Ms. Yu leaned over the hole. "Cassie! Are you all right?"

No answer.

"Cassie! Speak to me!"

Webby nuzzled against me, speaking in Parasaurolophus. "Whatcha doing?"

"Trying to get Cassie out of a hole."

"Oh. Can I help?"

"Please don't. I don't want you to get hurt. It's not safe."

Buttface ran circles around the opening and panted.

The smell of cigarette smoke wafted into my nostrils. A pair of black Oxfords clomped up the grass beside us. "Damn! She fell down there?"

Cynthia yelped and clutched her chest. "Jeez, Mister Arnold! Don't sneak up on me like that! I nearly pitched over the side!"

John just silently puffed his cigarette and stared into the Mayan ruin.

I hunkered down, searching for footholds, or maybe a staircase. "She climbed down."

The man knelt next to us. "Where? I don't see her."

"The floor collapsed," I and Cynthia blurted at the same time.

The Proceratosaurus lay down, watching us.

Cynthia kept eying the vine. "You got a rope ladder or something? I don't think that thing will hold me."

Mr. Arnold stood up and puffed. "I'll look in the boat."

As he walked away, I flinched as a hand ran up the length of my tail. A moment later, it patted me on the rear. Frowning, I turned my head to the side.

The blonde girl had come back. She had the look every kid gets when the go to the farm and see a pretty horse.

"Hey! How would you like it if somebody just came by and touched you on the butt?"

The girl quickly put her hand in the pocket of her coveralls. "Sorry, Mister Dinosaur."

"Mandy!" someone called from the beach. "Lunch time!"

The little blonde raised her voice. "Just a minute, mom!"

We all turned to look.

A bony woman in a sundress, permanently surprised look on her face from too much plastic surgery. The moment she spotted me, that overstretched face pinched into a scowl. "Amanda, get away from that thing! You'll get salmonella!"

"Okay!" Amanda slapped me on the rear and ran to the woman.

We returned our attention to the hole.

I stood up, removing my life preserver. "I'm going in."

Cynthia raised an eyebrow. "How? That vine isn't even strong enough for me. What, are you going to jump down?"

I pointed to my toe claws. "I think God gave me these things for purposes other than disemboweling my prey."

"You mean, the scientists—"

"Agree to disagree on that point, but if you want to get technical, maybe God gave toe claws to raptors in general, for purposes other than disemboweling. Like, for example: You know those nasty looking hatchet things people used to climb Everest?"

"And this is coming from a guy who wears this." Cynthia held up my life vest.

"We can have a swim class when we get back to Mister Hammond's pool. I'm telling you, my claws can handle these limestone blocks."

"Fine, fine," she groaned. "Don't come crying to me when you're stuck down there and we can't lift you back out."

"No worries. I'm used to being stuck in little prisons." I dug my hand claws into the dirt and backed into the hole, kicking my toe claws into gaps between the blocks.

Never scaled a rock wall before, even a fake one in my cage. The moment I had gone down a few feet, I slipped and came close to dropping to the floor. I suppose a fall from that wouldn't be fatal, but the concept of a hairline fracture to the spine didn't appeal to me.

Cynthia sucked in her breath. "Careful, Albert! — Hey!"

Webbigail seemed to have more confidence in my climbing ability than Cynthia and I did, for she jumped onto my head for a ride down the wall.

Not a comfortable sensation, using your nails to dig into rocks. Felt like they would snap off at any moment. That being said, I imagine it's harder for a human with those brittle fingernails. It kinda hurt, even my toe claws, as large as they were.

At least I didn't have too far to drop, about the height of a small house. I jumped to the floor halfway down.

Cynthia shook her head. "You're lucky the floor didn't fall in."

I stared at the limestone paving stones. "I know...Do you smell mildew?"

"Dude, I'm up here. All I smell is dirt, grass, and..." Buttface licked her. "This guy, I mean, girl."

It would have been a beautiful location, had it not been so exposed to the elements. Moss and vines clung to everything, the ancient paints used to decorate all the glyphs had worn down to ugly flakes, sculptures disintegrated to a pile of rubble, the elaborate bas relief murals crumbling away. The cartoony doodle glyphs and little pictures of guys posing like they're hiding inside a cabinet had seen better centuries.

