Ada
Unfortunately, Ada’s boss, Dr. Clement wasn’t so impressed with the specimen’s she had collected from Cliffside Crest. He sent her out again the very next day for more “useful” samples.
“I don’t care about cactus spines and sand!” he practically shouted at her when she returned and offered to start analyzing them right away. “I told you to look for unusual specimens!” he said, practically spitting his S’s in her face.
“Yes sir,” she said, taking a small step out of the splash zone. “I am sorry sir!”
“Go back out tomorrow and get something different, something that isn’t obviously from the area. A meteor crashed there, so there must be something close to it or at least nearby.” Ada agreed and resigned herself to another sticky, hot day of gathering.
This time Ada went out early. It was going to be a real scorcher, so she hoped she wouldn’t get sunburned in her sundress. She just knew she’d made a poor wardrobe decision that morning!
Instead of taking cuttings and digging up samples from the area near the road, this time Ada figured she’d have to really get close to the scar, the area where the supposed meteor had smashed into the earth, dragging against the land and finally settling against a pile of rocks which seemed to have buried it.
Digging a small patch of slightly darker soil that looked burnt to Ada’s eyes (a pretty good hypothesis considering the burned trees around it), Ada took a good look at the rocks piled onto the meteor.
“Doesn’t look like any meteor I’ve ever seen,” Ada thought to herself, noting that it was an almost pure white or pearlescent silver. “I bet that’s something Dr. Clement would want a sample from.”
She inched her way into the scar and approached the rock pile. On closer inspection, Ada was sure the meteor was pure metal, not rock. It looked smooth, too, which was extremely unusual.
“I’ll just scrape off a little bit,” she thought, and raised her rock pick and beaker up to collect the shavings.
“What do you think you are doing?”
From A to Z 