A few years ago I wrote a story that appeared in Pets in Space 6 and has now been published as a stand-alone. But I didn’t write it specifically for the anthology. The inspiration came well before then.
I was doing the writer’s equivalent of doodling, playing around with ideas, willing the Muse to come and play. I started off with a female freighter captain walking back to her ship after making a delivery. She is regretting taking the short cut to the spaceport through the oldest, seediest section of Old Port as one of the frequent fogs descends. It’s a haven for thugs and muggers and she’s grateful for the pistol in her pocket.
That looked promising, so I beckoned the Muse over and asked her what happened next. “Ah,” said the Muse, “As she walks, something hits her chest and clings, staring into her eyes.”
And just like that, I had a snippet of a story.
“But what hit her? What stared at her?” I asked the Muse. “Let’s see,” she muttered. “It can fly. It isn’t a bird or a bat. Something cute and alien.”
“But what is it?” I wailed. “Where does it come from?”
The Muse wasn’t happy. “Come on. Work it out for yourself. She’s – I don’t know – a cross between a Pern dragon and a pterodactyl.” Then she flounced off for a Bex and a lie-down.
The Muse is like that. Sometimes she just won’t cooperate. But she’d given me some ideas. Both of those species hatch from eggs so after some deep and detailed navel-gazing I decided that little Neyru was hatched from an egg that looked an awful lot like a thunder egg.
Yes, thunder eggs are real. No, they’re not fossilized, unhatched dinosaur eggs. But many of them have fascinating contents – if not quite so fascinating as Neyru. They are formed by volcanic activity, as described by Don, the owner of the Mt Hay gemstone tourist park, one of several places in Australia where thunder eggs can be found.
“Mt. Hay is the remains of an extinct ancient volcano, which was last active about 120 million years ago. When it was a rumbling volcano millions of gas bubbles were present in the molten rhyolite lava …. it is these gas ‘pockets’ that became thunder eggs. Thunder eggs or volcanic birthstones are the result of these “pockets” filling with siliceous liquids containing impurities and trace elements, which crystallize as they cool, and when cut in half, reveal many different colours and patterns.”
Neyru hatched from an egg that looked superficially like a thunder egg. Her protector, Professor Drew Torson, bought the rock during a visit to the famous markets at Laremenssa, which appear in several of my Dryden Universe stories. Drew was on his Sabbatical, touring some of the Empire’s outer planets, and Neyru’s egg attracted him because of certain iridescence in the stone. He was astonished when Neyru came out of a shell that looked like a rock. She wolfed down his steak dinner, too – clearly a committed carnivore. She’s totally alien and Drew has no idea what she is or where she comes from.
Fortunately, little Neyru approaches Afra (the freighter pilot I mentioned earlier) when Drew is attacked. And it all carries on from there. Drew has taken it upon himself to protect Neyru and take her home. Wherever that may be. Just as well he meets Afra. He wouldn’t be able to do it on his own. Want to know more? Tap here.
Leave a Reply