The Egg (de Camp short story)

1956 short story by Lyon Sprague de Camp

"The Egg"

Short story by L. Sprague de Camp
Country| United States
Language| English
Genre(s)| Science fiction
Publication
Published in| Satellite Science Fiction
Publisher| Renown Publications, INc.
Media type| Print (Magazine)
Publication date| October 1956

"The Egg" is a science fiction short story by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the magazine Satellite Science Fiction for October, 1956.[1][2] It first appeared in book form in the collection A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales (Doubleday, 1963).[1][2] The story has been translated into German.[1][2]

## Plot summary

[edit]

The reptilian alien Gnoth, Yerethian consul to Earth, is preparing to go out to a drive-in movie with his wife Triw. The outing is business as well as pleasure, as it's part of Gnoth's job to monitor Terran popular entertainment to determine Yerethians are being represented fairly. Since their egg is due to hatch in four days and they are concerned about its safety, they have hired Patrice Ober, a local teen, to babysit it. After giving Patrice her instructions they leave, and Pat settles down to read Jane Eyre as part of her high school homework. When that palls she thinks about boys, notably the two currently vying for her affection, the aggressive football hero Terry Blaine and the more gentlemanly intellectual Andy Dupas.

Meanwhile, Terry has called Pat's house and been told by her mother where she is. Her father is put out over this, suspecting Terry's intentions. Terry zips off to the Yerethians' home on his buzzer, or flying platform, to surprise Pat. He has brought some records, and entices her into dancing, during which they accidentally bump the incubator, injuring Pat and eliciting odd sounds from the egg within. Pat begs off from further dancing, whereupon Terry begins a forceful campaign of seduction. Andy, in the meantime, has also called the Obers asking about Pat. Pat's father, feeling him a responsible counterbalance to the reckless Terry, lets him know where she is as well.

At the Yerethians', the distracted teens fail to notice that the egg is hatching, and the baby alien, resembling a long-legged, long-necked alligator, emerging from the incubator. Yerethian young are mindless, instinct-driven carnivores during their first three years of life, after which they become teachable. Seeing the humans as prey, it immediately makes for them. They flee to the front door, but the Yerethian is speedier than they are, albeit less adept at sharp turns, and catches up before they can open it. They make for the powder room; Terry, reaching it first, locks himself in, leaving Pat to her fate. She can barely keep ahead of the alien in the pursuit that follows, and is trapped by the time Andy arrives at the house. The quick-thinking Andy attracts the baby's attention and ducks under a couch; it gets stuck trying to follow, and as it struggles he whips off his belt and chokes the creature with it.

At this point the parents arrive home; Triw gathers up her baby, clouting it into quiescence when it tries to bite her, while Gnoth sternly demands explanations. At first they blame the teens for causing their egg to hatch prematurely by jostling it, but it soon becomes apparent that Triw had miscalculated the incubation time due to confusion in reconciling the Yerethian and Terran calendars; the egg in fact hatched right on time. Gnoth proposes they all keep the matter quiet to prevent embarrassment to everyone concerned. The teenagers agree.

Terry flies off in disgrace, while Andy drives Pat back home, taking the rogue's place in her regard. Alas for romance; Andy is heading off to college soon, and expects to be away for years earning his Ph.D. She asks if he wants her to wait for him, but Andy, practically, notes that's too much to expect of someone so young. He allows that if she's still around when he's done with college they can talk about it. Broken-hearted, Pat goes to bed and cries on her pillow.

## Reception

[edit]

P. Schuyler Miller's comment on the tale takes a rather unrealistic lesson from it: "Need a baby-sitter for your egg? Then make sure—as the Yerethian couple of 'The Egg' did not--that you have correlated your calendar properly with the terrestrial one."[3]

Avram Davidson found the story among most others in A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales "a great disappointment," feeling the author "[t]ime after time ... gets hold of a great idea—and throws it away in playing for laughs of the feeblest conceivable sort."[4]

## Relation to other works

[edit]

De Camp also dealt with the theme of teens disrupting interplanetary relations in "Let's Have Fun" (1957), in which juvenile delinquents endanger the young of aliens rather than vice versa. In his "Judgment Day" (1955), the maliciousness of delinquents is the catalyst for a physicist's decision to publish a discovery that will result in nuclear holocaust.

