When he---and his trusty crew---sailing east first reached the limb of what we now call the Splanet-Side, they first saw what seemed a broad low distant hill, very dark at stunrise, very bright at stunset---in between with bright and dark vertical stripes that started from the edge or limb of the hill and grew downward every day to the Ocean horizon. As Zartlich sailed farther eastward on the Splanet-Side, sday by sday, the hill grew taller and spread broader---but it rounded incredibly like no hill or mountain---and clearly immense, it seemed to get larger, but not closer.
Then there were the Splanet-Side islanders. Zartlich's contact with them is its own story of cultural confrontation. There was no trace of common spoken language and the explorers and Splanet-Siders communicated insofar as that is possible by simple mating---which is its own story of cultural confrontation. The Splanet-Siders said the Splanet---the first name for the "hill" Zartlich heard---had always been there, there was nothing strange, it was not ominous or terrifying, just part of the natural order. There were myths of heroes going to the Splanet and having adventures there. All romances, no world-as-it-is reports. But these Splanet-Siders were bound to their own islands and nearest neighboring islands. They had spread over the islands over generations with limited communication to distant islands. They had never seen the Splanet grow.
Zartlich sailed farther---the Splanet became a hemisphere, standing 20° above the eastern horizon, then a standing more-than hemisphere, then separated altogether, a sphere in the sky above, not a part of our Kearth at all.
The Splanet was an astronomical body, vastly larger than the spoons and unmoving if you were unmoved. From any location on the Splanet-Side of the Kearth, it always has the same horizontal coordinates aside from small variations due to the small eccentricity of we know what.
Once the Splanet was in the sky, it no longer shortened the day, it made a small second night by covering the Stun for only a chour. Flowers closed, shpirds slept, the Spars appeared, it had always been thus. The Farther Splanet-Siders saw nothing remarkable in this---it had always been thus. It was just the Eclopse.
Farther and farther, Zartlich sailed until he reached Sub-Splanet Island which had never been reached by the Splanet-Siders. There the Splanet stands always at zenith and the Eclopse straddles Snoon.
All along in his voyage, Zartlich was also discovering new spoons that never rise above the horizon on our side of the Kearth and which transit the Splanet.
From his observations, it became clear to Zartlich that the new spoons orbited the Splanet, and then clear that so did the old spoons, and then blindingly clear that the Kearth itself orbits the Splanet. The Kearth, mighty and steady, was nothing but a spoon.