The Sqiuom Shell Mother patiently lay wrapped around the large rocky mass that would harbour her eggs over it’s phenomenal journey.

The workers brought more rocky mass for her. Voraciously she opened her maw and sucked it in. Hours later it was execreted in another layer over her egg.

Eggs rather, as the mammoth rock was really composed of layers of microscopic eggs mixed with the rock she consumed and certain binding agents secreted by her digestive and reproductive tracts.

After some time she uncurled herself from it, and gave it a gentle nudge. The workers came and picked it up, vomiting flame from their thrusters as they set it on it’s course.

Soon it would bring her hatchlings to another planet, one chosen while she was still an egg. The third planet of the G2 dwarf star would make only another thousand orbits or so, before it collided with her egg sac.

Her hatchlings would be born in the heat, and seed the world, and build a new colony to expand from.

“Soon” she crooned to empty space, “soon.”