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Laughlin, Charlotte, and Levack, Daniel J. H. De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco, Underwood/Miller, 1983, page 152-153.
2. ^ a b c The Egg title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
3. ^ Miller, P. Schuyler. "The Reference Library." In Analog Science Fact-Science Fiction, v. 71, no. 5, July 1963, page 90.
4. ^ Davidson, Avram. "Books" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, v. 25, no. 4, October 1963, pp.20-21

* v
* t
* e

L. Sprague de Camp

Viagens
Interplanetarias|

| Krishna|

* "Finished" (1949)
* The Queen of Zamba (1949)
* The Hand of Zei (1950)
* "Perpetual Motion" (1950)
* "Calories" (1951)
* The Virgin of Zesh (1953)
* The Tower of Zanid (1958)
* The Hostage of Zir (1977)
* The Prisoner of Zhamanak (1982)
* The Bones of Zora (1983)
* The Swords of Zinjaban (1991)

|

Kukulkan|

* The Stones of Nomuru (1988)
* The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992)

Other|

* "The Animal-Cracker Plot" (1949)
* "The Colorful Character" (1949)
* "Git Along!" (1950)
* "The Inspector's Teeth" (1950)
* "Summer Wear" (1950)
* The Continent Makers (1951)
* "The Galton Whistle" (1951)
* Rogue Queen (1951)

Harold Shea|

* "The Roaring Trumpet" (1940)
* "The Mathematics of Magic" (1940)
* The Castle of Iron (1941/50)
* The Wall of Serpents (1953)
* The Green Magician (1954)
* Sir Harold and the Gnome King (1990)
* Sir Harold of Zodanga (1995)

Pusadian|

* The Tritonian Ring (1951)
* "The Eye of Tandyla" (1951)
* "The Owl and the Ape" (1951)
* "The Hungry Hercynian" (1953)
* "The Stronger Spell" (1953)
* "Ka the Appalling" (1958)
* "The Rug and the Bull" (1974)
* "The Stone of the Witch Queen" (1977)

Novarian|

* The Goblin Tower (1968)
* The Clocks of Iraz (1971)
* "The Emperor's Fan" (1973)
* The Fallible Fiend (1973)
* The Unbeheaded King (1983)
* The Honorable Barbarian (1989)

Neo-Napolitanian|

* The Incorporated Knight (1987)
* The Pixilated Peeress (1991)

Conan|

| Novels|

* Conan and the Spider God (1980)
* Conan of the Isles (1968)
* Conan the Barbarian (1982)
* Conan the Buccaneer (1971)
* Conan the Liberator (1979)
* The Return of Conan (1957)

|

Short stories|

* "Black Sphinx of Nebthu" (1973)
* "The Treasure of Tranicos" (1953)
* "Black Tears" (1968)
* "The Blood-Stained God" (1955)
* "The Castle of Terror" (1969)
* "The City of Skulls" (1967)
* "The Curse of the Monolith" (1968)
* "Drums of Tombalku" (1966)
* The Flame Knife (1955/81)
* "The Frost Giant's Daughter" Conan (1953)
* "The Gem in the Tower" (1978)
* "The God in the Bowl" (1952)
* "The Hall of the Dead" (1967)
* "Hawks Over Shem" (1955)
* "The Ivory Goddess" (1978)
* "The Lair of the Ice Worm" (1969)
* "Legions of the Dead" (1978)
* "Moon of Blood" (1978)
* "The People of the Summit" (1970/78)
* "Red Moon of Zembabwei" (1974)
* "The Road of the Eagles" (1955)
* "Shadows in the Dark" (1978)
* "Shadows in the Skull" (1975)
* "The Snout in the Dark" (1969)
* "The Star of Khorala" (1978)
* "The Thing in the Crypt" (1967)
* "The Witch of the Mists" (1972)
* "Wolves Beyond the Border" (1967)

