A human-looking extraterrestrial in a one-man spaceship crash-lands near Los Angeles. Tim O'Hara, a young newspaper reporter for The Los Angeles Sun, is on his way home from Edwards Air Force Base (where he had gone to report on the flight of the X-15) back to Los Angeles when he spots the spaceship coming down. Tim takes the Martian in as his roommate--in an apartment house run by a congenial but scatterbrained landlady, Mrs. Lorelei Brown--and passes him off as his Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin refuses to reveal any of his Martian traits to people other than Tim, to avoid publicity (or panic), and Tim agrees to keep Martin's identity a secret while the Martian attempts to repair his ship. watch