Input:
You are provided a story and a multiple-choice question with 4 possible answers (marked by A, B, C, D). Choose the best answer by writing its corresponding letter (either A, B, C, or D).

Story:
HAGERTY'S ENZYMES

   By A. L. HALEY

    There's a place for every man and a man for

    every place, but on robot-harried Mars the

    situation was just a little different.

   Harper Breen sank down gingerly into the new Relaxo-Lounge. He placed
 twitching hands on the arm-rests and laid his head back stiffly. He
 closed his fluttering eyelids and clamped his mouth to keep the corner
 from jumping.

   "Just lie back, Harp," droned his sister soothingly. "Just give in and
 let go of everything."

   Harper tried to let go of everything. He gave in to the chair. And
 gently the chair went to work. It rocked rhythmically, it vibrated
 tenderly. With velvety cushions it massaged his back and arms and legs.

   For all of five minutes Harper stood it. Then with a frenzied lunge
 he escaped the embrace of the Relaxo-Lounge and fled to a gloriously
 stationary sofa.

   "Harp!" His sister, Bella, was ready to weep with exasperation. "Dr.
 Franz said it would be just the thing for you! Why won't you give it a
 trial?"

   Harper glared at the preposterous chair. "Franz!" he snarled. "That
 prize fathead! I've paid him a fortune in fees. I haven't slept for
 weeks. I can't eat anything but soup. My nerves are jangling like
 a four-alarm fire. And what does he prescribe? A blasted jiggling
 baby carriage! Why, I ought to send him the bill for it!" Completely
 outraged, he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.

   "Now, Harp, you know you've never obeyed his orders. He told you
 last year that you'd have to ease up. Why do you have to try to run
 the whole world? It's the strain of all your business worries that's
 causing your trouble. He told you to take a long vacation or you'd
 crack up. Don't blame him for your own stubbornness."

   Harper snorted. His large nose developed the sound magnificently.
 "Vacation!" he snorted. "Batting a silly ball around or dragging a hook
 after a stupid fish! Fine activities for an intelligent middle-aged
 man! And let me correct you. It isn't business worries that are driving
 me to a crack-up. It's the strain of trying to get some sensible,
 reasonable coöperation from the nincompoops I have to hire! It's the
 idiocy of the human race that's got me whipped! It's the—"

   "Hey, Harp, old man!" His brother-in-law, turning the pages of the
 new colorama magazine, INTERPLANETARY, had paused at a double-spread.
 "Didn't you have a finger in those Martian equatorial wells they sunk
 twenty years ago?"

   Harper's hands twitched violently. "Don't mention that fiasco!" he
 rasped. "That deal nearly cost me my shirt! Water, hell! Those wells
 spewed up the craziest conglomeration of liquids ever tapped!"

   Scribney, whose large, phlegmatic person and calm professorial brain
 were the complete antithesis of Harper's picked-crow physique and
 scheming financier's wits, looked severely over his glasses. Harp's
 nervous tribulations were beginning to bore him, as well as interfere
 with the harmony of his home.

   "You're away behind the times, Harp," he declared. "Don't you know
 that those have proved to be the most astoundingly curative springs
 ever discovered anywhere? Don't you know that a syndicate has built
 the largest extra-terrestial hotel of the solar system there and that
 people are flocking to it to get cured of whatever ails 'em? Old man,
 you missed a bet!"

   Leaping from the sofa, Harper rudely snatched the magazine from
 Scribney's hands. He glared at the spread which depicted a star-shaped
 structure of bottle-green glass resting jewel-like on the rufous rock
 of Mars. The main portion of the building consisted of a circular
 skyscraper with a glass-domed roof. Between its star-shaped annexes,
 other domes covered landscaped gardens and noxious pools which in the
 drawing looked lovely and enticing.

   "Why, I remember now!" exclaimed Bella. "That's where the Durants went
 two years ago! He was about dead and she looked like a hag. They came
 back in wonderful shape. Don't you remember, Scrib?"

   Dutifully Scribney remembered and commented on the change the Martian
 springs had effected in the Durants. "It's the very thing for you,
 Harp," he advised. "You'd get a good rest on the way out. This gas
 they use in the rockets nowadays is as good as a rest-cure; it sort of
 floats you along the time-track in a pleasant daze, they tell me. And
 you can finish the cure at the hotel while looking it over. And not
 only that." Confidentially he leaned toward his insignificant looking
 brother-in-law. "The chemists over at Dade McCann have just isolated an
 enzyme from one species of Martian fungus that breaks down crude oil
 into its components without the need for chemical processing. There's a
 fortune waiting for the man who corners that fungus market and learns
 to process the stuff!"

