It lay in a kind of metallic cradle, almost like a ship ready for
launching on its ways. Ahead of it, metal plates stretched away like
rails, running toward the lip of the Palisades. Its quadruple floats,
each the size of a tugboat and each capable of being exhausted of air,
constituted a potential lifting-force of enclosed vacuums that
very largely offset the weight of the mechanism. It was still a
heavier-than-air machine, but the balance could be made nearly
perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical, turbine-like
drums gleamed with metallic glitters--three on each side along the
fuselage--could at will produce an absolutely static condition of lift
or even make the plane hover and soar quite vertically.
There the monster lay, outstretching its enormous sextuple wings, each
wing with an area of 376 by 82.5 feet. The non-inflammable celluloid
surfaces shone white as fresh-cut ivory, clean, smooth, unbreakable.
The plane reminded one of some Brobdingnagian dragon-fly, resting for
flight, shimmering with power as it poised for one swift leap aloft
into the night.
Bohannan, still a bit confused, noted the absence of any exhaust from
the speeding engines.
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