Then, before Kieran could retort, she seemed to realize the monumental irony of what she had just said, and she burst into laughter.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Go ahead and say it. I had no right to wake you up."
"Let's come back to that," said Kieran after a moment. "Why did you?"
Paula looked at him ruefully. "What I need now is a ten-volume history of the last century, and time enough for you to read it. But since we don't have either—" She broke off, then after a pause asked, "Your date was 1981, wasn't it? It and your name were on the tag of your pressure-suit."
"That's right."
"Well, then. Back in 1981, it was expected that men would spread out to the stars, wasn't it?"
Kieran nodded. "As soon as they had a workable high-speed drive. Several drives were being experimented with even then."
"One of them—the Flournoy principle—was finally made workable," she said. She frowned. "I'm trying to give you this briefly and I keep straying into details."
"Just tell me why you woke me up."
"I'm trying to tell you." She asked candidly, "Were you always so damned hateful or did the revivification process do this to you?"