Read Kendra Kandlestar and the Door to Unger for Free Online Page B

mouse was dressed in a small cap and goggles, and he was wearing a long yellow scarf. Ratchet was about to light the fuse with a long match.
    “RATCHET!” Kendra exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Oh, hi,” the raccoon greeted her with a wave of his black paw. “You’re just in time to witness our great experiment.”
    “Experiment?” Kendra gasped. “Is that what you call this?”
    “No,” Ratchet said proudly. “I call it a cracker seat .”
    “Oh, dear,” Oki squeaked from his place on the rocket, high above the ground.
    “Oki!” Kendra called. “Are you all right?”
    “Well, I’m rather afraid of heights, and I’m not quite sure I want to fly into outer space,” the mouse answered timidly.
    “I told you already; you’re not going into outer space,” Ratchet hollered. “Just to the other side of the magic curtain. Now be a good slave and don’t complain!”
    “He’s not your slave!” Kendra cried with exasperation. “He’s your apprentice.”
    “Oh, yeah, right,” Ratchet said apologetically. “I’ll get that right one of these days.”
    “Oki, get down from there right now!” Kendra ordered.
    “But we haven’t launched yet,” Ratchet said.
    “And you’re not going to!” Kendra said, ripping the matches out of Ratchet’s paws. “Really, this is the most ridiculous invention you’ve come up with yet! You’re going to fry poor Oki with this thing.”
    “No, I won’t,” the raccoon said defensively. “You want to get out of Een, don’t you?”
    “But this won’t do it,” Kendra told him. “You can’t fly over the curtain. It’s like a great dome that covers us. Poor Oki will just go smashing into it. That’s if he survives the . . . the . . .”
    “Blast off?” Ratchet offered.
    “Oh, dear,” Oki squeaked again.
    “What possessed you to put a rocket under Oki’s tail?” Kendra demanded as the tiny mouse clambered down from the cracker seat.
    “Well, think about it,” Ratchet said.
    “I’m trying not to,” Kendra said.
    “Well, your uncle did say I was full of magic perspiration,” Ratchet declared in his defense.
    “No, not perspiration ,” Kendra corrected with a sigh. “He said inspiration .”
    “Oh,” Ratchet said, scratching his whiskery chin. “What’s the difference?”
    “One means you sweat a lot—the other means you have . . . er, ideas,” Oki explained as he eagerly climbed down from the firecracker.
    “Come on you two,” Kendra said, still shaking her head. “That’s enough inventing for the time being. I think we’ll stick with trying to find the secret tunnel.”
    “Thanks, Kendra,” Oki said, squeezing the girl’s hand as they set off toward Faun’s End and the mysterious crypt. “You saved my whiskers that time.”
    “I think I saved more than that,” Kendra told him.
    “Well,” Oki said, “it’s certainly not dull being Ratchet’s slave—er, I mean apprentice!”

     



WHEN KENDRA AND HER FRIENDS arrived at the statue of the Fallen Faun , they found that the doorway leading to the crypt was open and waiting for them.
    “Professor Bumblebean must be here already,” Kendra remarked as they entered the dark and gloomy chamber. “Maybe he decided to get an early start on the day’s search.”
    Ratchet had lit a torch, but the chamber was still very dark. They cast their eyes around the crypt to see if anything was out of order, but the peculiar artifacts—goblets and chests and small tokens—were where they had left them the day before. Along the far wall of the crypt, life-size Een statues stood in a row, staring blankly ahead, just as they had done for hundreds of years. There was no sign of Professor Bumblebean.

     
    “Hello?” Kendra called out, giving her braids an anxious tug. “Professor Bumblebean? Are you here?”
    “That’s strange,” Ratchet said, scratching his whiskery chin. “If he’s not here, why was the door open?”
    “Oh, I don’t like this at all,” Oki