   Scribney had gauged his victim's mental processes accurately. The
 magazine sagged in Harp's hands, and his sharp eyes became shrewd and
 calculating. He even forgot to twitch. "Maybe you're right, Scrib," he
 acknowledged. "Combine a rest-cure with business, eh?"

   Raising the magazine, he began reading the advertisement. And that
 was when he saw the line about the robots. "—the only hotel staffed
 entirely with robot servants—"

   "Robots!" he shrilled. "You mean they've developed the things to that
 point? Why hasn't somebody told me? I'll have Jackson's hide! I'll
 disfranchise him! I'll—"

   "Harp!" exploded Bella. "Stop it! Maybe Jackson doesn't know a thing
 about it, whatever it is! If it's something at the Emerald Star Hotel,
 why don't you just go and find out for yourself instead of throwing a
 tantrum? That's the only sensible way!"

   "You're right, Bella," agreed Harper incisively. "I'll go and find out
 for myself. Immediately!" Scooping up his hat, he left at his usual
 lope.

   "Well!" remarked his sister. "All I can say is that they'd better turn
 that happy-gas on extra strong for Harp's trip out!"

   The trip out did Harper a world of good. Under the influence of the
 soporific gas that permeated the rocket, he really relaxed for the
 first time in years, sinking with the other passengers into a hazy
 lethargy with little sense of passing time and almost no memory of the
 interval.

   It seemed hardly more than a handful of hours until they were strapping
 themselves into deceleration hammocks for the landing. And then Harper
 was waking with lassitude still heavy in his veins. He struggled out of
 the hammock, made his way to the airlock, and found himself whisked by
 pneumatic tube directly into the lobby of the Emerald Star Hotel.

   Appreciatively he gazed around at the half-acre of moss-gray carpeting,
 green-tinted by the light sifting through the walls of Martian
 copper-glass, and at the vistas of beautiful domed gardens framed by a
 dozen arches. But most of all, the robots won his delighted approval.

   He could see at once that they had been developed to an amazingly high
 state of perfection. How, he wondered again, had this been done without
 his knowledge? Was Scrib right? Was he slipping? Gnawing at the doubt,
 he watched the robots moving efficiently about, pushing patients in
 wheelchairs, carrying trays, guiding newcomers, performing janitorial
 duties tirelessly, promptly, and best of all, silently.

   Harper was enthralled. He'd staff his offices with them. Hang the
 expense! There'd be no more of that obnoxious personal friction and
 proneness to error that was always deviling the most carefully trained
 office staffs! He'd investigate and find out the exact potentialities
 of these robots while here, and then go home and introduce them into
 the field of business. He'd show them whether he was slipping! Briskly
 he went over to the desk.

   He was immediately confronted with a sample of that human obstinacy
 that was slowly driving him mad. Machines, he sighed to himself.
 Wonderful silent machines! For a woman was arguing stridently with the
 desk clerk who, poor man, was a high strung fellow human instead of a
 robot. Harper watched him shrinking and turning pale lavender in the
 stress of the argument.

   "A nurse!" shouted the woman. "I want a nurse! A real woman! For what
 you charge, you should be able to give me a television star if I want
 one! I won't have another of those damnable robots in my room, do you
 hear?"

   No one within the confines of the huge lobby could have helped hearing.
 The clerk flinched visibly. "Now, Mrs. Jacobsen," he soothed. "You know
 the hotel is staffed entirely with robots. They're much more expensive,
 really, than human employees, but so much more efficient, you know.
 Admit it, they give excellent service, don't they, now?" Toothily he
 smiled at the enraged woman.

   "That's just it!" Mrs. Jacobsen glared. "The service is

    too

   good.
 I might just as well have a set of push buttons in the room. I want
 someone to

    hear

   what I say! I want to be able to change my mind once
 in awhile!"

   Harper snorted. "Wants someone she can devil," he diagnosed. "Someone
 she can get a kick out of ordering around." With vast contempt he
 stepped to the desk beside her and peremptorily rapped for the clerk.

   "One moment, sir," begged that harassed individual. "Just one moment,
 please." He turned back to the woman.

   But she had turned her glare on Harper. "You could at least be civil
 enough to wait your turn!"

   Harper smirked. "My good woman, I'm not a robot. Robots, of course,
 are always civil. But you should know by now that civility isn't a
 normal human trait." Leaving her temporarily quashed, he beckoned
 authoritatively to the clerk.

   "I've just arrived and want to get settled. I'm here merely for a
 rest-cure, no treatments. You can assign my quarters before continuing
 your—ah—discussion with the lady."

   The clerk sputtered. Mrs. Jacobsen sputtered. But not for nothing was
 Harper one of the leading business executives of the earth. Harper's
 implacable stare won his point. Wiping beads of moisture from his
 forehead, the clerk fumbled for a card, typed it out, and was about to
 deposit it in the punch box when a fist hit the desk a resounding blow
 and another voice, male, roared out at Harper's elbow.

