Kieran had merely laughed then, and had promptly gone to sleep. When he
had awakened, it had been with the euphoria all gone and with his
present hangover.
"At least," he told himself, "I can truthfully say that this one wasn't
my fault. That blasted spray--"
He looked resentfully at the sleeping woman in the chair. Then he
reached and roughly shook her shoulder.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, first sleepily and then with
resentment.
"You had no right to wake me up," she said.
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?"