Chapter 10
The BioBubble event was the best thing to happen to astronomer Cosmo Pagan since he'd married his third wife. Or the Galileo flyby. Or maybe Shoemaker-Levy colliding with Jupiter. It was hard to say, on a cosmic scale. All were pretty spectacular events in the Big Bang that was his terrestrial sojourn.
Every time the heavens burst forth with a new wonder, or Cosmo Pagan fell in love, his career went up like a happy rocket. It was amazing. It was life affirming. It was exhilarating.
And it all started around the time the Viking 1 probe landed on the red sands of Mars and began transmitting pictures of the dead planet's arid surface.
Cosmo Pagan was an untenured astronomy professor in those days back at the University of Arizona. There, he met Stella, tawny, tenured and on the fast track, career-wise.
"So how does a guy get tenure in a place like this?" Cosmo asked on their first date at the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill outside Flagstaff, where they took turns looking up at red Mars through the same refractor Percival Lowell had used to study the canals of the Red Planet a century ago.
"You earn it. Usually by publishing."
Cosmo swallowed. "That sounds like work. I'm a people person. I do better in front of a class than on the printed page."
"There isn't a back door to enter, you know," Stella reminded him.
But Cosmo Pagan found one. First he married Stella Redstone, then after two years of marital stargazing, he popped the real question. "Why don't we collaborate on your next book?"
"Why?"
"Because you have tenure and I need it."
Stella thought about it. She thought about it hard. She had a growing academic reputation to protect.
"We'll give it a shot," she said guardedly. "But you have to pull your own weight."
"Deal," said Cosmo, shaking hands with his wife of two years-three tops, if things worked out. He was already shtupping the occasional undergrad.
They started with a strict division of labor, just as they did with the household dishes. Stella did the research, Cosmo the first draft and she the polish.
But typing was not Cosmo Pagan's strong suit, and no one could read the smeary Sanskrit that passed for his penmanship.
So they tried alternating chapters. Cosmo kept getting sick when his turn rolled around. Or he made Stella redo her chapter before he tackled his. The project fell further and further behind schedule.
Then in exasperation, Stella pulled out of the project. "You write your damn book. I'll write mine."
That's when Cosmo Pagan filed suit for divorce and his half of the book, as yet untitled.
It took three months of protracted litigation, arguments over commas, theories and metaphors until Stella threw in the towel.
"Look, just give me my freedom from that lazy leech," she told her lawyer. "He can have the book, the house, everything."
When Universe was published, it sold better than anyone ever dreamed, earning Cosmo Pagan full tenure and a cool quarter-million dollars, an unheard-of sum for a popular-science textbook at that time.
While the book was climbing the bestseller lists, Pagan received a telegram from his ex wife: "You turned my elegantly written prose into popular junk."
Cosmo fired back an equally succinct reply. On a postcard. "Popular junk is the future of this country."
When PBS approached Cosmo to adapt Universe for a twelve-part science special, Cosmo Pagan saw an opportunity undreamed of by tenured professors of astronomy.
"I have to write it. And host it," he insisted to his agent.
The PBS executive producer turned him down cold.
"How can he do this?" Pagan asked his agent.
"She. Her name's Venus. And she calls the shots over there."
"Did you say Venus?"
"Yeah. Venus Brown."
"I never slept-I mean met a woman named after a planet," Cosmo said wonderingly. "Especially one as interesting as Venus. It's my second-favorite planet after Mars."
So Cosmo Pagan asked her out. On the third date, he asked Venus Brown to marry him. She turned him down flat. It took two more tries until she succumbed to his boyish charm, but finally they were married in a brisk outdoor ceremony with the planets Mars and Venus hurtling through the evening sky overhead.
On the honeymoon, after visiting multiple cataclysmic orgasms on his new bride, Cosmo Pagan popped the question again: "Let me write and host the show."
"Why should I do that?" the newly named Venus Pagan asked.
"Because I'm your husband and you want me to succeed in life," Cosmo answered with his usual boyish directness.
She wrapped him up in a warm hug and said, "You already succeeded. Wildly. And repeatedly."
"I need to succeed bigger. And better."
"Let me sleep on it. Okay?"
"I haven't given you the galactic orgasm yet."
"Galactic orgasm?"
"It's the one after you scream you can't handle another one," Cosmo explained. "The perturbations are marvelous."
"Oh, really?"
Three orgasms later, she said "Yes! Yes! Yes!" to the heavens, and Cosmo Pagan took that as his green light. And no morning-after protestations of temporary nuptial insanity were accepted.
It was a wonderful marriage. It led to fame, wealth, a Tucson, Arizona, suburban home with its own private astronomical observatory where the seeing was best and more groupies than even a studiously handsome astronomy professor in the space age could ever wish for.
It might have gone on forever and ever if Cosmo Pagan hadn't gotten caught in flagrante delicto.
"We're done," Venus Pagan snapped after slapping Cosmo's face in both directions while the future unnamed third party in the divorce suit yanked on her panties.
"You can't divorce me," Cosmo blurted.
"Why not?"
"Think of how our careers are intertwined."
"What careers? You're famous. I'm a behind-the-scenes producer. You get all the glory. Hell, you hog it. I'm Mrs. Cosmo Pagan who gets thanked on the dedication page in small print."
"Look," Pagan said, getting down on bended knee, "we have a lifetime of split royalties ahead of us. Don't tear that apart over one eager-beaver blonde."
"You must be thinking of a prior beaver," Venus said tartly. "That was a brunette who just scampered away."
Cosmo made his voice as serious as nature would allow. "I won't give up the house."
"The Mars observatory, you mean. I'm sick of it. Don't think I don't know you point that kaleidoscope of yours at the neighbors' windows."
"It's called a telescope. And what about the children?"
"What children?"
"The two asteroids orbiting the sun named after us. They're our celestial offspring. They'll be together long after we're gone."
"Maybe they'll break up, too," Venus said thinly.
And the door slammed.
It might have been a career wrecker, except neat cosmic stuff kept happening. Comet Kohoutek.
Comet Halley's return. The Challenger disaster. Shoemaker-Levy. Every time the cosmos hiccuped, Dr. Pagan was invited on news programs and talk shows to interpret the burp.
When comet fragments struck Jupiter, Pagan was on the phone trying to convince the planetary society to strike the name Asteroid Venus until further notice.
"We've never had a precedent for renaming an asteroid," he was told.
"I can't orbit the solar system with my ex-wife for all eternity," Pagan lamented. "Think of how bad it looks. Besides, I'll probably remarry. Just leave the name blank until then. I guarantee my next new wife will be worthy of celestial immortality."
The response was disappointing: "No. Sorry. Not even for you."
Hanging up, Dr. Pagan silently vowed to get around the galactic red tape somehow.
He found it while flipping through interview requests from news organizations interested in interviewing him on the Jupiter-impact event.