They fell in fire. Touched down softly in the desert sand. They were ready to conquer. But then they realized this world, almost everyone of its inhabitants, gianted over them all. They held their breath, they shook on their three trembling knees, there was no way to restart the engines.They were only seen as a tiny spark by a lonely jack rabbit whose long ears barely heard the snap of their home on the air.

Oh yes, and there was one other. The most important of all, Professor Walter Lee Huff, the world’s foremost best and most unknown Cosmos Geologist. He spent night upon night shivering without a campfire in that desert that burned during the day and turned to ice at night. His neck also bent up from so many of those nights. He had two vertebrae which had fused, so it always looked as if he held his nose in the air, his eyes strained to look down. He was thought arrogant, but that was the farthest thing from his gentle soul. He had never swatted a mosquito or even a fly—-he was just what people call: a very nice guy.

Well, it so happened, that those eyes of his that slept during the day so that they could be open wide at night, had stretched their pupils and the tiny muscles had strengthened. He could beat with fine precision an owl in a dark night dart competition, that is if owls had thumbs on their talons. So, he saw that tiny spark, he saw where it led. With his rusty and sand blasted pickup he drove faster than a roadrunner on fire.

And then he found it, just as that meteorite (or what its inhabitants called a planet) was losing its last glow in a cooling ember. He lifted them up and a hurricane wind blew over their world as he tried to cool that sparkling ore-filled fist sized meteorite. He could tell this was a good find, one worth some money to sell to the Grand County Museum so far away in the sprawling city of lights. But then, as he lifted his magnifying glass, he saw what he thought were miniature ants with their legs waving at him. They had tiny white flags—-yes, in all the universe waving tiny white flags means: we are peaceful and we surrender. Professor Walter Lee Huff thought those two cupfuls of whisky were fooling his sight, tickling his mind. He peered closer——no they were really there!

He could have made millions and millions of dollars. But as I told you, he was a man who would not even hurt a fly. So, he sold that piece of space rock for a decent, not absurd, sum. There was one condition, that he could visit the museum at night—-he had told them that his eyesight had changed so much for so many nights and years looking at the sky in the desert. He emphasized, daylight left him blind. The Museum Director agreed, he was used to dealing with eccentrics who studied some of the strangest things, yet it brought in so much profit.

It was a luxurious life for those tiny aliens who had thought to conquer, but then changed their much more intelligent than human minds—-that is except for Professor Walter Lee Huff, he was very bright too. In his pocket he brought them each night their favorite delicacies of crushed pebbles and soft, white beach sand. They ate up just like if we were to have grilled steaks and silky vanilla ice cream. He lifted the glass from the case where they were displayed, it kept them safe from too close of peering eyes during the day. The metal plaque below only said: iron meteorite. Little did the visitors know it was so much more than that.

But the world wasn’t ready to know. So, the Professor and those million or so on that planet had long conversations through the stethoscope that he wore around his neck. They told him of their art, history, literature and sometimes they even played their music on their stone and metal instruments. He in turn carried them carefully in his palm—-all of those in the Southern Hemisphere would move north to avoid being crushed—-so that he could wander though that museum and tell them in soft whispers (so as not to hurt their little ears) of our world. Our science. Our art. Our music. Our life.

There was no need to conquer, just listen. Just listen!