I leaned over the dark hole the girl had fallen through. "Cassie?"

Webbie mimicked my sounds, trying to look heroic like me.

I couldn't see much of anything down below, just a rippling pool of dark water. "Cassie!"

The girl's voice sounded faint and far away. "Albert?"

"Are you all right? Where are you? I can't see anything!"

"I'm okay, but I'm really cold and wet. Could you get some towels?"

I called to Cynthia, but she was talking to Arnold about getting rope tied to a tree or something. A life ring got involved; I guess they intended to shove a tree branch through it to make the line extra secure.

"Cynthia! Towels plea—"

The floor had given away beneath my claws. I fell with a shriek.

In books, I've seen photographs of colossal Olmec heads. Fat faced, pug nosed, scowling guys with weird helmets. Never before had I (or archaeologists, for that matter) seen a full statue of that stylistic tradition.

A pair of these immense sculptures held up the ceiling. They reminded me of Sumo wrestlers, all big and fat and muscular, but I remembered the books said they actually played a game called Chunkey, which involved throwing spears at a ball.

The figures I fell past, I guess they played Chunkey with the sun and moon. I've seen television commercials where famous athletes do similar things.

The place had a fair bit of ambient light. These Mesoamerican builders appeared to have known something about refraction and reflection, using polished Mica to reflect light down from some exterior source.

I could only marvel at all this for a few seconds before swallowing water. I panicked and flailed in the cold aqueous mineral, gasping for air.

"Relax!" Cassie shouted. "You're going to tire yourself out!"

She dove into the water, swimming up to me.

Well, not `up to me,' up to me, because you know I probably would have pulled her down with me and made us drown together. "Fill your lungs with air! Your lungs are like balloons! They'll keep you afloat!"

My responses came out in sputters. "They're—filling—with—water!"

"Shove the water down and go up for a breath!"

Webbigail chirped more instructions at me from above.

I coughed, taking in more water.

You'd think maybe there'd be some nice limestone blocks below me, but I guess those lay submerged at least seven or eight feet underwater where I couldn't reach them. Like, way down there, where H.P. Lovecraft's scary Cthulhu monster and all his friends hang out. My feet couldn't touch anything. I kept inhaling water.

A gigantic sculpture of some Aztec death god leered at me from the back of the chamber. At the opposite end, water flowed from the mouth of a partially collapsed tunnel, bringing to mind unwanted comparisons:

The underground, suffocating river of slime from Ghostbusters 2.

The Cape Tainaron/Mataron caves, rumored to be the entrance to Hades, gate of the underworld. A watery pit leading into darkness. I'd seen pictures.

Pluto's Gate, also rumored to be the gate of Hades.

How long before I toured Hades firsthand?

"Fill your lungs with air!" Cassie repeated.

I frowned at her.

Realistically, a little kid isn't going to be able to save a big heavy raptor from drowning. Unfortunate, because I also left my life vest outside. I mean, how was I to know they had an indoor pool?

Cassie swam closer. "I'm gonna try to help you, okay? Don't go crazy and down me, or I'm going to be mad."

I couldn't respond without swallowing water, so I just nodded a little. Amazingly clean stuff, by the way, untouched by mankind for thousands of years, desalinated, filtered through rock lichen and so forth. If one were to fill their lungs with water and die, this would be the ideal place to do it.

The girl put her arm around me, tried treading water a few different ways to lift me to surface level. "Get some air and hold it in. You're a balloon!"

"What if I go under?" I gasped.

"You won't go under. You ever stuck a basketball under water? Just hold it in."

I didn't have the air to say Hammond never let me have a bathtub, I mostly showered. I had attempted to submerge a ping pong ball once.

You know how useful advice is in an `About to die' situation like this. It pretty much carried into one ear and out the other with all the water I swallowed. (Okay, okay, my ears are internal — I can't really wear glasses without them falling off, but you get the idea).

What did help: Cassie's lifting, using my toe claws like flippers, and figuring out the breathing-floating thing on my own.

When Cassie taught me how to backfloat, I suddenly discovered that the room contained more than chilly water that wanted to kill me.

