is harder than findin’ a needle in a haystack. There’s gotta be a hundred twenty million floors. Next time...oh, man, my side!...Becky’s takin’ the stairs.”

While his Papa Bear huffed and puffed, Kit was secretly finding all of this stair-climbing good to keep him in shape for track practice. Hearing the women scream, the boy cried, “Listen!”

“What’s that?” Baloo wondered. “Cats yowlin’ bad opera?”

“It sounds like someone’s in trouble! In there!”

“Oh, good. We get to get away from these stairs.” Baloo, his legs feeling as if he were treading in a bathtub full of jell-o, slowly followed Kit through the nearest door marked with a big black ‘15’.

They ran smack into a bevy of screaming women. The only word they could make out through the chaotic cacophony was ‘gun’.

“Kit, where ya goin’?” Baloo yelled, still out of breath, as the boy squeezed through the women pressing in around them and took off across the room.

“Trader Moe!” was all the boy said.

Seeing the cub racing towards him, Trader Moe turned to flee, but his way was barred by the crowd of women who were all trying to pile through the door at the same time to get away from him. “Move it, ya cluckin’ chickens!”

In the ensuing chaos, Baloo snuck up behind Trader Moe and snatched the stone from him.

“How dare ya steal what I rightfully stole first?” Trader Moe snarled.

“Who woulda thunk I could stoop so low?” Baloo’s laugh changed to a whimper when Trader Moe aimed his gun at him. Watching the gun warily, he drew back his arm. “Go long, Li’l Britches.”

The stone soared over the women’s heads and across the office.

With a burst of speed, Kit ran down the center aisle between the desks, hopped on top of one of the desks, and easily caught the stone. “Got it, Papa Bear!” he said triumphantly.

A familiar bass voice said, “No, we got you, shrimp, an’ da stone.”

Ape Goon, who was dangling Kit by the back of his shirt, echoed, “Yeah, we got you.”

“How did you get here?” Kit squeaked.

Ape Goon looked, bewildered, at his fellow goon. “How’s did we get here?”

Rhino Goon scratched his head. “I dunno. It don’t make sense.”

“It’s time ta take out the trash!” Baloo shoved a wastebasket over each goon’s head, causing the big ape to drop Kit. Baloo then grabbed the stone from Rhino Goon. “Now I got lotsa cents,” he chortled, pushing his way through the women to the hallways, and, consequently, the elevators.

Hopping up and down in rage, Trader Moe shouted, “Stop goofin’ around, ya banana peels, an’ get dat stone!”

Both goons staggered around dizzily asking, “Who turned out da lights?” and “Where did I go?”

Awkwardly climbing on top of one of the desks, Trader Moe growled as he tugged on the waste baskets, “Ya stupids. Can’t even get rid of a little trash can.” He and the baskets went falling to the floor.

Rhino Goon blinked from the bright overhead lights. “Wow, da lights turned back on.”

“Better dan da dark!” Ape Goon added, laughing gleefully.

“Ya dim-bulbs!” Trader Moe shoved the wastebaskets off of him and scrambled to his feet. “Get dat stone!”

Meanwhile, in the elevator set on a straight course up to Shere Khan’s penthouse office, Baloo chuckled to himself about his good fortune. He once again kissed the stone that was his key to prosperity.

Ten floors up, the elevator stopped. The door opened. There was Leo Stedman. He swiftly snatched the stone from the surprised bear. “I’ll take that, thank you.”

“Hey, who are you?” Baloo cried as the doors shut.

“Someone of consequence.” Stedman smoothed his hair down, turned with a jaunty smile, and faced Rebecca. She was holding a fire extinguisher and her finger was on the trigger.

“Hand over the stone, or get sprayed,” Rebecca threatened, scowling. “That’s my consequence.”

The smile faded from Stedman’s face. His lips curled in a sneer. He fled down the hall, stone in hand.

Rebecca hurled the fire extinguisher at him, knocking him out. She pried the coveted stone from his limp fingers and ran for the stairs, where she met up with Molly.

“This is a big place, Mommy. Even bigger than the All-in-One-Mart where I got lost.”

“Stick close to me, Pumpkin. I’ve got the stone.”

“Correction,” Trader Moe said from the landing above. “You had da stone.”

The bearesses retreated down the stairs, but the two goons were there and were moving towards them.

“Give up da stone, lady.”

