Ventblockers Our shock picture last Friday of a Quatermass-style lifeform lurking inside a PC prompted a flurry of snaps forwarded by readers who had similarly confronted unspeakable horrors.

We gather that many of our correspondents are responding well to therapy, and could be back working in PC maintenance in five years or so. Others, sadly, are condemned to spend the rest of their days in a padded room gibbering about alien beings like that unfortunate bloke from Quatermass and the Pit who sees a hellish vision of Mars inhabited by Red Planet bouncing insect creatures.

Well, flamethowers at the ready. We're going in...

A gentle start there, courtesy of Rob Dege and the front panel of a client's PC. Definite signs of proto-life.

Next up, Neil Cameron-Rollo, who says this machine was still working...

...as was this one, claims Stuart Green, "until we cleaned it":