   "This is a helluva joint!" roared the voice. "Man could rot away to the
 knees while he's waitin' for accommodations. Service!" Again his fist
 banged the counter.

   The clerk jumped. He dropped Harper's card and had to stoop for it.
 Absently holding it, he straightened up to face Mrs. Jacobsen and the
 irate newcomer. Hastily he pushed a tagged key at Harper.

   "Here you are, Mr. Breen. I'm sure you'll find it comfortable." With a
 pallid smile he pressed a button and consigned Harper to the care of a
 silent and efficient robot.

   The room was more than comfortable. It was beautiful. Its bank of clear
 windows set in the green glass wall framed startling rubicund views of
 the Martian hinterland where, Harper affectionately thought, fungi were
 busy producing enzymes that were going to be worth millions for him and
 his associates. There remained only the small detail of discovering how
 to extract them economically and to process them on this more than arid
 and almost airless planet. Details for his bright young laboratory men;
 mere details....

   Leaving his luggage to be unpacked by the robot attendant, he went up
 to the domed roof restaurant. Lunching boldly on broiled halibut with
 consomme, salad and a bland custard, he stared out at the dark blue
 sky of Mars, with Deimos hanging in the east in three-quarter phase
 while Phobos raced up from the west like a meteor behind schedule.
 Leaning back in his cushioned chair, he even more boldly lit a slim
 cigar—his first in months—and inhaled happily. For once old Scribney
 had certainly been right, he reflected. Yes sir, Scrib had rung the
 bell, and he wasn't the man to forget it. With a wonderful sense of
 well-being he returned to his room and prepared to relax.

   Harper opened his eyes. Two robots were bending over him. He saw that
 they were dressed in white, like hospital attendants. But he had no
 further opportunity to examine them. With brisk, well-co-ordinated
 movements they wheeled a stretcher along-side his couch, stuck a hypo
 into his arm, bundled him onto the stretcher and started wheeling him
 out.

   Harper's tongue finally functioned. "What's all this?" he demanded.
 "There's nothing wrong with me. Let me go!"

   He struggled to rise, but a metal hand pushed him firmly on the chest.
 Inexorably it pushed him flat.

   "You've got the wrong room!" yelled Harp. "Let me go!" But the hypo
 began to take effect. His yells became weaker and drowsier. Hazily, as
 he drifted off, he thought of Mrs. Jacobsen. Maybe she had something,
 at that.

   There was a tentative knock on the door. "Come in," called Harper
 bleakly. As soon as the door opened he regretted his invitation, for
 the opening framed the large untidy man who had noisily pounded on the
 desk demanding service while he, Harp, was being registered.

   "Say, pardner," he said hoarsely, "you haven't seen any of them robots
 around here, have you?"

   Harper scowled. "Oh, haven't I?" he grated. "Robots! Do you know what
 they did to me." Indignation lit fires in his pale eyes. "Came in here
 while I was lying down peacefully digesting the first meal I've enjoyed
 in months, dragged me off to the surgery, and pumped it all out! The
 only meal I've enjoyed in months!" Blackly he sank his chin onto his
 fist and contemplated the outrage.

   "Why didn't you stop 'em?" reasonably asked the visitor.

   "Stop a robot?" Harper glared pityingly. "How? You can't reason with
 the blasted things. And as for using force—it's man against metal. You
 try it!" He ground his teeth together in futile rage. "And to think I
 had the insane notion that robots were the last word! Why, I was ready
 to staff my offices with the things!"

   The big man placed his large hands on his own capacious stomach and
 groaned. "I'm sure sorry it was you and not me, pardner. I could use
 some of that treatment right now. Musta been that steak and onions I
 ate after all that tundra dope I've been livin' on."

   "Tundra?" A faint spark of alertness lightened Harper's dull rage. "You
 mean you work out here on the tundra?"

   "That's right. How'd you think I got in such a helluva shape? I'm
 superintendent of one of the fungus plants. I'm Jake Ellis of Hagerty's
 Enzymes. There's good money in it, but man, what a job! No air worth
 mentionin'. Temperature always freezin' or below. Pressure suits. Huts.
 Factory. Processed food. Nothin' else. Just nothin'. That's where they
 could use some robots. It sure ain't no job for a real live man. And in
 fact, there ain't many men left there. If old man Hagerty only knew it,
 he's about out of business."

   Harper sat up as if he'd been needled. He opened his mouth to speak.
 But just then the door opened briskly and two robots entered. With a
 horrified stare, Harper clutched his maltreated stomach. He saw a third
 robot enter, wheeling a chair.

