Indecision tortured the pair briefly, but their nerve failed. Weapons clattered on the floor.
"What are you going to do with us?" one asked unhappily.
"Nothing, if you do as you're told. Where is everyone?"
The men talked willingly enough. As soon as the lighter had left, Credus took over. Weapons were confiscated, all the women were seized and taken to the lower caverns as hostages. Of the others, some had followed Credus willingly, the rest had been threatened into obedience. Except for his trusted cohorts, all convicts were ordered out of the way pending the return of the lighter. If Wilding's project succeeded, Credus wanted no one to interfere with his idea of snatching it away for his own use.
Wilding snapped commands. The women were to be brought to the main caverns at once. All others who wished to leave Alcatraz were to assemble there without delay. Alarm had gone out during the taking of the supply ship. Probably the patrol cruisers were already converging upon the asteroid, so time was short.
Half an hour later, Wilding stepped before the thronged convicts to address them. A hush fell as he looked grimly into the sea of faces, pale from their sunless quarters and from excitement.
"I can't promise you freedom," he warned. "What I have in mind may not be freedom at all to your way of thinking. All I offer is a hard, dangerous life, and possibly a short one. I'll need strong men and women for what I have in mind if we reach our destination. And competent technicians, first, to see that we get there. If we make it, you'll have a fighting chance at a new way of life. Life totally different from any you may have known before."
"How many can go?" Tiny asked soberly.
Wilding shrugged. "All who will want to, probably ... when they've heard my plan. It may be crowded, but for a short distance the lighter and supply ship can carry all of you. And at the moment, the trip to the asteroid belt is only a ferry run. Shorter than it will be for a long time again."
He told them, then, of his plan. He told them of the fabulous treasure he had stumbled upon in a derelict spaceship, and how he had invested his treasure trove in a new-type spaceship bought and assembled secretly, and hidden among the asteroids.