‘Round about two this afternoon,’ Willard explained. ‘We were making out the harvesting rota, just along the track there-a-ways. I was standing on the roof of the Jeep, looking around to see how the crops were lying, what with all those winds we’ve been having and all – and I could see a dark patch from the road. At first I thought it was the shadow from a cloud. But when it didn’t move, like the other shadows did – well, then I knew there was something wrong.’

Two this afternoon?’ asked Ed. ‘It’s only eight now. How can you tell if it’s spreading?’

Jack cleared his throat. ‘At two this afternoon, it was only covering two to three acres.’

‘What do you mean? You mean it’s spread two acres in six hours? That’s crazy.’

Willard’s expression was indistinguishable in the dusk, but Ed could tell from the tone of his voice that he was embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid it’s true, Ed. We didn’t measure exactly, or nothing like that. But it seems like it’s going through the wheat like some kind of a slow fire.’

Ed stood silent for a while, his hand over his mouth, staring at the dark patch of decaying wheat in the middle of his field. If the blight could spread at the rate of two acres in six hours, that meant it could eat up eight acres a day at the very least. The danger was that as the circumference of the blighted area increased, so the speed at which the disease burned up his crops would increase. Willard was right. It was just like a slow fire.

‘Let’s get in the Jeep,’ Ed suggested at last. ‘Then let’s circle the affected wheat and see how much of a problem we’ve got on our hands. I want to watch this blight in action. I want to see it actually spreading.’

They climbed into the Wagoneer, and Willard started up the engine.

‘Make sure you only drive over unblighted wheat,’ Ed told him. ‘If it’s any kind of a fungus, I don’t want it spread around the farm on the tyres of your Jeep.’

Willard nodded and backed up a few feet before turning the wheel and taking the Jeep in a slow, bumpy circle around the darkened edge of the crops. Ed reached into the pocket of his red plaid shirt and took out a pack of small cigars. He stuck one between his lips without offering them around. He knew that neither Willard nor Jack smoked, although Willard had been known to make short work of a half-bottle of Old Grandad.

Jack said, ‘It must be some kind of airborne fungus. Otherwise, it couldn’t spread so damned fast. But the question is – what made it start here? And where did it come from?’

‘You haven’t had any reports of it elsewhere on the farm, have you?’ asked Ed.