Suddenly there were ships all over the sky, cautiously converging. Every one of them was unique. Though it was hard to judge distances and sizes, Futurity could see that some were larger than the Ask Politely, some smaller; some were roughly cylindrical like the Politely, others were spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, even toroids, and some had no discernible regularity at all. And all of them sported gaudy features every bit as spectacular as Politely’s. There were immense scoop mouths and gigantic flaring exhaust nozzles, spindly spines and fat booms, and articulating arms that worked delicately back and forth like insect legs. Some of the ships even sported streamlined wings and fins and smooth noses, though none of them looked as if they could survive an entry into an atmosphere. These glimmering sculptures drifted all around the sky.

Poole said, ‘Quite a carnival. Look at all that crap, the spines and spikes and nets and fins. It looks like it’s been stuck on by some giant kid making toy spaceships. I can’t believe there’s any utility in most of those features.’

Futurity said, ‘It’s also ugly. What a mess!’

‘Yes,’ said Poole. ‘But I have the feeling we’re not the ones this stuff is supposed to impress.’ He pointed. ‘And that one looks as if it wants to get a bit more intimate than the rest.’

A huge ship loomed from the crowd and approached the Ask Politely. It was a rough sphere, but its geometry was almost obscured by a fantastic hull-forest of metal, ceramics and polymers. Moving with an immense slow grace, it bore down on the Ask Politely, which waited passively.

At last the big sphere’s complex bulk shadowed most of the observation lounge’s blister. A jungle of nozzles and booms slid across the window. Futurity wondered vaguely how close it would come before it stopped.

And then he realised it wasn’t going to stop at all.

Captain Tahget murmured, ‘Brace for impact.’ Futurity grabbed a rail.

The collision of the two vast ships was slow, almost gentle. Futurity, cupped in the Ask Politely’s inertial-control field, barely felt it, but he could hear a groan of stressed metal, transmitted through the ship’s hull. Two tangles of superstructure scraped past each other; dishes were crashed and spines broken, before the ships came to rest, locked together.

Translucent access tubes sprouted from the hulls of both ships, and snaked across space like questing pseudopodia, looking for purchase. Futurity thought he saw someone, or something, scuttling through the tubes, but it was too far away to see clearly.

Poole gazed out with his mouth open. ‘Look - here’s another ship coming to join the party.’

So it was, Futurity saw. It was a relative dwarf compared to the monster that had first reached Ask Politely. But with more metallic grinding it snuggled close against the hulls of the two locked ships.