h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wasn't sure which brother was nuttier -- Joseph or Peregrine -- but luckily their mother bailed me out before they could continue. A tall platinum blonde in her sixties, Hope took me off to one
side to explain that she was *not* a Mardukian. "Cosmo could have steered the boys toward real science when they were young," she told me, "but he was lost in the stars and hardly noticed them. Joseph went to divinity school, and Peregrine worked at Radio Shack while he tinkered with his inventions. They're in their thirties now, and beyond my influence....."

"Do you believe that Peregrine really went into the future and met interplanetary gurus?" I asked.

"I'm sure he went *somewhere,*" she conceded, "but what was really there I can't conceive. Maybe it was a masquerade party with a strange theme? Or a movie set like 'Argo'?"

I looked back at Joseph, who was with his wife and kids now. Hope's blond hair and good looks had carried through to her sons and grandchildren. They looked like an all-American family planning a picnic, not a mission to the outer Solar System.

The hall where the wake was held was the planetarium next to Cosmo's elegant home near Denver. It had never before been used for a wake, but it was designed for meetings of astronomy associations, which the wake resembled. Many astronomers were there to pay their respects. At night the overhead dome rolled back to reveal the sky, but it was 3:00 in the afternoon now, so the dome was closed. The night sky was depicted in detail there.

Jennifer, Cosmo's second wife, was standing near a bust of Copernicus, staring up at the ceiling. I went over to say hello.

[Amy P]