Wiggling shapes of refracted light danced across the huge Chunkey players, finely chiseled ceiling blocks above me, and the three faces peering at me through the hole.

"Great job, daddy!" Webby squealed.

Cynthia clapped and whistled. "Way to go, Albert! I knew you were an apex predator!"

John, though, his eyes just bulged, his skin turning a light shade of brown. "Nope!"

He got up, backing away from the hole.

"Stay where you are!" Cynthia called. "We'll get you out of there!"

Cassie paddled below the opening. "You got any towels? Blankets? It's cold down here!"

"Really? It's gotta be eighty up here. We're in the tropics!"

"I don't know, I'm still cold!"

Cynthia glanced over her shoulder. "We're going to get more rope and try to get you out of there. Stay put!"

I nervously kicked my feet and treaded water. "Ummm...Is it okay if I move about a little bit? Like, for example, getting out of the water?"

She smacked her forehead. "Of course you can get out of the water, Albert. The last thing I want is a drowned dinosaur...Just don't get far, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Hey!" she blurted as Webby made a Parasaurolophus `cannonball' bellow and dove through the hole.

Splash! She paddled up to me, butting me with her head.

Cynthia groaned as she watched her. "Great. Now I got two dinosaurs and a kid to rescue!"

With Cassie's help, I dogpaddled to the staircase, taking in our surroundings with awe.

The towering Olmec sports figures stood atop large stone blocks. I think the area had been designed as an entryway of some sort, because of the half submerged staircase, and the collapsed arch behind us.

All over the walls they had more of those doodle glyphs and squished up cartoon people. I guess the carvings spelled out words and stuff, but I and Cassie couldn't read them.

At the top of the staircase towered Coatlicue, a weird monster thing with snake heads and assorted human body parts, all mashed together in a squatty human body shape. A big skull stared out from its middle. I'd seen pictures of her in books, but this one had an archway between its legs that you could walk through. Deliberately suggestive, by the way. The Freudian symbolism fits with the whole birth mother mythology. On either side of the idol stood Chacmools, big bathtub things sculpted to resemble reclining people with no stomachs.

Past the skull-snake monster's legs, lumpy sculptures lurked in a dimly lit hallway.

Cassie leaned over a Chacmool, staring into the basin. "What do you think this is for?"

"Uh...killing people and draining them of their blood?"

She stared at me like I intended to do that to her. "You're making that up."

"No, I'm pretty sure that's what they did with those."

Cassie ran her hands across the rough stone. "Cool."

We stood shivering for awhile, the novelty of the strange environment slowly wearing off with each passing minute.

"What's taking them so long?"

"Maybe they went back to the house to get rope."

"And just leave us here? Really?"

"I don't see how they could get it. Arnold's scared of my wife, and Cynthia speaks raptor...Unless that lady with the stretched face has some rope in her boat..."

With a sigh, Cassie seated herself beside the Chacmool.

I whistled the tune from Temple of Doom. "Great. Now you got that song stuck in my head."

She stared. "You know that one?"

"Yeah. It's John Williams. Slave Children's Crusade."

"I thought that was Short Round's song. How do you know that music anyway?"

"They play it on the park's PA system every day between 11:30 and 2:00."

Cassie frowned. "I guess that explains why Buttface knew the Star Wars Imperial March."

I whistled the tune again. "Listen to that echo! This place has great acoustics!"

She rolled her eyes. "Hey, why were you watching Mexican television this morning instead of all those videos we've got?"

"Uh, because I tried to watch Xanadu and the VCR ate the tape?...I guess you were in bed when it happened, huh? I kinda find Xuxa entertaining anyway."

"There's a Video Disk Player, you know."

"I...don't know how to use that thing. I didn't want to break it."

"And you know how to use a VCR?"

"It's not like I'm programming it. Mister Hammond showed me a recording of a staff guy loading the park's TV programming one time. And a Mister Rogers episode featuring a VCR. I didn't see a program about what to do when all that tape gets stuck inside the machine. I tried to use the Betamax thing, but it's not hooked up, and I don't know how to plug it into the TV."

"Those things are going the way of the dinosaur anyway..." She gave me an apologetic look. "I mean, Dodo, I mean, people—"

"I know what you meant," I groaned.

"You think Mrs. Raptor would like this place?"

