers are shot with bullets made of meteorites, an alien force compels them to work on a mysterious project.
The Control Voice: Man looks up at the stars, and dreams his futile dreams. Child of the universe, his toys are ignorance, his games, fantasy. Not even master of his own fate, it is the Devil's Puppeteer who stretches his fingers to answer the question: What will happen next?
Part II
The Control Voice: The Earth, tumbling grain of sand in the darkness of unending space, plays host to a strange and awful guest, unsought, uninvited, possessor of fearsome power, purveyor of dark deed, a relentless traveler on the road to its mysterious goal...
Lt. Minns with the disabled children.
Ballard learns that the alien project involves not only the soldiers, but a group of disabled children.
The Control Voice: The Inheritors are on their way. In a universe of billions of stars, there are places of love and happiness. On this Earth, in this spot, magic settled for a moment. Wonder touched a few lives, and a few odd pieces fell smoothly into the jigsaw of Creation.
"This is troping power like nothing you've ever seen!"
- Compelling Voice: A rare heroic example. While the soldiers retain their personalities and wills, the alien influence forces them to work on the project, like it or not. As Renaldo puts it: "You do what's inside your head, no matter how your insides are busting!" Ballard notes that the soldiers "hate what they are doing even as they unwillingly do it.... [They] are tormented and unable to control themselves."
- Good All Along: While both the characters and the audience spend most of the story assuming that the aliens must be evil, the Twist Ending reveals that their goals are altruistic.
- Missing Time: After his encounter with Conover, Ballard winds up in Indianapolis two weeks later, with no memory of the intervening time.
- Multi-Part Episode: The only one in the original Outer Limits series.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The aliens subject the soldiers to a lot of psychological trauma for what turns out to be a benevolent purpose.
