Ben stood next to her like a proud papa. “Stone Aerospace designed her shape so that she’d slide through the lasered ice funnel like a greased dart. Once we enter the lake, the wings hyperextend away from the chassis to give us more stability. We lose a bit of protection going with an oval interior pod instead of a standard sphere, but she still withstood eight thousand psi during lab tests, which is forty percent more than Vostok’s surface pressure and twenty percent more than the lake’s maximum depth. The acrylic is composed of quartz Lexan.

“Forward and aft ports house our high-definition night-vision cameras and broad-spectrum floodlights, in addition to the sonar array and hydrophone mics. Body panels are composed of titanium and a composite material called Isofloat, developed by the Aussies to withstand water pressure in excess of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch. Behind the cockpit is an accessible storage area that holds eighteen lithium-ion batteries. The engine pumps out four hundred and fifty horsepower and runs on rechargeable batteries and hydrogen cells, and I can’t wait to see what she does when we let her run in open water.”

“Why’d they make her so narrow?”

“Had to. Ice penetration rate is inversely proportional to the square of the diameter of the vehicle. Every time you double the vehicle’s diameter, you increase the power requirements by four times. Once we’re in Lake Vostok, we’ll be running autonomously. Of course the beauty of the design is that we’ll still be able to suck power from the surface generators.”

“Unless the fiber-optic cable snaps.”

“Even if that happens, we’re still self-sustained for up to twenty hours at maximum cruising speed. Stop being such a naysayer. If you’re still scared after all these precautions, then maybe the real problem is that you need to grow a bigger pair of balls.”

True stepped between us, shoving Ben backward toward the hole in the ice. “Listen tae me, sub pilot. I witnessed our boy here descend intae Loch Ness to bait himself to a fanged beast forty feet long, wearing nothing but a Newtsuit—nearly got himself swallowed whole. When you pull a stunt like that ye can go ’round setting the standard for scrotes. Until then shut yer yap hole, or I’ll shut it for ye.”

Ben grinned nervously. “Personally, I have no intention of ever using a dive suit to perform an endoscopy on a fish.”

True continued advancing, backing Ben closer to the edge of the rectangular hole in the ice.

“Oh, sorry. I can tell by the empty gaze in your eyes that my endoscopy reference went completely over your thick head. See, True, an endoscopy shoots a probe down your esophagus. In your case, however, I’d recommend a colonoscopy… to see what crawled up your ass.”