"No. She can't swim."

Cassie tapped the Chacmool impatiently. It could have just been the water lapping below us, but I thought I heard blood sloshing inside the stone basin.

Ancient places like that are full of spooky unexplained noises. I mean, my brain understood that maybe water gurgled a bit when it entered the chamber, but imagination can turn that into voices. That's why there's so many books about guys hearing ghosts in radio static. Compile this with...I don't know, the structure settling, maybe a breeze traveling through cracks in the stonework, and I swear I heard the voices of long deceased Mayan or Aztec guys chanting in their dead languages.

...Like, down the hallway, where you can't actually hear the syllables, to make it extra creepy. "Did you...hear something?"

Cassie only shrugged.

"So you're scared of the monster under the bed, but this doesn't bother you at all?"

"I have a Velociraptor for a pet. I think I'll be okay."

"I'm not your pet."

"Fine. A Velociraptor for a friend. Plus Indiana Jones doesn't get scared."

"Yeah? What about snakes?"

"I thought you didn't watch those movies."

"I didn't say that. I saw Raiders. Well, a version where they cut to the next scene whenever he got tied up or handcuffed. But he was afraid of snakes."

"Okay, he forced himself to be brave, so I gotta do that too." The girl wrinkled her face like I'd just farted. "Wait, why did they cut to the next scene?"

"I dunno, something about them not wanting me to break out of my cage?"

Cassie scratched her head.

"Yeah, I don't get it, either."

I swear I saw my reflection in the polished mica moving on its own. I excused my reflection in the water because it's water, but the one in the mica...you can only blame so much on refraction from the underground lake. I mean, whenever I looked away, I thought I saw the other raptor trying to kill and eat Cassie's reflection. When I turned around, Mirror Albert pretended to be a normal reflection...I think. It still could have been imagination.

The girl stood up, digging a mini flashlight out of her pocket. Minor miracle that it worked after being submerged. "I'm going to look around. Let me know if Cynthia comes back."

I opened my mouth to protest, but she had already taken off between Coatlicue's legs.

I trailed her down the tunnel, between rows of stone wrestler guys, all clad in thongs, frozen in various aggressive poses. Again, a little dimly lit, but I have good night vision, and she had a flashlight. "C'mon! It's not safe! You already fell down a hole! You're lucky you didn't break your little bones on the way down!"

"That's why you gotta stay back and let Cynthia—"

She yelped, not finishing the thought.

Up ahead, a vast dragon-like head smoked menacingly in the dark.

We faced a large blocky sculpture of Quetzalcoatl. Rather impressive, despite the faded paint job...kinda resembled a big alligator with a crown and wings. The weird thing was all that smoke billowing out its eyes and mouth. Didn't know where it came from.

Webby stared at her surroundings with discomfort, chirping at me.

"If you want, you can go back and wait for Cynthia."

"Nuh-uh."

"Suit yourself."

Cassie gave me a look like she wanted me to do that myself, but instead pointed to the sculpture. "What's this thing?"

"It's called Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of—" I flinched as a reptilian shape emerged from the smoke, raising its nasal crest. "Shit."

"Wow, they have gods for everything!"

"Shhh!" I hissed, pointing to the dark figure.

That `Roo Koo Koo' Strange Brew sound fluted out the creature's nose.

Cassie swallowed. "I see what you mean."

Webby cowered behind my legs.

A second shadow materialized. Fins popped out its neck with a rhythmic rattle. "You thought you had me beat. But you're about to face defeat!"

"I believe a strategic retreat is in order," I muttered, pushing the girl back.

"Why? It's only two dinosaurs. You can take them."

I just shook my head. "Something...doesn't smell right." I pulled her back further.

"Guys!" a voice shouted behind me a little too loudly. "I told you not to run off! We got a rope and a ladder tied up there. I think we can—"

A gigantic scaly body now appeared behind Quetzalcoatl. Roughly sixteen feet in height, Tyrannosaurus teeth, its huge head had eyebrow ridges reminding me of spoiler fins from a `57 Chevy.

Allosaurus.

The one and a half ton monster roared, and...long octopus tentacles spread from the sides of its thickly muscled neck.

"The fudge?" Cynthia cried.