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that the Stingers had seen from space turned out to be natural erosions of a network of long extinct rivers that must have webbed across the planets surface ages ago.  Some cataclysmic upheaval must have taken place, like a collision with a meteor or a shift of the planet's rotation, which had ripped away the world's water supporting atmosphere.  The dune-swept environment which the Stingers found so appealing had been formed from that cosmic mishap, and on initial examinations, this theory proved most satisfactory to them.  At last, it seemed, here was a planet they could call their own.
    Alas, this hypothesis was founded more on hope than characteristic Thelerick extrapolation -- for the disarmingly, attractive red planet that seemed custom tailored to Stinger requirements, was about to literally reveal a few skeletons beneath its sandy closet.
    Several days after they had arrived, and the initial euphoria had subsided, the Stingers began a more extensive survey of their new home.  Almost immediately, they discovered the smashed, pummeled ruins buried beneath several hundred feet of sand.  The twisted remnants of some ancient civilization glazed the entire world under the veneer of its red surface, and at first, the archeological find had been heralded with hisses of wonder and happiness by the Thelerick Stingers.  Here was proof that the universe was probably populated with millions of races! As they had already suspected, their own, fog blanketed galaxy was simply a cosmic freak; other galaxies, like the Milky Way, must harbor countless civilizations.  Plunging into study, the fascinated Stingers attempted to reconstruct the history of the red planet's buried civilization.
    The analyses were damning; for what they subsequently were to discover, would force the Stingers off their new world in less than a week.
    The builders of the cities beneath the sands had been relatively small, two-legged beings, maybe one tenth the size of the Thelerick Stingers.  Though they had space-travel capacities, the Stingers concluded that interstellar gallivanting had been beyond their means.  Short jaunts within the solar system were not impossible, however, and the human race on this red planet had even established commerce with another world close to them.
    For a thousand years, the red world and their mysterious neighbor planet had lived in peace and prosperity.  Eventually, war erupted, and the incredible forces that both worlds had discovered together from the brotherhood of mutual cooperation, were transformed into horrible weapons of destruction that ravaged the two civilizations completely.
    The red world survived total obliteration, but the other planet was blown out of space.  The residue from that horrible culmination of events was still floating around the sun like some tortured ghost in the form of millions of asteroids.  Heartsick, the Stingers recalled their playful wandering through that crowded piece of space; like unwitting children, they had been frolicking amidst a giant cemetery, littered with the nameless tombstones of a murdered world.
    Further investigation uncovered the last remaining mystery of the red world's race.  The enemy planet succeeded in unleashing a devastating plague into the atmosphere, which not only transmutated the composition of the air into almost pure carbon dioxide, but also wiped out the red world's plant life.  The Stingers could imagine what an agonizing demise the people of the red world must have endured in the end.  No further records were discovered that would indicate if survivors had flown to nearby planets, and as the last gruesome page of the red planet's past was assembled, the Thelerick Stingers knew that they could not stay.  Squeamish they were not, but the Thelericks realized they could never comfortably plan the foundations of a new start on the grave dirt of a deceased civilization.  For them, the small red planet, resplendent in an ocean of plush sand and earth,