 Where is Matt from?
Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and ridges and bridges of ice. It lit the snow slope to a frozen glare, penciled black shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow's end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness. It's well on the cards that I'm all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don't see how it could happen. Sure I'm a good astronomer but so are lots of other guys. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you'll remember, and James pushed the button marked 'Jump'. Two months later your time, one second later by us. We covered our whole survey assignment like that, smooth as a pint of old and mild which right now I could certainly use. Matt Hennessy, from Farside Observatory, back of the Moon, just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale . You'll find you can name your price and don't take any wooden nickels. Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. "One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. "Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . Can't say I care for that hot-foot and belly-laugh stuff myself, but tastes differ. "Four, the ten-man language team also learned chess and table tennis. People who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like tigers in trousers. As for chess, Svendlov was our champion. Of course it's a screwy situation, playing chess with something that grows its own fur coat, has yellow eyes an inch and a half long and long white whiskers. He was called—well, we called him Charley, and he was the ethnologist, ambassador, contact man, or whatever you like to call him, who came back with us.
 Matt is from a colony on the Moon.
 Matt is from France.  Matt is from the United States.  Matt is from a colony on Mars.  Matt is from a colony on the Moon.