The huge ship fell into a flat spin, and Lois --strapped into her seat just two rows back from the loudly cursing mission commander-- thought numbly it’s like being inside a clothes dryer… only much, much cooler. Her thoughts spun out of control just as the airship’s wild plummet…

Stopped.

Suddenly… gently… miraculously…

Stopped.

“We’re leveling off… we’re slowing down!” Commander Morrow shouted, turning to his copilot. “Callahan, did you--“

Major Adam Callahan shook his head. “Not me boss. We’re still dead stick and power down. I don’t know what’s--“

“I… I do,” Lieutenant Anne West, the ship’s navigator, looked up from her monitor station, blue eyes wide with amazement. “I’ve got it on our belly camera, but…”

“On the heads-up display Lieutenant, now!” Commander Morrow barked.

Lois looked up at the video display. There was someone beneath the Constitution, gently cradling the great ship in his broad hands, and….

“He isn’t--“ Lois began incredulously.

“He has to be, “ Lieutenant West assured her without turning around. “And he’s--“

“Flying.” Major Callahan finished, finally saying the words aloud.

“A flying man?” Lois cried, shocked.

“I don’t care if he’s a flying squirrel,” Commander Morrow spat. “Callahan, get that gear down so he can set our sorry butts down.”

The landing was picture-perfect after all. Moments later, Lois scrambled from the space plane, and spotted the tall stranger as he emerged from beneath the fuselage.

Lois put Captain Sam Lane’s endless drills to the test: “Hold it right there buster!”

The young man froze in his tracks. Lois dashed up to his side, her mind racing with questions and Pulitzer Prize acceptance speeches, but then….

Their eyes met.

For the first time in her life, Lois Lane found herself speechless.

It wasn’t just that he was tall and handsome. His eyes were a deeper blue than any she’d ever seen, and his hair was very dark, with an errant lock that curled boyishly across his forehead.

No, aside from his striking appearance --even aside from the astounding fact that he’d just flown through the air and saved their lives-- there was something very different about this man. There was nothing distinguishable about his clothes (he was dressed simply in slacks and a jacket), but there was something….

Lois opened her mouth, but found that she still couldn’t speak. The stranger appeared to be similarly affected. They stood mere inches apart; stared intently at each other.

Gradually, Lois became aware of a distant roar which grew slowly in volume and intensity. The roar coalesced into voices… cheering, shouting, screaming voices. Across the runway streamed hundreds of people who had overwhelmed the security barricades. Before Lois could gather her wits, the crowd surged around her, separating her from the handsome stranger. A look of sheer panic flashed across his ashen face, and suddenly he leapt up into the air… and out of the clamoring crowd.

Stunned silent by the flying man’s sudden --and dramatic-- departure, the mob fell back, thinning. In the confusion, Lois made her way to a pay phone to call in the story to the Planet’s city desk.

Within minutes, her story went out over the AP wire, and newspeople across the country seized upon the name that Lois Lane had bestowed upon the mysterious stranger: “Superman”.