The ceiling above the Meathab spaceport was the color of hamburger torn from some dead cattle -- but it was very much alive. Diminutive lizard things crawled over it, sloughing away the parts that were really dead. In the fleshy red-lit space below, arrivals from the most recent shuttle, Octojean Veinous among them, queued for orientation.

Veinous expected he'd be tiring of red lighting quickly, but worse was the feeling of being in something's belly, alive, consumed. His chromatophores kept veering off toward red, and his tentacles pressed in toward his body, unwilling to expose themselves. There was no place to hide here.