 Where is Stinson from?
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. 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 shone obliquely, throwing Stinson's shadow upon the sand. Again Stinson felt the urge to run, or to use the cylinder to project himself somewhere else, but he said, "No!" very firmly to himself. 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. As he stood beside a small creek, a chill wind blew from the northwest. "My name is Stinson," he said, pointing to himself. Still angered, Stinson grasped it firmly, with half a notion to break it over his head. 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. Stinson looked at the wind devil, since it could be no one else speaking, and pointed to himself. "I am Stinson, of the planet Earth." You want to live here, on this planet." 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. Stinson cried angrily, "You tried to kill me!" These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. And this is contrary to the greatest law of all—that an entity, once in existence, can never cease to exist." Stinson asked, incredulously, "all these people? It has to do with what comes after physical existence, not with existence itself. The greatest law is this, that an entity, once existing, must not be harmed in any way.
 Missouri
 Montana  Missouri  Mississippi  Michigan