19 HERE’S ANOTHER INTERESTING QUESTION IS THE UNIVERSE A GOOD EGG OR A BAD EGG

19. HERE'S ANOTHER INTERESTING QUESTION. IS THE UNIVERSE A GOOD EGG OR A BAD EGG? The Exterminators paused mid-dive, as the sea, and the sky, and the islands themselves, rocked crazily round them. This eruption was different from the first. This time, what had happened was that the heat of the Volcano had HATCHED the Fire-Stone. For one of the many secrets of the Fire-Stone, that Hiccup had worked out from Old Wrinkly's riddle (and I am sure that you clever readers and listeners have guessed this too) is that it is not, in fact, a Stone at all. It is an Egg. The Egg of the exceptionally rare Fire-Dragon.

And one of the reasons that Fire-Dragons are so exceptionally rare is that the conditions required for them to hatch are so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. For the Fire-Egg can only hatch in the heat and turbulence of a Volcano that is exploding. But the Fire-Egg also gives out chemicals that PREVENT the Volcano from doing just that. First, you have to imagine the extraordinary, impossible hugeness of a Fire-Dragon. Then you have to imagine that hugeness all coiled up and packed inside an Egg no larger than a human head. That is the Fire-Egg. The walls of this Fire-Egg are made of a material so terribly, terribly strong that only a temperature of seven hundred and fifty degrees Celsius can melt them or crack them. Normally, the Fire-Egg is laid on a nook on the upper levels of a volcano crater, where the temperature never reaches levels high enough to hatch it. But if it topples down (or in this case, is thrown) into the heart of the Volcano itself and sinks down deep into the molten lava, then that kind of heat is sufficient to crack the unbelievably hard shell. It takes about six or seven minutes, the same sort of time that it might take you to hard-boil a chicken's

egg. Then, when the shell is cracked, all that energy and hugeness packed down to such a pinprick smallness are suddenly released in an instant and the Fire-Dragon EXPLODES outward with an energy and a force impossible to describe, like a sort of mini Big Bang. So what the Exterminators, and the Vikings, and Hiccup and Toothless saw was SOMETHING erupting out of the Volcano crater, SOMETHING that shot up so high it seemed as if it could touch the very stars. Down on the deck of The Blue Whale, Stoick flung up an arm to shield himself from the brightness, for to look at it was a bit like looking at the sun itself, and pained the eyes. "What is that?" breathed Stoick in awe. Humungous and Camicazi and Fishlegs, who had landed safely on the deck of The Peregrine Falcon, forgot their fear as they gazed up in wonder at the extraordinary, terrible beauty of this sight. The SOMETHING that erupted out of the Volcano was a DRAGON that seemed to be made entirely out of fire. Of course, that is impossible, but this is what it looked like. Gleaming muscles and scales of flame. Burning

talons and scorching fangs. It threw back its great fiery head and let out a great ROAR that echoed across the islands, and even reached the trembling ears of the fleeing Viking Tribes miles and miles to the south, watching all this unfold on the horizon, standing silent on the decks of their rocking ships, soaked to the skin by the wildness of the storm. The Fire-Dragon turned its great flaming red- gold eyes down toward the earth and they focused on the Exterminators, hanging below it in great black trembling clouds. And when the Fire-Dragon looked at the Exterminators, what it saw was PREY. The Exterminators knew it too. One minute they were the predators, leaping down toward Hiccup with greedy talons outstretched. The next, the world was shaking and vibrating around them, as if the gods had suddenly re-shaken the dice. And now that the world had stopped shaking again, they had suddenly become the victims. The Vikings were now in the extraordinarily privileged position of being the audience to a scene played out in the blue skies above that had not taken place for hundreds and hundreds of years. A scene that dramatically demonstrated the exquisite balance of nature that Hiccup had placed such trust in.

The fight was played out against the background of the tempest at its peak, Thor's thunder rolling out magnificently from the blue-black clouds, great flashes of white sheet-lightning lighting up the drama in intermittent bursts, and then dying away to darkness. Hiccup watched the combat lying floating on his back, in the grave coldness of the sea below, and the battle raging in the sky above him reminded Hiccup of a shoal of fish trapped in a tide-locked bay by a mighty shark. The Exterminators shot shrieking across the surface of the stormy sky in their panic. They scattered hither and thither, in great fleeing groups that sped across the firmament, splitting and re-forming as they dodged through the jaggedy lightning, right to the very edges and corners of the horizon. But however fast or far they flew, they couldn't escape the Fire-Dragon. The Fire-Dragon never moved from its position on top of the Volcano. It reached out with its great arms, flaming gloriously upward like tall watery trees of fire, and scooped up the Exterminators in huge handfuls, thrusting them down its glowing gullet with noisy relish.

It played with them like a cat does a mouse, letting them think they had gotten away, and then catching them up with its burning tongue. The Fire-Dragon swallowed the whole lot of them, tossing them into his blazing mouth in their struggling thousands, plucking them out of their hiding-places in the smoke, sucking them in in satisfied, crackling bursts... until there was only one left, zigzagging across the sky like a demented bluebottle. This was the one with Alvin on its back. "You haven't seen the last of me, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Thi-I-I-I-ird!" yelled Alvin the Treacherous (but he was far too far away for Hiccup to hear him properly). And then the Fire-Dragon picked up the Exterminator Alvin was riding by the spear in its breast, between two delicate flaming fingers, for all the world as if it were a wriggling worm on a cocktail stick... and down it went too. The Vikings held their breath. Were they to be the next to go? But no, the Fire-Dragon has particularly evolved to only feed on Exterminators. The Fire-Dragon let out one final ROAR of triumph, the contented song of a meal caught and ready for digestion.