But the huge Nardak swept into her dock in a very different manner.
CHAPTER XIII
WITHIN THE SILVERY HULL
The Nardak was coining into her hangar—not drifting through the air, but rolling in on wheels. From far down the track line that entered the covered dock came a heavy rumbling. Then a long line of trucks appeared, running smoothly over the docking rails. Anchored to these was the vast, silvery shape of the Nardak, an aeronautical leviathan nearly eight hundred feet long by a hundred and forty feet high.
“The Nardak on wheels! I thought it was a ship of the air!” gasped Renaud.
“So it is,” laughed Captain Bartlot, “but this is the simplest way of getting her into her hangar. Even with these rolling doors opened to make an enormous entrance, there is always the danger that the cross winds and gusts that sweep into the hangar will batter this lighter-than-air craft against the walls or roof. She’s been on a test flight. Her crew landed her out on the unobstructed field, then anchored her on wheels for the trip indoors.”
After the Nardak was in the hangar, the ground crew stepped forward and fastened her ropes through the iron rings in concrete pillars that studded the floor here and there on either side of the docking rails.
“We won’t have all this assistance and landing paraphernalia to help us when we get up into the ice country,” said Bartlot. “But we are counting on another landing method that we are going to try out when the need comes. All right, young man,” motioning Lee to follow, “want to see this 'cigar’ of mine at close quarters?”
The huge dirigible in its sheen of silvery paint did look like a mammoth, tinfoil wrapped cigar—a cigar eight hundred feet long!
As Lee Renaud went up the little set of drop-steps and entered the hull, he was overwhelmed at the amazing intricacy of the interior. Seen from without, the simple lines of the dirigible would seem to indicate that it was nothing more than a great gas bag. But within that silvery casing was a structure as complicated as that of a steel skyscraper. Three thousand metal struts criss-crossed in a maze of latticed girders.
“Tons, and thousands of tons of weight!” thought Lee. “How can this load even lift, much less fly!”