(It was the end of the month. Please vote for me! I want monthly votes!!! I definitely won't forget!)
As the meteorite samples gradually began to emit a green glow, a group of scientists, sweating profusely, tried every possible means to separate them. They used everything they could think of, including small laboratory tractors, lifting equipment, towing cables, and crowbars. Some even recklessly reached out to touch those potentially lethal extraterrestrial substances with their bare hands. But it was all useless: the meteorites did not move an inch. Some force unknown to humanity enveloped the samples, making them seem impossibly heavy, as if they had frozen together with the surrounding space.
Everyone was drenched in sweat, and what made matters worse was the heavy protective suits, which looked fit for charging into Stalingrad in 1942. These things placed enormous demands on their wearers. Trained astronauts would naturally be fine wearing similar gear in space, but the average age of these national treasures at the scene was over fifty, and most suffered from frozen shoulders and assorted orthopedic ailments. The oldest among them had helped send Armstrong into space back in the day—making a group of old men and women with intelligence stats of one hundred and physical stats of one do this kind of manual labor was absurd. Completing three hours of observational experiments in that gear would already count as overwork.
Of course, no one had expected that the very first step of a proper research project would turn out to be physical labor...
These were the finest experts and scholars on Earth. Between them, they represented the pinnacle of achievement in fields such as space geology, biology, and physics. If they formed a group, they could probably monopolize four or five Nobel Prizes for over a decade. Yet