“Yeah, da shiny stone,” said Rhino Goon.

“Da pretty, shiny stone,” added Ape Goon. “An’ it’s pretty shiny.”

It didn’t look like she had a choice - Trader Moe above, the goons below and all had guns. Trying to shield her daughter from the guns and goons, Rebecca slowly made her way up the stairs towards Trader Moe with the stone held out before her.

Then, Kit threw open the door, causing Trader Moe to be smashed behind it. “There you are! This way!”

Rebecca, holding Molly’s hand, ran up the stairs. Molly stuck out her tongue at the goons before she slammed the door behind her. From behind the door, Trader Moe fell over onto the landing, stiff as an ironing board.

“Dey got away, boss,” Rhino Goon said, taking hold of Trader Moe’s arm.

“Dem an’ da stone,” added Ape Goon.

“Don’t just stand dere like two dumb statues, ya dummies! Get ‘em!”

“Right boss.” The goons simultaneously dropped Trader Moe and opened the door, consequently pushing the alligator down the stairs. He tumbled head over heels. On the landing below, he moaned, “I gotta get me new goons!”

Meanwhile, Rebecca, Kit, and Molly were racing up the stairs.

“Dere dey are!” Rhino Goon cried.

“Where?” asked Ape Goon.

“Why can’t we get rid of those guys?” Rebecca asked, breathing heavily from running.

“I can’t run anymore,” Molly gasped, holding a stitch in her side.

“In here.” Kit pushed open the door to floor ‘52’.

Floor fifty-two was no ordinary floor. It didn’t house offices, and it didn’t even have hallways. Instead, on the other side of the large, cavernous room, was a single glass elevator shaft.

Looking up and to their right, they saw a wall constructed only of panes of glass.

“What’s up there?” Molly asked, pointing up.

“We’re about to find out,” Rebecca replied, hearing the goons’ muffled voices becoming louder.

They piled into a glass-enclosed elevator, which wasn’t part of the main elevator system that ran the height of the building. It went to one place only - up to the glass-enclosed room. It was sort of a separate building within Khan Towers.

When the doors opened, they found themselves in a scientist’s paradise. Men and women in white lab coats tended top-secret projects and painstakingly wrote formidable-looking formulas in laboratory notebooks. The benches that ran the length of the large room were piled with every scientific instrument known to man. Some of these instruments were so new that they were available only to Khan’s employees. Beakers of bubbling brews boiled over Bunsen burners. Curious-looking gadgets filled every available nook and cranny. A multitude of sounds - hissing, clacking, humming, clicking, and whirring - met the three bears’ ears. The bitter and salty smells of chemicals as well as the faint odor of propane gas wafted towards the bears’ noses.

“What is this place?” Rebecca wondered, taking Molly securely by the paw. As they carefully picked their way through whirring machines and flasks full of frothy liquids, the bearess warned, “Don’t touch anything.”

“Mommy, look!” Molly stuck her head through a banister, which surrounded a long, narrow rectangular hole in the floor. Down through this opening, the first floor of the lab was visible; it was similar to the lab that they were passing through, only with fewer benches and bigger machines.

Kit, peering with curiosity into the story below, grinned at the familiar surroundings. “This is one of Buzz’s labs, Miz Cunningham.”

“One?” Rebecca’s eyes looked around at the large room. It, combined with the room below, could have easily housed all of Higher for Hire.

“He has his own private lab a few floors up.”

“You’ve been here before, Kit?” Rebecca asked, leading Molly away from the banister.

“Sure. Baloo’s brought me here to visit Buzz a couple of times. He sure has some weird inventions.”

Staring at ten scientists bouncing on top of a large piece of plastic as if it were a trampoline, Rebecca murmured, “I see what you mean.”

Molly stopped in front of a large, complicated machine that reached to the ceiling. The sole purpose of that machine seemed to be blowing bubbles. The little girl watched, fascinated, as the growing bubble changed from one pastel color to the next. “Neat-o!”

“Come on, Pumpkin. We can’t stop to look today.”

“Can Baloo bring me here someday?” Molly asked eagerly. “I wanna see some more of Buzz’s inventions.”

“We’ll see,” Rebecca answered vaguely.

Molly frowned up at her mother. She knew that ‘we’ll see’ was a polite way of saying ‘no’.

They were almost to the door on the other side of the

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