Ina crater which had been turned into a crude fortress by the piles of wreckage surrounding its perimeter, Roffrey found a handful of wretches, the remnants of the human population of Entropium.
The man who had waved had a fleshless head and huge eyes. Dirty, scab-covered skin was drawn tight over his skull. He fingered his emaciated body and eyed Roffrey warily. He said:
'We're starving here. Have you got any supplies?'
'What happened?' Roffrey said, feeling sick.
There was desolation everywhere. These human beings had evidently banded together for protection against similar bands of aliens. Evidently, also, only the fittest survived.
The ragged man pointed at the rubble behind him. 'This? We don't know. It just hit us…'
'Why didn't you leave here?'
'No ships. Most of them were destroyed.'
Roffrey grimaced and said: 'Keep me covered while I return to my ship. I'll be back.'
A short time later he came stumbling back over the rubble with a box in his hands, his boots slipping and sliding on the uneven ground. They clustered around him greedily as he handed out vitapacks.
Something terrible had happened to the planet - perhaps to the whole system. He had to know what - and why.
Nowa woman separated herself from the group squatting over their food. The man with the fleshless head followed her.
She said to Roffrey: 'You must be from the home galaxy. How did you get here? - Did they… find how the Shifter worked?'
'You mean Renark and Asquiol?'
Roffrey looked hard at the woman, but he didn't know her. He noted that she had obviously been beautiful, probably still was under the filth and rags. 'They got through. They discovered more than they bargained for here - but they got through. Our whole universe doesn't exist any more. But the race - or the part which left - is still going. Maybe it's wiped out by now. I don't know.'
The man with the fleshless head put his arm around the woman. They looked like a pair of animated skeletons and the man's action enhanced the bizarre effect.
'He didn't want you then and he won't now,' he said to her.
Roffrey saw tension between them, but couldn't understand why.
She said: 'Shut up, Paul. Are Renark and Asquiol safe?'
Roffrey shook his head. 'Renark's dead. Asquiol's okay - he's leading the fleet. The Gee-lord gave him complete leadership during the emergency. They work under him now.'
'Local boy makes good,' said the male skeleton.
Roffrey felt he could name both of them now. He pointed at the man. 'Are you Paul Talfryn?"
Talfryn nodded. He cocked his head towards the woman. She dropped her eyes. "This is Willow Kovacs - my wife. We sort of got married… Asquiol's mentioned us, eh? I suppose he sent you back for us?'
'No.'
Willow Kovacs shuddered. Roffrey reflected that she didn't appear to like Talfryn very much; there was a kind of apathetic hatred in her eyes. Probably she regarded Talfryn merely as a protector, even if that. But it was no business of his.
'What happened to the rest of the human population?' Roffrey said, concentrating on his own affairs and trying to ignore the sickening feeling of disgust at the sight of such degeneration. 'Were they all killed?'
'Did you see anything when you came through the ruins?' Talfryn asked. 'Little, scuttling animal shapes, maybe?'
Roffrey had seen them. They had been repulsive, though he didn't know why.
Talfryn said: 'All those little creatures were intelligent once. For some reason, the Shifter stopped shifting. There was a long period of absolute madness before she seemed to settle down again. This happened - that happened.
'When the trouble started, the actual forms of human beings and aliens changed, devolving into these. Somebody said it was metabolic pressures combined with time-slips induced by the stop, but I didn't understand it. I'm no scientist - an astro-geographer. Unlicensed, you know…' He seemed to sink into an attitude of detachment and then looked up suddenly. 'The city just crumbled. It was horrifying. A lot of people went mad. I suppose Asquiol told you…'
'I've never met Asquiol,' Roffrey broke in. 'All my information is second-hand. I came particularly to find another person. A woman - she helped Renark with information. Mary the Maze - a mad woman. Know her?'
Talfryn pointed upwards to the streaked sky.
'Dead?' said Roffrey.
'Gone,' Talfryn said. 'When the city started breaking apart, she took one of the only ships and just spun off into space. She probably killed herself. She was like a zombie, and quite crazy. It was as if some outside pressure moved her. I heard she wanted to get to Roth. That was a crazy thing to want to do, in itself! She took one of the best ships, damn her. A nice one - Mark Seven Hauser.'
'She was heading for Roth? Isn't that the really strange planet?'
'As I said, she was crazy to go there. If she did get there.'
'You think there'd be a chance of her still being alive if she made it?'
'Maybe. Asquiol and Renark obviously survived.'
'Thanks for the information.' Roffrey turned away.
'Hey!' The skeleton suddenly became animated. 'You're not leaving us here! Take us with you - take us back to the fleet, for God's sake!'
Roffrey said: 'I'm not going back to the fleet. I'm going to Roth.'
'Then take us with you - anywhere's better than here!' Willow's voice was shrill and urgent.
Roffrey paused, deliberating. Then he said: 'Okay.'
As they neared the ship, something small and scaly scuttled across their path. It was like nothing Roffrey had seen before and he felt he never wanted to see it again. Entropium, when it flourished, had contained the seeds of corruption - and now corruption was dominant, a physical manifestation of a mental disease. It was an unhealthy place, with intelligent species scrabbling and fighting like animals to survive. It was rotten with the sickness that came from a state of mind as much as anything.
He was glad to reach the ship.
As Willow and Talfryn climbed into the airlock, he glanced back at the ruins, his face was rather grim. He helped them aboard and closed the lock.
Now he turned his thoughts to Mary the Maze.
TWELVE
Roffrey debated his next move, sitting hunched at the controls while he checked the astrochart before him. It didn't tally with the Shifter as it now was, but it would do. He could recognise descriptions of planets even though they had changed their location.
Willow and Talfryn were cleaning up. They were both beginning to look better. The ship itself was hardly tidy. It was not even very clean and there was a smell of the workshop about it - of oil, burnt rubber, dirty plastic and old leather. Roffrey liked it that way.
He scowled then. He didn't like company. I'm getting soft, he told himself.
Now he was going to Roth he began to feel nervous at what he might find there.
Talfryn said: 'We're ready!'
He activated the ship's normal drive and lifted off. He was tempted to burn the city to rubble as he passed, but he didn't. He got into space with a feeling of relief, heading in a series of flickering hops used for short journeys towards Roth, now hanging the farthest away from the parent binary, as if deliberately set apart from the rest of the system.
Roth, more than any other planet in the Shifter, defied the very logic of the cosmos and existed contrary to all laws. Roth - nicknamed Ragged Ruth, he remembered - still contained the impossible gaps. There, two men had become supersane. But Mary, poor Mary who had helped them - she had found only madness there.
Had she gone back to try and lay the ghost that was her insanity? Or had her motives been induced by madness? Perhaps he would find out.
The planet was big now. The screens showed nothing but the monstrous globe with its speckled aura, its shifting light-mist, its black blotches and, worst of all, the gaps. The gaps which were not so much seen as unseen. Something should be there but human eyes couldn't see it.