The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from himself--I couldn't tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache, just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment, the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just supports for that slab of rock. They were bars. And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen missing Space Scouts. "Snow!" One of the boys, his hair as raven as Snow's was blonde, tore away from the group and rushed over to the bars, jamming his arms between them to reach out for her. "Ted!" Snow cried, and rushed over to him. It was kind of awkward, embracing with the bars in the way, but they did it anyhow. "Ted, dear Ted! Are you all right?" "Yeah," he said, with a note of uncertainty. "Yeah, I guess we are. Only, I was almost giving up on you." "Have you," the Martian's icy voice cut into the reunion, "seen quite enough?" "Hold your horses!" I hollered at him through the cage. "She hasn't checked him for broken bones, yet!" The Martian, whether out of patience or alien incomprehension of my sarcasm, left the cage where it was, and stood waiting. "I knew you'd get my message, Snow!" said Ted eagerly, quite forgetting his doubts of a few seconds before. "I just knew it. When do we get out of here, hey? We want to go home!" Apparently adventure lost its tang when the cage had first been lowered into the--the whatever it was that served us as a floor. The other boys had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing, as the next best thing to a human-type mother. "Oh, you poor kids," Snow sobbed suddenly. "Have they been feeding you? When did you last wash your face, Ted?" "They don't feed us at all!" Ted said sorrowfully. "It's been weeks now since we ran out of candy, and--" "Jery Delvin!" the Martian's voice interrupted imperiously. "Before that look on your woman's face erupts into some more of her tiresome vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?" "Sure," I said, folding my arms. "As soon as you explain it to me!" The Martian seemed to be gathering himself for a cry of utter exasperation. Then he caught hold of himself and said with rigid calm, "We merely have held the children within a field of radiation that obviates the necessity of their taking alimental nourishment." Snow looked over her shoulder at me, wonderingly. "He means, honey, that they fixed it somehow so the kids didn't need to eat. I guess it was simpler than running a catering service." "Didn't need to eat!" she exploded. "Doesn't that blob of black sparklers know that growing boys need food to grow!"