Automatics lack them

Usage examples of clutches.

Not that there hadn’t been clutches successfully hatched on makeshift warm beds, but the sand flooring appealed to the queens.

Todd cried, pointing at a pair of very small snakes, probably at the dunes for their first clutches, that zipped around the front of the tractor.

Good, then, I can escort Kai to Mayerd's clutches and take Varian on to the quartermaster.

We have her beloved Benisur in our clutches, you must remember, to insure her good behavior.

And if Luzon doesn't help us get 'Cita out of the clutches of that pervert, he certainly won't want all his fine friends knowing he went along with a vile thing like that, now will he?

Although Kris couldn't imagine how they could manage to help others escape when they didn't even know how to themselves, that was not as important as getting humans out of the clutches of the mechanicals.

Since coming to maturity three years ago, Mihall’s bronze Brianth had sired sufficient clutches that Sean had grounded the randy bronze during queen mating flights.

Sometimes her intuition was downright uncanny: she could accurately predict the size of clutches, the distribution of the colours, the sex of babies born in the Weyr and, occasionally, even the type of weather in the future.

In the propagation of dragons, the pair had found no fault with Telgar Weyr: it had had the largest clutches of all the Weyrs in the last three years as the dragons themselves answered the tide of preparations for the coming struggle.

Only three fire-lizard clutches had been found in Ista in the last five decades, though it was thought more might be found in the Southern Continent, but that quest had so far been futile.

She might be one of his best teachers though the rumour was that children learned their lessons to get out of her clutches - but her attitude towards him, and his proposed revitalization programme, was totally hostile.

There had been few enough clutches and Impressions since S'loner had died.

However, with these timetables, we can manage until Ramoth's first clutches have matured.

Of course, thought F'nor, the Oldtime queens didn't produce large clutches like the modern queens, nor many golden queen eggs.

If the Oldtimers would throw open the mating flights of their junior queens to bronzes from other Weyrs, they'd soon have clutches as large as the ones at Benden, and undoubtedly queen eggs, too.