Isso é "All the Way Back" , um conto de Michael Shaara ; publicado pela primeira vez em Astounding Science Fiction , julho de 1952 , disponível no Arquivo da Internet (a história começa em página 48 ); o texto também está disponível aqui . Os alienígenas chamam a antiga raça de Antha:
"The news of what happened to the Apectans set the Galactic peoples up in arms, but it was not until the Antha attacked a Federation world that we finally moved against them. It was the greatest war in the history of Life.
"You will perhaps understand how great a people the Antha were when I tell you that they alone, unaided, dependent entirely upon their own resources, fought the rest of the Galactics, and fought them to a standstill. As the terrible years went by we lost whole races and planets—like this one, which was one the Antha destroyed—and yet we could not defeat them.
"It was only after many years, when a Galactic invented the most dangerous weapon of all, that we won. The invention—of which only the Galactic Council has knowledge—enabled us to turn the suns of the Antha into novae, at long range. One by one we destroyed the Antha worlds. We hunted them through all the planets of the desert; for the first time in history the edict of the Federation was death, death for an entire race. At last there were no longer any habitable worlds where the Antha had been. We burned their worlds, and ran them down in space. Thirty thousand years ago, the civilization of the Antha perished."
Roymer had finished. He looked at the Earthmen out of grave, tired old eyes.
Para mais informações, consulte this pergunta antiga .