The Inheritors (The Outer Limits) - Plot

Plot

Lt. Minns (played by Steve Ihnat) is shot in the head. Rescued, he is operated on by American doctors. Adam Ballard (Robert Duvall) watches the operation. Minns begins to show the same brainwave patterns that three other men have shown — each one shot in the head by a bullet made from a meteorite fragment.

Ballard explains to his superior (played by Ted De Corsia) that he believes the Earth has been invaded, and that these four men are in league with the extraterrestrials.

As Ballard investigates, he discovers that the men are building a starship. He also discovers that Lt. Minns is going around recruiting children to take with him on a long trip. All the children are handicapped in some way — from being blind, to being deaf/mute, to having to walk with leg-braces, and so on.

Ballard is afraid these helpless children are being taken somewhere to be subjected to degrading studies and hideously painful experiments. He finds the location where the ship has been built, but the men within are sealed off by a force field which nothing can get through. Ballard begs the men to fight the "Charlie" in their heads, turn off the force field, and not kidnap the children.

Three of the four men attempt to do just that, obliging Lt. Minns to explain the project's purpose. The children are not to be studied, they are to be helped. They will be taken to a new world, where their handicaps will be healed. Indeed, the special air within the spaceship has even now healed them.

Ballard is allowed to go inside the ship, and sees what Minns says is true. He exits, and the four men are given a choice, stay on Earth or go with the children. They elect to leave with the children for a new world and a new life.