Jack Marowitz was one of Ed’s senior farm managers. He was young – only twenty-eight – but he had a silo-full of honours from the Iowa State University of Science and Technology in the agricultural uses of advanced chemistry, automation and computer techniques. It was Jack’s job to make sure that what grew in the fields came out of those fields in optimum condition and was delivered to the right place at exactly the right moment Jack could plan the harvesting of ten thousand acres down to the last half-hour.

He was quiet, almost diffident, with a thick brown head of hair and Coke-bottle glasses, but Ed liked him because he didn’t rant and rave and he did his job well.

Jack held up an ear of wheat in the palm of his hand and directed his flashlight on it.

‘What do you make of this?’ he asked Ed. Ed peered at it closely, arid then poked it with his finger.

‘It’s rotten,’ he said. ‘The whole damned thing’s rotten.’

The ear of wheat was blackened and every grain inside it was dark and slimy with decay. Ed took it out of Jack’s hand and sniffed it, and he could smell a distinctly sour odour, like whisky mash.

‘It appears to me like some kind of blight,’ said Jack. ‘The only trouble is, what kind? It certainly isn’t rust, arid it sure as hell isn’t smut.’

Ed stood straight and looked around. ‘How much of the crop’s been affected?’ he asked. ‘Maybe it’s just some localised soil complaint. Maybe these seeds weren’t dressed.’

‘Well, that’s the problem,’ put in Willard. ‘And that’s why I wanted you to come take a look for yourself. It covers something like five acres at the moment, but it’s spreading.’

Ed took the flashlight from Jack and walked a little way out into the wheat. He shone the beam this way and that, quickly, and every way he shone it, he saw the same thing. The ears of wheat were drooping on their stalks and they were all dark brown with decay. The smell of sourness was carried on the breeze, and under the light of that pale and emotionless moon, silently suspended on the horizon, Ed felt as if the world had subtly changed position on its axis, as if things would never be quite the same again.

‘You never saw anything like this at Ames?’ he asked Jack, switching off the flashlight and walking back.

‘Nothing at all. And, believe me, I saw some pretty grotesque stuff.’

‘When did you spot it?’