Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nic.gs. NS
Answer
nic.gs. 5 NS b.nic.gs.
nic.gs. 5 NS a.nic.gs.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
a.nic.gs. 5 A 45.54.76.1
b.nic.gs. 5 A 157.53.224.1
a.nic.gs. 5 AAAA 2607:f740:e633:deec:0:0:0:2
b.nic.gs. 5 AAAA 2607:f740:e00a:deec:0:0:0:2
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0