Continuing the traditionof stubborn disbelief of the obvious, the scientists and astronomers ofBaroon collectively came up with every theory to describe the phenomenon,some of them quite imaginitive, except, of course, that it was the workingsof a civilization that had once lived or was living on their moon.

     Needless to say, they wereall very surprised a few weeks later when a group of humanoid beings fromDiala landed in a sparkling white spacecraft, drove around in a 3-wheeledbuggy for a while, planted a flag in someone's driveway, took a few snapshotsof the farming population, and left.

     "Oh dear, we hadn'tthought of that."

     There was great anxiety inthe air for the next year or so, and constant rumors of alien invasion.Each time, reports became a little more exagerrated, and through the diffusionof reporters about the globe to pick up on little stories and the latestrumors, and everyone wanting to visit the farming plains where the visitorswere sighted, the population was tending to get a little mixed togetheragain. This time, though, a particularly snoopy reporter actually visitedthe historians' home one crisp winter evening (largely to escape the bittercold), and found that they actually had something to say about this wholesituation.

     Word spread quickly of thehistorians' careful study and observations. Reporters were in and out everyday, and more and more young people were turning to the study of historyas a career. By part 5 of this story, the historians will long have movedout of their household and increased a thosandfold in numbers. Of course,by then, the population would no longer be in discreet, individual societies,either, but you'll find out all about that when we come to it.

     Two and a quarter calendaryears had passed since the late spring arrival of the Dialan voyagers, andBaroon's people, having never encountered anything so curious, stumbledover themselves with curiosity and a strange desire for knowledge that they'dnot had in vast quantities before. A museum had opened presenting threebits of memorabilia from the landing: a clay imprint of the tire treadsleft by the buggy, a discarded plastic container, and a leaf from the vegetableplant that one of the landing party had taken the perrogative to relievehis bladder upon. The flag they left behind remained planted in the driveway.

     No one could quite rememberwhat the actual craft, buggy, or Dialans had looked like, because the exaggerationblurred the facts, even in the memory of the farmer who chased one of themoff for pissing on his tomatoes.

     Science had advanced, orat least was trying to, in two distinct areas. One was the breakdown andexamination of the plastic cup, and the introduction of self-made polymersinto Baroonian society. They had only made some very primitive plastic productsthat were not widely in use so far, and having something to shoot for helpedquite a bit.

     The other area of sciencewas actually agricultural in nature. The farmer found that his urine-soakedplant grew bigger and produced healthier tomatoes than his, shall we say,cleaner stock. After several attempts at re-creating his experiment, whichonly ended up making his crops 1) smell like an outhouse and 2) die. thestory got around and soon some migratory scientists came over to check thesituation out. There had been fertilizers in use, of course, but nothingof this magnitude. Fortunately, they had the tomato plant to analyze thoroughlybecause the farmer could not bring himself to eat anything from the plant,though it certainly looked inviting. Research went on to single out andduplicate the ingredient in the Dialan urine that caused the so-called "miraclegrowth."

     And so, by the 3rd anniversaryof the landing, the world population had diffused itself evenly, and everyonewas working together to understand what had taken place. Science-fiction,a new, unexplored, area of writing, was taking control of the best-sellerslist, and each one dealing with Dialan society, the "deadly mission"of the Dialan crew, the "secret invasion" of Baroon, or all ofthe above. The museum was packing in hundreds per day to see the 3-itemexhibit. People camped outside to get in before the rush. Motion pictures,working on some of the plastic technology as well as cashing in on the sciencefiction boom, were enjoying a new high as well. A breakthrough was justaround the corner for the fertilizer industry, and everyone seemed to begetting along just swell with each other.

     "Things couldn't bebetter," many said.

     Needless to say, they wereall dumped on their respective ends when the Dialans stopped by for a returnvisit, and with enough luggage to make it clear that they intended to stayfor a while.