vast unnatural bulk.
“Because,” said the inflating man in a high, twanging voice, “because I’m one of the clam-eaters!”
This horrid statement proved too much for George’s wavering sobriety. He blinked. Then he slid backward off the bar stool and collapsed softly on the floor. His eyes closed.
The billowing form of the clam-eater tightened and condensed into that of a singularly handsome young man. He was dressed in winged sandals and a winged hat; from his naked body there came a soft golden light.
For a moment he stood over George, chuckling at the success of his joke. His handsome, jolly face was convulsed with mirth. Then, giving George a light, revivifying tap on the shoulder with the herald’s wand he carried, the divine messenger left the bar.
AN EGG A MONTH FROM ALL OVER
When the collector from Consolidated Eggs found the mnxx bird egg on the edge of the cliff, he picked it up unsuspiciously. A molded mnxx bird egg looks almost exactly like the chu lizard eggs the collector was hunting, and this egg bore no visible sign of the treatment it had received at the hands of Jreel just before Krink’s hatchet men caught up with him. The collector was paid by the egg; everything that came along was grist to his mill. He put the molded mnxx bird egg in his bag.
George Lidders lived alone in a cabin in the desert outside Phoenix. The cabin had only one room, but at least a third of the available space was taken up by an enormous incubator. George was a charter member of the Egg- of-the-Month Club, and he never refused one of their selections. He loved hatching eggs.
George had come to Phoenix with his mother for her health. He had taken care of her faithfully until her death, and now that she was gone, he missed her terribly. He had never spoken three consecutive words to any woman except her in his life. His fantasies, when he was base enough to have any, were pretty unpleasant. He was forty-six.
On Thursday morning he walked into Phoenix for his mail. As he scuffled over the sand toward the post office substation, he was hoping there would be a package for him from the Egg-of-the-Month Club. He was feeling tired, tired and depressed. He had been sleeping badly, with lots of nightmares. A nice egg package would cheer him up.
The South American mail rocket, cleaving the sky overhead, distracted him momentarily. If he had enough money, would he travel? Mars, Venus, star-side? No, he didn’t think so. Travel wasn’t really interesting. Eggs… Eggs (but the thought was a little frightening), eggs were the only thing he had to go on living for.
The postmistress greeted him unsmilingly. “Package for you, Mr. Lidders. From the egg club. You got to brush for it.” She handed him a slip.
George brushed, his hand shaking with excitement. This must be his lucky morning. It might even be a double selection; the package seemed unusually big. His lips began to lift at the corners. With a nod in place of thanks, he took the parcel from the postmistress, and went out, clutching it.
The woman looked after him disapprovingly. “I want you to stay away from that gesell, Fanny,” she said to her eleven-year-old daughter, who was reading a postcard in the back of the cubicle. “There’s something funny about him and his eggs.”
“Oksey-snoksey, mums, if you say so. But lots of people hatch eggs.”
The postmistress sniffed. “Not the way he hatches eggs,” she said prophetically.
On the way home George tore the wrapper from the box. He couldn’t wait any longer. He pulled back the flaps eagerly.
Inside the careful packing there was a large, an unusually large, pale blue -green egg. Its surface stood up in tiny bosses, instead of being smooth as eggs usually were, and the shell gave the impression of being more than ordinarily thick. According to the instructions with the parcel, it was a chu lizard egg from the planet Morx, a little - known satellite of Amorgos. It was to be incubated at a temperature of 76.3 C. with high humidity. It would hatch in about eight days.
George felt the surface of the egg lovingly. If only Mother were here to see it! She had always been interested in his egg hatching; it was the only thing he had ever wanted to do that she had really approved of. And this was an unusually interesting egg.
When he got home he went straight to the incubator. Tenderly he laid the soidisant chu lizard egg in one of the compartments; carefully he adjusted the temperature control. Then he sat down on the black and red afghan on his cot (his mother had crocheted the coverlet for him just before she passed away), and once more read the brochure that had come with the egg.
When he had finished it, he sighed. It was too bad there weren’t any eggs in the incubator now, eggs that were on the verge of hatching. Eight days was a long time to wait. But this egg looked wonderfully promising; he didn’t know when the club had sent out an egg that attracted him so. And from one point of view it was a good thing he hadn’t any hatchings on hand. Hatching, for all its excitement, was a sort of ordeal. It always left him feeling nervously exhausted and weak.
He had lunch, and after lunch, lying under the red and black afghan, he had a little nap. When he woke it was late afternoon. He went over to the incubator and looked in. The egg hadn’t changed. He hadn’t expected it would.
His nap hadn’t cheered or refreshed him. He was almost more tired than he had been when he lay down to sleep. Sighing, he went around to the other side of the incubator and stared at the cage where he kept the things he had hatched out. After a moment he took his eyes away. They weren’t interesting, really—lizards and birds and an attractive small snake or two. He wasn’t interested in the things that were in eggs after they had hatched out.
In the evening he read a couple of chapters in the Popular Guide to Egg Hatchery.
He woke early the next morning, his heart hammering. He’d had another of those nightmares. But—his mind wincingly explored the texture of the dream—but it hadn’t been all nigh tmare. There’d been a definitely pleasurable element in it, and the pleasure had been somehow connected with the egg that had come yesterday. Funny. (Jreel, who had molded the mnxx bird egg from its original cuboid into the present normal ovoid shape, wouldn’t have found it funny at all.) It was funny about dreams.
He got grapes from the cupboard and made
The temperature and humidity were well up. It was about time for him to give the egg a quarter of a turn, as the hatching instruction booklet suggested. He reached in the compartment, and was surprised to find it full of a dry, brisk, agreeable warmth. It seemed to be coming from the egg.
How odd! He stood rubbing the sprouting whiskers on his upper lip. After a moment he tapped the two gauges. No, the needles weren’t stuck; they wobbled normally. He went around to the side of the incubator and checked the connections. Everything was sound and tight, nothing unusual. He must have imagined the dry warmth. Rather apprehensively, he put his hand back in the compartment—he still hadn’t turned the egg—and was relieved to find the air in it properly humid. Yes, he must have imagined it.
After lunch he cleaned the cabin and did little chores. Abruptly, when he was half through drying the lunch dishes, the black depression that had threatened him ever since Mother died swallowed him up. It was like a physical blackness; he put down the dish undried and groped his way over to a chair. For a while he sat almost unmoving, his hands laced over his little stomach, while he sank deeper and deeper into despair. Mother was gone; he was forty-six; he had nothing to live for, not a thing… He escaped from the depression at la st, with a final enormous guilty effort, into one of his more unpleasant fantasies. The imago within the molded mnxx bird egg, still plastic within its limey shell, felt the strain and responded to it with an inaudible grunt.
On the third day of the hatching, the egg began to enlarge. George hung over the incubator, fascinated. He had seen eggs change during incubation before, of course. Sometimes the shells got dry and chalky; sometimes
