The Ford brothers were interested in getting to know Li Du, but they had no intention of talking to him about meteorites.
When they talked about meteorites, they only talked about the difficulty of finding them and where they had searched. They never talked about the purpose of finding meteorites or how they planned to use them after finding them.
As it happened, Li Du did not care about that.
Finding the fifth dimension, traveling through time and space, finding the origin of life, and so on, he thought it was all nonsense.
Anyway, he would not waste energy and money on such things. He would rather make money and build a comfortable living area in a place he liked, like these people.
He thought that Steve and the Ford brothers had money to burn. For them, taking risks and exploring these so-called unsolved mysteries might be a kind of spiritual sustenance.
The Ford brothers had been called by Steve to study the meteorite.
Encouraged by the meteorite, they decided to search the area around where Li Du had found the meteorite the next day to see if they could find another one.
Newman invited Li Du to go with them, and Li Du readily agreed. He was quite interested in the job of meteorite hunter. If he could find another ten or so meteorites, his bank account could grow again.
As long as there were no major storms during the warm season in Antarctica, life was quite comfortable.
The sun was shining brightly outside, and many seabirds flew over the camp. Antarctica ushered in a period of the year when life exploded.
Li Du and Sophie walked on the glacier, and after lunch, they took a dog sled along the glacier to see the natural wonders of the ice sheet.
The flat ice sheet was dotted with many raised icebergs, which varied in shape and form.
After a day, they met up with Steve and headed to the beach again in the same direction as yesterday.
The Ford brothers had brought more people with them. Including the two of them, there were fourteen or fifteen of them.
After the two sides met, Newman gave Li Du a brief introduction. The people they brought were all hired meteorite hunters, professional meteorite hunters.
Yesterday, when he had nothing to do, Li Du went online to learn about the industry.
Meteorite collection had a long history. Since ancient times in China, craftsmen and the royal family had begun to collect these extraterrestrial visitors.
In medieval Europe, people were more curious about meteorites and paid more attention to collecting them. However, for many years, meteorites had not appeared much.
It was not until modern times that more meteorites were found.
The reason why more meteorites were discovered in recent times was not because more meteorites had landed on Earth in recent times, but because it was easier for people to identify meteorites now.
With the development of the aerospace industry, humans could fly into space and retrieve samples from other planets in the solar system. With these samples as a reference, some meteorites could be identified.
In other words, it wasn't humans who first discovered the meteorites and then learned about the situation of the other planets. Rather, it was by understanding the structure of the other planets that they were able to identify the meteorites that fell on Earth.
Whether it was in terms of weight, historical value, or scientific research value, meteorites were very valuable. In addition, they were very rare, which caused their value to rise further.
Most meteorites were very similar to the rocks on Earth, so they were generally not easy to distinguish. The probability of finding a meteorite was very small. Even experienced meteorite hunters might need several years to find a meteorite.
In such a situation, finding a meteorite could make one rich, but most meteorite hunters couldn't find one even after working for several years. It was usually a waste of effort.
Therefore, unlike other jobs, meteorite hunters were rare.
However, those who could survive in this industry must have made money, or at least found a meteorite, which was enough to support their families and keep them in the industry.
Because of the small number of people in the industry, meteorite hunters were inevitably arrogant and refused to submit to anyone.
When Steve arrived with Li Du, the meteorite hunters did not come over to curry favor with them. They just sat lazily in their sleds.
The Ford brothers didn't seem to have a good impression of them. When Li Du arrived, Newman said coldly, "This Mr. Li has just found a meteorite weighing more than five kilograms. As far as I know, he is still a layman in this industry. I don't understand why you guys, who are experts, haven't found anything."
Li Du could understand his feelings. It was not free to feed these meteorite hunters. The Ford family paid them a high salary. Even if they didn't find anything, they still earned ten thousand dollars a month.
In addition, because they had come to Antarctica to work, which was a dangerous area, their salary was doubled.
In other words, the Ford family had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for these people. In the end, they didn't find anything, and a straightforward person like Newman was naturally unhappy.
The Ford family was a big capitalist in the United States. They were willing to pay their workers, but they had to create value to match it. They would not be happy if these meteorite hunters only got paid and no harvest.
One of the hunters took off his leather hat to reveal his bushy beard. He touched his hair and said, "Young Master Ford, it takes luck to get a meteorite. That's what we said from the beginning. Besides, we used to work in Siberia and the Arctic, which is not a working environment we are familiar with."
Hearing that they had worked in Siberia and the Arctic, Li Du's heart skipped a beat. He and Steve had agreed to go to the Arctic. Maybe he should talk to these people and gain experience.
Newman rolled his eyes and went to discuss the search plan with Steve. The hunters were lazy again. Some of them had cigarettes in their mouths and began to smoke.
Li Du walked over and kindly reminded them, "The Antarctic ecosystem is very fragile. It's not easy to solve the pollution here. You'd better not smoke."
The hunter looked at him coldly and said, "Pollution? Can a cigarette from us compare to the pollution produced in a second by the factories of you big capitalists? "
"Don't be a goddamn busybody. Your good luck can guarantee that you will find a stone, but it doesn't guarantee that you will be able to dodge my fist," said another big man.
Brother Wolf's expression was cold. He came out from behind Li Du, ready to teach the big man a lesson.
Li Du did not expect that his warning would make everyone so hostile to him, so he laughed and said, "Hey, I'm not a big capitalist. I'm now a meteorite hunter like you."
A big man gave him the finger and smiled contemptuously. "Like us? Wow, we're honored to be doing the same work as a rich man like you. But do you know anything about meteorites? You think it's just a matter of finding a stone and then you can become a meteorite hunter, don't you? "
Li Du touched his chin. These people seemed very arrogant. It would not be easy for him to get some information about Siberia from them.
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