THE SUPERWOMAN FROM KRYPTON

THE ETERNAL COURSE. PART III

Smallville, Kansas, May 1948

On the veranda of a large but modest farmhouse a woman was enjoying the afternoon breeze. Martha Kent was an older woman in her sixties. Despite her austere dress she was still flirtatious. She still dyed her hair auburn and painted her lips. Her late husband Joe loved it when she did it...how she missed him. She pulled a newspaper out of a cloth bag and unfolded it. It was the Metropolis' Daily Planet, last Friday's edition. It wasn't the main headline, but one of the main lead-ins on the front page read "ARMY AND AVIATION INDUSTRY LAUNCH JOINT CORPORATION. TELCORP AND LORD INDUSTRIES MAIN CIVIL PARTNERS, a story by Clara J. Kent." How proud she was of her daughter. Not only was she an excellent reporter in Metropolis who had already made the front page of her paper several times, but, although no one in the world knew it except her and a couple of others, her daughter was Superwoman, the world's most powerful superheroine flying through the sky in her red cape helping others.

Her thoughts were a sort of premonition because from the sky came the sound of a kind of fast and strong breeze. Her daughter landed gently right in front of her.

"Good afternoon mother," Clara went over to kiss her mother, she took her hand.

"How was your day?"

"Great Scott, it was terrible! Among other things I had to intervene this morning in China in a train derailment. It turned out to be a prisoner train. They are in a civil war. I don't even know if the prisoners were from the communist or nationalist side. I refused to capture the escaping ones and stopped the guards' bullets. I have taken the wounded to Red Cross field hospitals...I have just heard that the head of our troops in Asia has asked me not to intervene in any country in Asia without military authorization...not even if it is a humanitarian emergency", Clara dropped into a rocking chair on the terrace and closed her eyes.

Martha held her daughter's hand.

"Well, you'll get by. You always do..."

Clara smiled.

"Mom, Can I bring Krypto to you this afternoon? You can keep him for a few days. The poor boy can't be alone all the time in the apartment, and I don't want to ask the neighbors for more favors for a few days."

"Sure, he'll keep me company. Will you stay for dinner tonight?"

"No, I'm having dinner with Jimmy, my friend from the newspaper."

"Is that the photographer?"

"Yes."

"He's a very nice guy, he's funny."

"Yes, he is."

"You could invite him here to Smallville."

"It would be complicated; it takes several days to get here and back if it's done the normal way...I'm not going to fly him here."

"Will you tell him someday?"

"Mother...it is very difficult."

"And Mr. Lane?"

"It's even more complicated."

"He is a gentleman."

"He is very good to me at the newspaper. He gives me the freedom to run my stories and makes sure our boss leaves me alone."

"Clara, but he's a married man and..." Martha knew her daughter very well.

Clara remembered the last time she as Superwoman had spoken to Louis... it had been a few months earlier. After defeating Metallo, saving Louis' life from Luthor's henchmen and preventing the flood caused by the blowing up of three large dams. A catastrophe Luthor had used to blackmail her into confronting Metallo. She wanted to turn Luthor over to the police...Metallo had died of exhaustion caused by the very heavy armor Luthor forced him to wear. She had done everything she could to save his life, but John Corben, the man who had been Metallo, was poisoned and collapsed from the billionaire's bloody invention. Luthor smiled, "It was just an experiment, training."