The ships looked like they’d been tattooed. Their hulls were covered in a bewildering swirl of patterns upon patterns upon patterns, a fractal welter of colours, designs and textures that saturated their every square millimetre. He had seen this a hundred times before but it never failed to fascinate and amaze him.

On a few occasions he had floated up to some of the ships and touched their skins, and even through the thickness of the gloves on the millennium-old suit he had felt the roughened surface, whorled and raised and encrusted beneath. He had looked closely, then more closely still, using the suit’s lights and the magnification on the visor-screen to peer into the gaudy display in front of him, and found himself becoming lost within concentric layers of complexity and design. Finally the suit was using electrons to scan the surface and imposing false colours on the surfaces displayed and still the complexity went on, down and down to the atomic level. He had pulled back out through the layers and levels of motifs, figures, mandalas and fronds, his head buzzing with the extravagant, numbing complexity of it all.

Gestra Ishmethit remembered seeing screen-shots of warships; they had been whatever colour they wanted to be - usually perfectly black or perfectly reflecting when they were not hidden by a hologram of the view straight through them - but he could not recall ever having seen such odd designs upon them. He had consulted the Mind’s archives. Sure enough, the ships had been ordinary, plain-hulled craft when they had flown here. He asked the Mind why the ships had become decorated so, writing to it on the display of his terminal as he always did when he wanted to communicate: Why ships tattooed look?

The Mind had replied: Think of it as a form of armour, Gestra.

And that was all he could get out of it.

He decided he would have to be content to remain puzzled.

The little fire sent quivering veins of dim light into the hollow shadows around the enigmatic towers of the dazzlingly patterned ships. The only sound was his breathing. He felt wonderfully alone here; even the Mind couldn’t communicate with him here as long as he kept the suit’s communicator turned off. Here was perfect; here was total and complete loneliness, here was peace, and quiet, and a fire in the vacuum. He lowered his gaze again, towards the embers.

Something glinted near the floor of the hall, a couple of kilometres away.

His heart seemed to freeze. The thing glinted again. Whatever it was, it was coming closer.

He turned the suit communicator on with a shaking hand.

Before his quivering fingers could tap in a question to the Mind, the display on his visor-screen, lit up: Gestra, we are to be visited. Please return to your quarters.