She nodded. “I was sent to East Antarctica to determine the feasibility of accessing Lake Vostok from Prydz Bay. The Loose Tooth Rift is opening above a subglacial river that runs west beneath the Avery Ice Shelf before forging south to connect with Vostok’s northern basin. As for your involvement, Ben is right; we used the discovery of the Miocene fossils as an excuse to mount an exploratory mission into the lake. And your presence legitimized the ruse.”

“I don’t get it. What ruse? What mission?”

Ben took another swig of whiskey and passed the near-empty bottle back to Ming as another swath of sand rained down upon our sub. “A few years ago SOAR, the Support Office for Aero-physical Research, sent a reconnaissance flight to conduct magnetic resonance imaging over Antarctica. When they flew over Lake Vostok, their magnetometers went nuts. Scientists from Japan and Germany later confirmed the presence of a magnetic anomaly in the subglacial lake along a rise located in its eastern sector. The affected area spans a sixty-five-mile radius. Whatever’s responsible for throwing us off-course probably packs enough juice to power every city in the world for the next hundred years.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s an extraterrestrial spaceship.”

“What else could it be?”

“Any one of a dozen things—from a localized variation in the earth’s magnetic field to the magnetism of the geology due to the impact of an asteroid. Antarctica got walloped by a huge one about 250 million years ago—killed just about every life-form on the planet.”

“Believe what you want, Zach. Eighteen months ago, my buddy at Skunkworks told me he saw engineering schematics for a thirty-seven-foot submarine named the Tethys. He told me it was a black-budget project designed for one purpose—to access Lake Vostok by traveling beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet through a network of subglacial rivers. The sub’s bow is equipped with a Europa-class Valkyrie laser, an energy-sucking beast designed specifically for Jupiter’s frozen moon. The E-class is powered by its own nuclear reactor that superheats its exterior hull plates. The conductor plates are composed of a calcium isotope that can maintain temperatures of fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit without compromising the metal.”

“And your friend saw this sub being built?”

“No, just the plans. The moment it gets funded, Dr. Greer will go public with photos of the E.T. ship I was assigned to bring back with me.”

Ming drained the remains of the whiskey. “The Chinese have a similar project in development. The project gets funded or derailed based on my report.”

“So you used me, the two of you. Thanks for nothing.”

“Sorry, Doc.”

“Zachary, if it means anything to you, your family will be compensated.”

I thought of Brandy raising William alone and teared up.

Ben whispered something to Ming. Then I heard him climb back into her cockpit.