A Duel of Minds

The second Martian expedition returns to Earth, having found only a few clay fragments. The astronauts don’t know that they’re carrying back to their home planet Quidax—a welcome guest with a Higher Purpose…
Quidax watched from a hill as a thin beam of light descended from the sky. Fringed at the bottom, the golden beam shone brighter than the sun. It was topped by a gleaming metallic body—more like something artificial than naturally of origin—something Quidax had already seen in the past. Quidax tried to find a name for it.
The word wouldn’t come back to him. Memory faded in him together with functions; all that remained were disordered shards of images. He sifted them, filtering out scraps of memories—ruins of cities, the death of those who had lived in them, a channel of blue water, two moons, a spaceship…