"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.