Free Last Son of Krypton by Elliot S. Maggin Page B

new super-baby sightings there invariably seemed to follow an outbreak of tales of a werewolf in some cavern, or a 100-year-old Indian medicine man who hid out in the woods, or the old reliable flying saucers.
    The child was the source of a number of unsolved mysteries until the day he revealed himself to the world. There was one point when he flew to London and helped Scotland Yard foil a plot to steal the Crown Jewels. He was the "messiah" once as far as a tribe of Bantu were concerned. He was probably among the most widely traveled children on Earth, even discounting his interstellar journey from a dying world.
    When Clark was about ten years old he started wearing glasses and purposely acting timid in front of people other than his parents. That was the Kents' idea; it would allay suspicions that Clark was anything but ordinary.
    There was even a girl-next-door romance of sorts in the boy's life. Lana Lang was Clark's age, and she was a sunshiny little red-headed girl. She tended to consider herself a notch or so above the rest of the people in Smallville. Her mother was editor of the local weekly newspaper and her father was a nationally recognized archaeologist who once made the mistake of telling his daughter that the family chose to live in Smallville so that Lana would grow up in a wholesome small town environment. Professor Lang often traveled to New York, London, Metropolis, Rome, as well as the sites of early American Indian excavations. Lana sometimes went with him, and no one in Smallville forgot it when she did.
    When he was in his early teens Clark asked his foster mother to design a costume for him—an unforgettable one. He wanted to be recognizable instantly, even to people who had never seen him. The costume would have to be made of the material from the blankets in which baby Kal-EI was wrapped when he came from Krypton, as was the indestructible baby jumper he had to wear for most of his first five years. She unraveled the jumper and blankets, Clark cut the material with his heat vision and fused the hems when it was done. He would wear the cape, the skin-tight blue suit and red boots, along with the "S" insignia that would become his symbol.
    His foster parents gave him permission to bore a pair of tunnels into the woods outside Smallville. One was connected to the basement of the Kents' home and one underneath the general store. He was going out alone a lot now, stopping fires, scooping people out from under falling trees, tripping up criminals, all from cover or at a speed so fast that the eye could not register his presence. Jonathan Kent told him that he was as ready as he would ever be.
    A pair of bored, broke adventurers in diving suits tried to rob a bank in Smallville. The event came over a police band radio in the store. Lana was in the store at the time, and Jonathan Kent covered for Clark by asking him to go to the basement and bring up a package from storage. Clark brought back no package. He stripped to the costume he wore under his street clothes, dove through his hidden tunnel and found the robbers jumping into a lake from a pier outside of town. A police car was unable to follow them into the water.
    Superboy plopped out of the sky into the lake and threw the pair out as quickly as they fell in. They tried to gun the boy down and he giggled as the bullets bounced harmlessly off his chest. The criminals surrendered in shock and the police were amazed. The patrolmen on the scene took Superboy to Police Chief Parker.
    George Parker thought it was a matter for the Mayor's attention. The Mayor thought the Governor should know. The Governor, naturally, used the alien teenager as an excuse to call the President. The President, who was very graceful in strange and bizarre circumstances, promptly invited Superboy to spend the next weekend at the White House.
    The last son of Krypton was an instant star. Martha Kent's Horatio Alger books finally seemed to make a little sense.
    Smallville was