The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [135]
There was something inside the doors. As Nina’s vision adjusted to the darkness, it revealed what she at first took to be two stone blocks, about five feet high and three feet apart, before realising they were merely the ends of larger constructs. Together, they formed the two halves of a steeply sloping ramp that rose a good thirty feet at the far end, dropping almost to floor level before rising back up; the comparison that leapt instantly to her mind was a ski-jump.
There was no snow inside the chamber, though. So what was it for?
An answer came as she and Shankarpa moved further into the cave, the others following. Something was perched at the top of the ramp, slender parts extending out to each side like wings . . .
Not like wings. They were wings.
‘It’s a glider!’ Nina cried, completely forgetting the threat of the guardians as she ran for a better look. ‘Khoil told me about the stories in the ancient Indian epics where the gods had flying machines. I thought they were just legends - but they were true!’
‘The vimanas,’ said Girilal. He laughed. ‘My father told me those stories when I was a boy - and I told them to my own son. Do you remember?’
‘I remember,’ said Shankarpa, amazed.
Nina started to climb the ramp, eager to see the craft at the top. ‘What Talonor said in the Codex all makes sense now. This is why it took the priests one day to get up here, and only an hour to get back - they flew! They released the glider, it slid down the ramp, then hit the ski-jump at the end and flew out down the valley.’ She examined the stone slide; it was smoothly polished, with a small lip at the outer edge to guide a runner on the glider itself.
Eddie looked back through the doors, seeing the cliff at the far end of the canyon. ‘They’d have to pull up pretty sharpish when they took off. Cock things up, and you’d smack into that wall.’
Nina shone her flashlight at the glider. It had an organic appearance, the wings formed from gracefully curved wooden spars. The wood itself was dark and glossy, given some kind of treatment to strengthen and preserve it. Between the spars, the fabric of the wings was still stretched taut. It appeared to be a fine, lightweight silk, covered in dust and yellowed with age.
‘This is incredible!’ she said as Shankarpa ascended the other ramp. ‘The ancient Hindus had actual, working flying machines before the Greeks even came up with the myth of Daedalus. And it took until the sixteenth century before Leonardo designed anything similar.’ The glider’s undercarriage was made from the same wood, a trapezoidal frame with ski-like metal runners attached. These weren’t as corroded as she would have expected; the cavern was dry as well as cold. The craft seemed designed to carry at least two people, lying prone on a slatted platform beneath the wing.
Girilal grinned up at her. ‘Well, it is often said that we Indians invented everything.’
‘Who says that?’ Eddie asked.
‘We Indians,’ Kit told him.
Nina directed her light along the ancient aircraft’s fuselage. At the end of the slender wooden body was a fan-shaped tail. There was something affixed beneath it, a long black cylinder protruding out past the end of the glider’s frame. At first she was puzzled as to what it might be . . . before a cord hanging from its end gave her a clue: a fuse. ‘Here’s something else you might have invented before anyone else,’ she said. ‘Rockets.’
‘You’re kidding!’ said Eddie. ‘I thought the Chinese invented them.’
‘I think they’ll be very annoyed when they find out someone beat them to it. They came up with gunpowder around the ninth century, but our friends here were using it thousands of years earlier. It must be how they got up enough speed to launch.’
Below, Girilal walked round the base of the ramp. ‘Look here,’ he called.
Nina aimed the flashlight down to find him prodding his stick at a stack of more black tubes. ‘Careful, don’t poke them! They’ve been here for who knows how long - they might be unstable.’
Eddie had a different opinion.