Other
speculative
fiction|

| Novels|

* The Carnelian Cube (1948)
* Genus Homo (1950)
* The Glory That Was (1960)
* The Great Fetish (1978)
* Land of Unreason (1942)
* Lest Darkness Fall (1941)
* None but Lucifer (1939)
* Solomon's Stone (1942)

|

Short stories|

* "Aristotle and the Gun" (1958)
* "The Blue Giraffe" (1939)
* "The Command" (1938)
* "The Contraband Cow" (1942)
* "Cornzan the Mighty" (1955)
* "Divide and Rule" (1939)
* "The Egg" (1956)
* "Employment" (1939)
* "The Gnarly Man" (1939)
* "The Guided Man" (1952)
* "A Gun for Dinosaur" (1956)
* "The Hardwood Pile" (1940)
* "The Hibited Man" (1949)
* "Hyperpilosity" (1938)
* "In-Group" (1952)
* "Internal Combustion" (1956)
* "The Isolinguals" (1937)
* "Judgment Day" (1955)
* "Let's Have Fun" (1957)
* "Living Fossil" (1939)
* "The Merman" (1938)
* "Nothing in the Rules" (1939)
* "The Reluctant Shaman" (1947)
* "The Saxon Pretender" (1952)
* "The Space Clause" (1952)
* "The Stolen Dormouse" (1941)
* "Throwback" (1949)
* "The Wheels of If" (1940)

Historical fiction|

* The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate (1961)
* The Arrows of Hercules (1965)
* An Elephant for Aristotle (1958)
* The Bronze God of Rhodes (1960)
* The Golden Wind (1969)

Fiction edited|

* The Wolf Leader (1950)
* Swords and Sorcery (1963)
* The Spell of Seven (1965)
* Conan the Warrior (1967)
* The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967)
* Conan the Conqueror (1967)
* Warlocks and Warriors (1970)
* 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1972)
* Tales Beyond Time (1973)

Nonfiction|

| Science and
history|

* Inventions and Their Management (1937)
* The Evolution of Naval Weapons (1947)
* Antarctic Conquest (1949)
* Engines (1959)
* The Heroic Age of American Invention (1961)
* Man and Power (1961)
* Energy and Power (1962)
* The Ancient Engineers (1963)
* Ancient Ruins and Archaeology (1964)
* Elephant (1964)
* Spirits, Stars, and Spells (1966)
* The Story of Science in America (1967)
* The Day of the Dinosaur (1968)
* The Great Monkey Trial (1968)
* Darwin and His Great Discovery (1972)
* Great Cities of the Ancient World (1972)
* The Ragged Edge of Science (1980)
* The Fringe of the Unknown (1983)
* The Ape-Man Within (1995)
* Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants (1996)

|

Lit crit and
biography|

* Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975)
* The Conan Reader (1968)
* Dark Valley Destiny (1983)
* Lands Beyond (1952)
* Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976)
* Lost Continents (1954)
* Lovecraft: A Biography (1975)
* The Miscast Barbarian (1975)
* Science-Fiction Handbook (1953/75)
* Time and Chance (1996)

Nonfiction edited|

* The Conan Swordbook (1969)
* The Conan Grimoire (1972)
* To Quebec and the Stars (1976)
* The Blade of Conan (1979)
* The Spell of Conan (1980)

Poetry|

* Demons and Dinosaurs (1970)
* Heroes and Hobgoblins (1981)
* Phantoms and Fancies (1972)

Collections|

* The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953)
* The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid (1983)
* The Incomplete Enchanter (1941)
* Wall of Serpents (1960)
* The Compleat Enchanter (1975)
* The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989)
* The Enchanter Reborn (1992)
* The Exotic Enchanter (1995)
* The Mathematics of Magic (2007)
* The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales (1953)
* The Reluctant King (1985)
* Conan (1967)
* The Conan Chronicles (1989)
* The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990)
* Conan of Aquilonia (1977)
* Conan of Cimmeria (1969)
* Conan the Adventurer (1966)
* Conan the Avenger (1968)
* Conan the Freebooter (1968)
* Conan the Swordsman (1978)
* Conan the Usurper (1967)
* Conan the Wanderer (1968)
* Sagas of Conan (2004)
* Tales of Conan (1955)
* The Treasure of Tranicos (1980)
* Aristotle and the Gun (2002)
* The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (1978)
* Divide and Rule (1948)
* Footprints on Sand (1981)
* A Gun for Dinosaur (1963)
* The Purple Pterodactyls (1980)
* The Reluctant Shaman (1970)
* Rivers of Time (1993)
* Scribblings (1972)
* Sprague de Camp's New Anthology (1953)
* Tales from Gavagan's Bar (1953/78)
* The Undesired Princess (1951)
* The Virgin & the Wheels (1976)
* The Wheels of If (1948)
* Years in the Making (2005)

About de Camp|

* GURPS Planet Krishna (1997)
* The Enchanter Completed (2005)

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template