Rock in a Hard Place.

It came from outer space. And, having landed in America, it wound up--where else?--in court.

The 15-ton Willamette meteorite has a special place in the newly reopened Hayden Planetarium at New York City's American Museum of Natural History. In fact, the new showcase was literally built around the big hunk of space rock.

But a federation of Native American tribes in Oregon says that the meteorite is a holy tribal object that was spirited away in 1906--and they want it back. They claim that the meteorite was worshiped as a sacred representation of sky, earth, and water called Tomanowos, or Sky Person.

The group's claim is now winding its way through the legal system at a less than meteoric speed.