 Approximately how long was Stinson on the planet before he decided it was home?
Stinson lay still in the sand where he fell, gloating over the success of his arrival. He touched the pencil-line scar behind his ear where the cylinder was buried, marveling at the power stored there, power to fling him from earth to this fourth planet of the Centaurian system in an instant. It had happened so fast that he could almost feel the warm, humid Missouri air, though he was light years from Missouri. A gray, funnel-shaped cloud of dust stood off to his left. Weather control made cyclones and other climatic phenomena on earth practically non-existent. The cloud did not move, though, except to spin on its axis rapidly, emitting a high-pitched, scarcely audible whine, like a high speed motor. He stood on a wide valley floor between two mountain ranges. Dark clouds capped one peak of the mountains on his left. He was here and Earth was somewhere up there. The sun burned fiercely, although he would have said it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been Earth. The sun shone obliquely, throwing Stinson's shadow upon the sand. He was here to investigate, to determine if this planet was capable of supporting life. There was no core, no central place you could point to and say, here is the brain, or the nervous system. When it changed to a cube he drew a square, a circle for a sphere, and so on. He became so absorbed in doing this that he failed to notice how the wind devil drew closer and closer, but when he inhaled the first grains of sand, the realization of what was happening dawned with a flash of fear. "My name is Stinson," he said, pointing to himself. He pointed upward, described a large circle, then another smaller, and showed how Earth revolved around the sun. But up to now the tube and the chain was the only evidence of an advanced technology, unless the ancient inscriptions in the stone wall of the pool, and the statues lining the wall were evidences. Incongruously, he thought of Benjamin back on earth, and all the others with cylinders, who might be fighting for their lives at this moment. "I am Stinson, of the planet Earth." It is impossible to move a physical body from one place to another by a mere thought and a tiny instrument, yet you have done so. These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet.
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