Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
first! Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?" I blinked. "Who?" "My folks." That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart. I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet. My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It wasn't surprising. The It doesn't matter , I told myself. Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!" Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and "I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for the past year." introduction of Charlie. You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first to reach the Moon!" Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?" I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're planning to see the town tonight." "Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room. Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian fizzes and Plutonian zombies. But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration. a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor should look. "Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two months to decide." "No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me." A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben? Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben. of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben." I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my knees with the blast of a jet. "It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have a good weekend." Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a shower, but he tried courageously to be himself. At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said: "Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's sort of funny." spaceman then." "But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?" I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson." Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally alone, never finding a home. Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth "I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben." "It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of sense." The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin, tight coughs. I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?" Some of these days, I won't be so lucky." I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie." I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna. We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I. "When will you be back?" you asked. Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a have lived the kind of life a kid should live. Mickey noticed my frown. "What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—" "No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really." "Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me "Can't a spaceman marry, too?" "Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see, Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for maybe two months, "Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?" "Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened on the Cyclops You can't stay here. You've got to make a choice. open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the way to Pluto. You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now. Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie. My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie! The audiogram had lied! Charles ..." voice droned on. You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—" Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze. Charlie's faded tin box. Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god, a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol. This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space. Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they could tell me what he could not express in words. Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother, brothers, the planets his children. You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes ? We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways? Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his

<question>:
What is Ben's relationship with Charlie?

<options>:
A Chalie is Ben's uncle.
B Charlie is Ben's favorite teacher at the Academy.
C Charlie is Ben's grandfather.
D Charlie is the only family Ben has.

<answer>:

D