CHAPTER 2

LEVIN GOT ON HIS TWO-TREAD and, parting regretfully from the Pitbots, rode homeward.

He found Socrates pacing anxiously, looking through a newly delivered stack of mail. Levin rushed into the room with his wet and matted hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist. Despite his physical state, he was merry.

“We excavated four tunnels!” he announced buoyantly to his beloved-companion, who regarded him with a warily flickering eyebank. “And some maltuned Pitbot struck a hot one, and an explosion shook the mines, and the crater floor was buried in rock! And how have you been getting on?”

“Dirt! Grime! Filth! What do you look like?” said Socrates scoldingly for the first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. “And the door, shut the door!” he cried. “You must have let in a dozen at least.”

Socrates could not endure flies, for he had an inexplicable fear that one would fly into his joints and lay eggs, disabling him.

“Not one, on my honor,” Levin replied with a hearty laugh. “But if I have, I’ll catch them. You wouldn’t believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?”

Five minutes later the two old friends met in the dining room. Although it seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, when he began to eat, the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good.

A small red bulb alongside Socrates’ monitor lit up. “A communiqués has arrived for you,” the Class III said. The communiqué was from Oblonsky, and Socrates cued it for Levin to view:

“Dolly is at Ergushovo,” said the little hologrammatic vision of Oblosnky, “And everything seems to be going wrong there. Her I/Butterchurn/19 has exploded, the well is not running clear, and a II/MilkExtractor/47 had a disastrous accident. Poor Dolly, never mind the cow! Do ride over and see her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be so glad to see you. She’s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of them are still in orbit.”

“That’s capital! I will certainly ride over to her,” said Levin. “Or we’ll go together. Darya Alexandrovna is such a splendid woman, isn’t she? They’re not far from here! Twenty-five miles.”

“Thirty,” Socrates corrected, with a wry smile, for he knew what was already in his master’s mind: To meet with Dolly and find out news of Kitty Shcherbatskaya.