The Falcon grinned. "Everything's under control," he said reassuringly. "There are plenty of Earth women there. They'll fix you up with clothes or whatever you need."
"Thank you, Falcon," Jean said, but fear was flickering again in her blue-green eyes.
They walked down a gentle ramp, crossed on a suspended walk to a web-tier that hugged one wall of the gigantic room. Jean peered about in quiet excitement, open amazement in her face when she saw the hundreds of fighting ships cradled in rows. She watched the men that worked with a methodical thoroughness upon the gleaming hulls, fitting the coppery muzzles of space-cannon into place. Carts darted here and there on soundless wheels, carrying supplies to piles that never grew, because other men immediately and without hurry emptied the piles in steady streams into the holds of waiting ships.
Long radi-light tubes striped the ceiling three hundred feet overhead, filled the room with the clear yellow glow of Earth sunlight. There was an air of competence and efficiency about the scene that was compellingly impressive.
"A throg!" Jean gasped in sudden terror.
Curt glanced down at the spider man who minced daintily along on his fragile hairy legs. His double-facetted eyes glanced toward the suspension-walk, and two of his legs lifted in salute. A piercing vibrational whistle followed. Curt grinned, whistled an answer in a series of flatted notes, waved.
"That's Lilth," he explained. "He's a good guy, even if he is a Ganymedian. His family starved to death because they could not mine enough xalthium." He gestured toward a gigantic slug inching along the floor, pulling a loaded cart. "That's a Venusian gastod," he finished. "He is utterly helpless and harmless. He is also the only gastod not in captivity. His race exuded pure vitamin K from their bodies, so the Food Administrators imprisoned the entire race. He is a pirate here and does what he can—for oddly enough he has a brain and a soul."
They had crossed the bridge and walked slowly down a lighted tunnel. The tube debouched into a great amphitheater, at the mouth of which the group halted for a moment. Shouts, whistles, hissings came from the groups of men before them. In a gigantic pool of steaming water, Venusian reptile-men swam with loud splashing. On the field at the right of the pool, Earthmen played space-ball, their tiny hand-tractors lancing pale-green rays at a floating gravity-neutralized sphere. The beams made a network of power that spun the copper ball like an air bubble in a whirlpool.
Spider men sat side by side, curling their legs beneath their globular bodies, then nipping them out again, a few at a time. Gravely they compared the numbers flipped out, then paid their wagers from piles of money at their sides.