And my reply. “Copy Mars Departure, vector Bravo One. See you in a couple of years. Seward’s Folly out.”For the younger bridge crew, this was th...ir first launch. One of them spoke up, “Sir, may I ask a stupid question?”I knew what was coming and was happy the question had been asked. “Go ahead, Lieutenant, stupid answers are my specialty.”“Well, Sir, I was wondering why we had to ask Mars station for permission to depart? We’ve been underway for a month now.”This was a teachable moment for my. I didn’t close the main door of my house.Suddenly, my sister came inside and searched for my mom. She didn’t know where my mom had gone. She didn’t also know about my arrival from Coimbatore.I just wanted to scare and prank my sister. So I hide under the bed. She came inside the bedroom and sat on the bed and relaxed for some time. I could feel that she was lying on the bed. Her legs were touching the floor. I thought I could touch her leg and scare her. But she suddenly got up and made a phone. Normally you need twenty years in to retire and get a pension, but you’ve already got four years. You could conceivably retire at thirty-eight or thirty-nine. Believe me, that’s not old! You could get another job and collect a paycheck there and a pension from Matucket.”My eyes popped open at that. That was younger than my parents! “That’s interesting, Captain.”He tossed me over a packet of paperwork held together by a binder clip. The top page read ‘Application’. “It’s time to make up your. "That isn't our son."And it wasn't. Standing before us, dressed in Clark's Superboy costume,was a girl; a girl who looked enough like Clark to be his sister. Shewas a pretty young thing, with a sweet oval face and shoulder-lengthhair. She wore Clark's super-uniform, the same one I had sewn from theblankets he was wrapped in when he landed on Earth. It had adapteditself to the girl's smaller, and much curvier, frame. Our stunnedsilence lasted only a moment, but it felt so much longer, before.