Famine Read Free

anticipated his every need. Bless her! He pulled a plastic cover over the vulnerable parts of the combine-harvester, tied them into position over the wheels, and turned to walk away.
    He went two or three steps, and stopped, for straight ahead was a faint, narrow track through the waist-high barley. He did not recognise it as the track of any familiar animal. Rabbits, mice, rats, voles and foxes, left little sign of passing; cats left much more. Hares seldom came into such a field, and if there had been any recent incursion, he would have seen the tell-tale signs; he was as sure as a countryman could be that there had been none.
    Then what, or who, had made these tracks?
    There were three lines, thrown into relief by the slanting rays of the sun; all leading to the big oak where Betty would be waiting. He could see the top of it, a dark mass of foliage, about a quarter-of-a-mile away.
    The most puzzling thing was not the tracks in themselves, but the fact that they had not been here half-an-hour ago. He himself had driven the combine-harvester past this very spot, and could not have missed such signs.
    Nor did the fact that they started ten yards or so inside the uncut barley now escape him. There was a little stretch of grain through which he had walked, picking his way carefully; and the three tracks started, mysteriously, out of nowhere. He had intended to walk across the patch already cut, and then along the edge of the field, but now the tracks so interested and puzzled him that he was tempted to follow them. Comparatively little damage had as yet been done, but he was likely to cause more; that was the only reason for his hesitation.
    He began to move forward.
    Almost at the same moment that he did so, he heard behind him the harsh jangling of collapsing metal. He spun round. There, only a few yards away, the combine-harvester was lurching to one side, already the front wheels had sunk a foot or more into the solid ground. Utterly astounded, Dave Fordham stood and gaped.
    There was nothing he could do to stop the fall. The machine, moving heavily, almost majestically, like a great ship slowly submerging, gradually settled down until the front was out of sight, and the back poked starkly into the air, the wheels still above ground.
    Fordham’s first thought was of a land subsidence. There had been accounts of one a few months before at the site of an old Roman burial ground near Salisbury. Uncharted burial grounds were suspected to be in the neighbourhood, but he knew of none here near Tidford. And he and his family had worked this field for thirty-odd years, and every kind of machine had been driven over it. Moreover, at one time it had been used for tank training; any underground earthworks or caves could hardly have remained undiscovered.
    He began to move forward, his mind working fast but confusedly, still hardly able to believe the truth. The machine which he had covered up with such care was now standing drunkenly on ground which had sunk at least three feet. He paused momentarily before taking each step, for he was a powerful man, very heavy for his height, and if he trod on a weak spot, he might fall. The ground seemed firm enough, but he did not allow himself to be lured into a false sense of security.
    The metal was still groaning, and a scattering of rooks, feasting on the ears left over by the harvester, rose high, cawing and croaking in their alarm. Gradually, they began to settle again.
    Fordham heard other, different, noises nearby, like and unlike the sound of voices. Yet no one was in sight, and he could hear no one approaching. The voices, and shrill unspecified squeals, seemed to be coming from beneath him – or beneath the useless machine. Mystification at the damage, its effect on tomorrow’s harvesting, and the utter obscurity of what had happened all tended to exasperate him. Some bloody young fools digging for bones! He would like to tan their hides.
    He saw something move, close