Please help me identify this story

[morseman]

Story goes:

Mankind has discovered interstellar flight, and is searching the local neighborhood. They find only burned out planets, stars without planets, for hundreds of light years radius.

They suddenly find a habitable planet, and are approached by an old man after they land. It is explained to them that there was an ancient race that originated from their planet (Earth), expanded into the galaxy, conquered it in a ruthless manner, and was only forced back to Earth after scorching all of the star systems local to Earth, and Earth was blown back to the stone age.

The two explorers are then killed.

To the star people, it is obvious they didn't stomp out the humans well enough, and they have once again took to the stars. They need to decide whether to perform another genocide to exterminate the humans while they are still neophytes again on the interstellar stage.

It is driving me crazy that I cannot find this science fiction short story in my collection. Any ideas who the author was, and name of the book? It was in a set of science fiction short stories.

Thanks all,

Morseman

[MG1962]

I will be looking forward to the answer as well - it is a great story.

[Winter Lord]

Sounds like a basis for a episode of The Twilight Zone.