Ninety South

Fifteen million years of silence. One drill.

A lake the size of an inland sea lies sealed beneath two miles of Antarctic ice — cut off from the sun, the air, and every living thing that came after. Dr. Elin Kavanagh came to the bottom of the world to keep eleven people alive while a drill breached that dark for the first time.

What comes up the borehole is pale, patient, and hungr...