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hearing him give her the go-ahead, she wasn’t really listening.
     
     
    BACK AT HER DESK, LOIS SMILED TO HERSELF AS SHE REMEMBERED how she had gotten her big scoop on Superman.
    Sure, Clark Kent had been the one to break the story about the strange flying man clad in blue and red. Clark, a country bumpkin fresh off the bus from Nowheresville, Kansas, had arrived at the Daily Planet offices when Lois, like every other reporter in town, was scrambling to get the story. In a single day, the mysterious hero had saved an airplane from crashing, foiled a robbery at an art museum, and saved five children and a puppy—never forget the puppy!—from a burning tenement. But nobody knew who he was or where he’d come from.
    And Clark had waltzed in with a finished report, a front-page article that gave the amazing details of all the hero’s exploits. He had meekly asked for a job at the paper, and Perry gave it to him on the spot. Clark Kent—with his self-effacing sense of humor, his chivalry, and his bumbling kindness—had somehow scooped Lois Lane.
    While Clark’s article introduced Metropolis to the mystery, Lois had given them the man. She had been the first to speak with him, had pried out answers to the most intriguing questions….
    On that terrifying, wonderful day, Lois had been hot on the trail of jewel thieves who’d stolen the famed traveling exhibition of exquisite Buccellati jewel-encrusted cups from the Siegel Museum of Precious Gems and Geological Oddities. The thieves had peppered the air with a barrage of bullets while innocent bystanders dove for shelter.
    Lois had joined the chase, racing along in her 1951 white Ford convertible. The police were desperate to catch the robbers, the thieves were desperate to get away, and Lois was desperate for her story. She meant to scoop the whole world with an up-close-and-personal eyewitness account. She gunned the engine, swerved to pass a slow-moving car, and closed the distance to the fleeing robbers. She yanked her head to one side when a bullet drilled a spiderweb crack through her windshield and punched a hole into her car’s beautiful red upholstery. She didn’t slow down.
    The thieves reached the Twelfth Street Bridge, a monstrosity that sprawled over the sluggish green-brown Metropolis River. On the other side, once the robbers got into the lower-end slums, a rats’ nest of alleys clogged with grocers’ carts and festooned with laundry-draped clotheslines, they would be able to elude pursuit. On the span of the bridge, the jewel thieves shot at the lead police car, striking its front tires. The car spun out, and the closely following squad cars swerved and dodged; one cop car scraped the guardrail, sending sparks flying.
    Lois was driving too fast, intent on the chase. She slammed on the brakes to keep from plowing into the halted police cars, laying a smear of black rubber on the metal gridwork of the bridge. Her bumper smashed through the guardrail, and the shrieking metal slowed her momentum. But not enough.
    Her convertible pushed through, its front wheels rolling into space, and the undercarriage caught on the edge. Lois held her breath as the snappy convertible teetered slowly, tipping her inexorably toward the river. Lois let go of the wheel and scrambled into the back seat, clawing her way toward the trunk in an attempt to keep the car balanced for just a few more seconds.
    The other cops jumped out of their vehicles and rushed to help, but Lois knew they’d never get to her in time. She absolutely hated being the damsel in distress! The thieves, laughing and shooting at random in celebration, raced over the bridge and escaped into the maze of the slums.
    Metal groaned as the convertible pitched forward, its heavy V8 engine dragging the front down and off the edge of the bridge. Lois scrambled from the back seat, seized the folded canvas of the convertible top, and tried to pull herself onto the trunk. So close! Two policemen had almost reached her,