The happy Andrew immediately felt an extreme love and tenderness for Sergey. Together with Barsov, they carefully held him under his arms and their care didn’t grow less when Sergey began to tear away angrily  and persuade them that he felt excellent so far. They dragged him into the depths of the laboratory, where Sergey was intercepted by coquettish girls and pushed into the armchair. Barsov immediately vanished, — obviously to guide, tutor and administer, — and Andrey inserted the disk into a humming  crossbreed of a metal safe and a cubicle, which seemed to have been screwed together by a mad assembler. The monstrous hybrid blinked with green, yellow and blue lights, roared and threw out a closed case with an opening, where the girls gently put Sergey’s hand.

—   It is too early to twitch, — explained Andrew. — Nobody is touching your hand   yet. We are copying your biological field and transferring it on the disc.

The case gave a squeek and slipped into silence.

—   Are you sure you have transferred all the field? — Sergey asked urgently.

—   We’ll check, — Andrew said, took the disc out and put it on a small stand in front of the computer. The stand hid sockets for cords, one of which stretched to one of the computers, and the other one — to a huge metal case in the corner. The display showed the sbow-covered yardwhich Sergey had already seen. It was empty to Andrey’s satisfaction. He peered into the monitor, nodded, pressed some button — and the disc vanished. Something flickered on the screen,. Andrey cursed and convulsively pressed the button. The disc reappeared — in the teeth of an unbelievably dirty ruffled   dog. The dog shook, splashing wet snow, bared its teeth and snarled at the screaming girls.

—   Doggy. Nice dog, — Andrey said ingratiatingly. — give back the disc, you scum.

The good doggy wasn’t in the mood  to give the disc back. The transfer from the January of 1953 to the hot July of 20…  wasn’t conducive to a positive frame of mind and soul.

Sergey was indignant.

—   My disc! — he yelled.

—   Here, take asausage, — offered one of the girls gently, a leggy blond with a white cap dangerously perched on her fluffed up hair.

The dog agreed to sniff the sausage, but obviously didn’t approve of the changes that had happened toit during the previous fifty years. He nervously looked around for some bush, failed, and raised his hind leg on the stand.

—   Bump it off! — shouted Andrey. The dog twitched its leg and obediently bumped the stand, pouring it with a yellowish smelly jet.

The second girl was gingerly approaching the dog with a small vial in her hand.

—   Look here, probably you shouldn’t… — Sergey began.

The girl decisively directed the jet on the dog’s nose. The dog yawned with pleasure and fell on his side.

—   Why is it wet& — asked Sergey, watching how Andrey was cleaning the mucked slobbered disc.

—   Well, the dog sucked it, — answered Andrey, wondering at Sergey’s slow-wittedness.

—   No. I mean  the dog. Why was it all wet and with snow in its…

—   Because it came from January. The January where you will go soon.

—   January? What do you mean, January? You mean,the January… the past January?!

Sergey was awed.

—   But how did she get here, in the first place? She hadn’t had any disc implanted, had she?

—   Here is the first lesson for ouy, — Andrey explained., passing the disc to the girls who desinfected it and put it into the humming case again. — The disc snatches to another time everything in the radius of seveenty centimetres around it. The dog there in the past took the disc with its teeth and found itself withingthis radius. That is why once you are there please don’t drag anybody here. Especially people.

—   People??

—   Exactly. When youwant to press the disc watch out for people. No people should be closer than seventy centimetres to you at the moment. Got it? Well, OK, — he looked at the dog, snoring in the corner. — And neither should animals. In case you are in the Zoo, take care you don’t fetch a lion with you to the laboratory. Always keep centimetres in your mind. Right?

Andrey supressed the desire to specualte about the presence of Sergey’s mind worth speaking of.

Sergey suddenly became angry.

—   I wish you would stop standing here and telling me about lions, — he said tartly. — Tell me where I am going to live there. And I suppose I will have to work somewhere?

—   Good boy. That is the very core of the subject, — Andrey said approvingly.

A dark-haired girl sneaked up to Sergey from behind and pressed a mask to his face. A sweet smelling gas filled his nostrils, and Andrey carefully placed the suddenly slumped Sergey into the armchair.