Second Landing by Murray Leinster — Read

The exploring-ship Franklin made its first landing on a remarkable wide beach on the western coast of Chios, the largest land-mass on Thalassia. Using the longest axis of the continent as a base, and the pointed end as seen from space as 0°, this beach bears 246° from the median point of the base-line. The Franklin later berthed inland some four miles 360° from Firing Plaza Number One on the chart. There is a pleasant savannah here, with a stream of water apparently safe for drinking. -- _Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297, Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Sector XXXIV, pg. 58-59._

It was not plausible that Brett Carstairs should find a picture of a girl, to all appearances human, in millenia-old ruins on a planet some hundreds of lightyears from earth. But the whole affair was unlikely, beginning with the report of the exploring-ship which caused the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition in the first place. Had it not been for the photographs and the ceramic artifacts, nobody would have believed that report. It simply was not credible that another intelligent race should have ever existed in the galaxy. No hint of extra-terrestrial reasoning beings had been found in two centuries of exploration. But the exploration-ship's stilted narrative didn't stop at one impossibility. It said that on the twin worlds Thalassia and Aspasia, revolving perpetually about each other as they trailed the satellite-sun Rubra on its course, not one, but _two_, intelligent races had existed. It offered some evidence that some thousands of years before they had fought, bitterly and mercilessly, and that they had exterminated each other in an interplanetary atomic war which lasted only days or even hours. It was hard to believe.