“Precisely. As the ice sheet moves, its weight compresses gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide downward while raising sediment and other objects caught in its wake. The frozen remains of these two behemoths were squeezed topside as the ice became part of the Amery Ice Shelf. By analyzing the ice attached to the creatures’ remains, we were able to determine the location of their habitat while they were alive.”

“Which is… ?”

“Lake Vostok—the largest and deepest body of water on the continent.”

I looked more closely at the satellite image. At one hundred and sixty miles long and fifty miles wide, Vostok was roughly the size of Lake Ontario, only its eleven-hundred-foot depths easily dwarfed those of the Great Lake. My eyes traced a river that appeared to run from Vostok’s northern border to the Amery Ice Shelf. “Dr. Ahmed, how far would these creatures’ remains have had to travel down this river to reach that rift?”

He was ready with the answer. “We calculated the journey to be between eight and nine hundred miles, depending upon what section of Vostok they were in when they engaged in battle. The lake also possesses two islands, so they might have fought on land. We are bringing in a team of paleontologists to inspect the fossils for traces of soil.”

Brandy inspected the satellite image. “Ye say this lake is buried beneath the snow?”

Dr. Ahmed nodded. “Beneath an ice sheet thirteen thousand feet thick. The lake was sealed off approximately fifteen million years ago.”

“But its waters are frozen… ”

“No, Mrs. Wallace,” Liao replied. “Lake Vostok’s waters are actually quite liquid.”

“That makes no sense. How can a lake remain unfrozen beneath, what… four thousand meters of ice?”

Dr. Liao seemed slightly annoyed at Brandy’s distraction. “The water remains liquid because of two factors: the tremendous pressure generated by the weight of the ice sheet from above and the presence of geothermal vents pumping superheated waters into the bottom of the lake, which may actually be a tectonically active rift.”

Dr. Ahmed pushed back from the table. “Dr. Wallace, Lake Vostok represents a precious, unspoiled time capsule into our past, a fossil-rich water reserve that may still harbor life. This recent discovery has accelerated everyone’s interest in both the government and private sector. The United States has joined China and Australia in a joint effort to develop the means to explore this lost world, while taking every measure to protect its microbial life from contaminants—something the Russians have not taken to heart. With a new budget in excess of a billion dollars, the conversation has changed from developing cleaner methods of deep ice-core drilling to actually sending drones into the lake itself.”