CHAPTER XXI Stepping into the chamber the darkness fell so suddenly that they had to stop and hold their position while the spots danced before their eyes.

Only the Red Panda seemed unaffected, and Kit wouldn't have liked to guess if he had a setting for just such an emergency in his mask lenses, or if he was faking it.

"'Look at this,' he said, before either of the others really could.

The flying squirrel felt her way forward and found herself standing beside a massive stone that

took up most of the passageway and stood almost four feet high.

"'What the heck?' she asked, turning back toward the rubble-strewn entrance.

She could now see that there had been doors under all that rock,

and they were shattered now, thrown aside like toys behind the furious blast

Max had unleashed.

That must have been something to see.

But all of the other stones that had been thrown this far were smaller.

Football-sized at best.

This one was a monster. How did this thing make it this far were smaller. Football sized at best. This one was a monster.

"'How did this thing make it this far?' she asked, amazed.

"'It didn't,' the Red Panda said gravely. "'Touch it.' "'She did. It was perfectly smooth. This wasn't rubble at all. She looked up. The chamber seemed endless.

"'She plied her flashlight up and still could see nothing. If this stone fell from above,

"'it would have been travelling at a heck of a clip when it crashed to the ground.

"'As near as I can tell, the Red Panda said, the debris from the blast must have triggered

something in the floor.

Or perhaps the blast itself did it.

Doesn't matter which, really.

The point is that if anyone did get past those doors, the first thing that was meant to happen was for them to get squashed like a bug.

...