When they were well under way, Andy went back midships to supervise the contact with the pursuit plane.
Lieutenant Crummit buzzed nervously about the Goliath in his fast single-seater. The airship gradually stepped up its speed until it was doing a hundred miles an hour, going fast enough for the contact to be made.
Back in the cavernous hold of the Goliath a tense crew was waiting to leap to its task. Andy’s father came back to watch the operation.
A great arm hung beneath the dirigible and from this arm extended a V-shaped coupler into which the coupler on the plane would fit. Synchronization of speed was the main thing upon which success depended and it was up to Lieutenant Crummit to creep up under the Goliath at just a trifle more than a hundred miles an hour.
From the observation windows in the keel Andy watched the approach of the pursuit plane. Lieutenant Crummit was coming in as slowly as he dared, maneuvering carefully in an attempt to make the coupling on the first contact.
The triangular coupling mounted on the upper wing of the army plane slipped into the “V” of the arm below the Goliath. There was a slight jolt at the shock of contact and Lieutenant Crummit, assured that the coupling was fast, cut the switches on his motor and looked up expectantly.
Andy threw over the switch on the main control. The large trap door at the bottom of the Goliath rolled back. Simultaneously the arm which held the army plane fast in its grip moved upward rapidly, bringing the pursuit ship with it. In another thirty seconds the army fighter was deposited safely in the hold, the trap door was back in place and the powerful crane, or arm, which had caught and lifted the plane, was back in position.
Lieutenant Crummit leaped from the cockpit and ran toward Andy.
“That’s the greatest aerial stunt I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Why, it’s as simple as falling off a log. I couldn’t miss that big ‘V’ and the next thing I knew the plane was being whirled upward.”
Army officers who had watched the operation from the control room came back to interview the lieutenant and get his report. It was decided to repeat the maneuver, only this time the plane would be set into flight from the Goliath.