   "A wheel chair!" squeaked the victim. "I tell you, there's nothing
 wrong with me! Take it away! I'm only here for a rest-cure! Believe me!
 Take it away!"

   The robots ignored him. For the first time in his spectacular and
 ruthless career Harper was up against creatures that he could neither
 bribe, persuade nor browbeat, inveigle nor ignore. It shattered his
 ebbing self-confidence. He began waving his hands helplessly.

   The robots not only ignored Harper. They paid no attention at all to
 Jake Ellis, who was plucking at their metallic arms pleading, "Take
 me, boys. I need the treatment bad, whatever it is. I need all the
 treatment I can get. Take me! I'm just a wreck, fellers—"

   Stolidly they picked Harper up, plunked him into the chair, strapped
 him down and marched out with him.

   Dejectedly Ellis returned to his own room. Again he lifted the receiver
 of the room phone; but as usual a robot voice answered sweetly,
 mechanically, and meaninglessly. He hung up and went miserably to bed.

   There was something nagging at Harper's mind. Something he should do.
 Something that concerned robots. But he was too exhausted to think it
 out.

   For five days now his pet robots had put him through an ordeal that
 made him flinch every time he thought about it. Which wasn't often,
 since he was almost past thinking. They plunked him into stinking
 mud-baths and held him there until he was well-done to the bone, he
 was sure. They soaked him in foul, steaming irradiated waters until he
 gagged. They brought him weird concoctions to eat and drink and then
 stood over him until he consumed them. They purged and massaged and
 exercised him.

   Whenever they let him alone, he simply collapsed into bed and slept.
 There was nothing else to do anyway. They'd taken his clothes; and the
 phone, after an announcement that he would have no more service for two
 weeks, gave him nothing but a busy signal.

   "Persecution, that's what it is!" he moaned desperately. And he turned
 his back to the mirror, which showed him that he was beginning to look
 flesh-colored instead of the parchment yellow to which he had become
 accustomed. He closed his mind to the fact that he was sleeping for
 hours on end like the proverbial baby, and that he was getting such an
 appetite that he could almost relish even that detestable mush they
 sent him for breakfast. He was determined to be furious. As soon as he
 could wake up enough to be.

   He hadn't been awake long this time before Jake Ellis was there again,
 still moaning about his lack of treatments. "Nothin' yet," he gloomily
 informed Harp. "They haven't been near me. I just can't understand it.
 After I signed up for the works and paid 'em in advance! And I can't
 find any way out of this section. The other two rooms are empty and the
 elevator hasn't got any button. The robots just have to come and get a
 man or he's stuck."

   "Stuck!" snarled Harp. "I'm never stuck! And I'm damned if I'll wait
 any longer to break out of this—this jail! Listen, Jake. I've been
 thinking. Or trying to, with what's left of me. You came in just when
 that assinine clerk was registering me. I'll bet that clerk got rattled
 and gave me the wrong key. I'll bet you're supposed to have this room
 and I'm getting your treatments. Why don't we switch rooms and see what
 happens?"

   "Say, maybe you're right!" Jake's eyes gleamed at last with hope. "I'll
 get my clothes."

   Harp's eyebrows rose. "You mean they left you your clothes?"

   "Why, sure. You mean they took yours?"

   Harp nodded. An idea began to formulate. "Leave your things, will you?
 I'm desperate! I'm going to see the manager of this madhouse if I have
 to go down dressed in a sheet. Your clothes would be better than that."

   Jake, looking over Harper's skimpy frame, grunted doubtfully. "Maybe
 you could tie 'em on so they wouldn't slip. And roll up the cuffs. It's
 okay with me, but just don't lose something when you're down there in
 that fancy lobby."

   Harper looked at his watch. "Time to go. Relax, old man. The robots
 will be along any minute now. If you're the only man in the room, I'm
 sure they'll take you. They aren't equipped to figure it out. And don't
 worry about me. I'll anchor your duds all right."

   Harper had guessed right. Gleefully from the doorway of his new room
 he watched the robots wheel away his equally delighted neighbor for
 his first treatment. Then he closed the door and began to don Jake's
 clothing.

   The result was unique. He looked like a small boy in his father's
 clothes, except for the remarkably aged and gnome-like head sticking
 up on a skinny neck from a collar three sizes too big. And he was
 shoeless. He was completely unable to navigate in Jake's number
 twelves. But Harper was a determined man. He didn't even flinch from
 his image in the mirror. Firmly he stepped over to Jake's telephone.
 "This is room 618," he said authoritatively. "Send up the elevator for
 me. I want to go down to the lobby."

   He'd guessed right again. "It will be right up, sir," responded the
 robot operator. Hopefully he stepped out into the hall and shuffled to
 the elevator.

   Only the robots were immune to Harper Breen's progress across the huge
 suave lobby.

   He was a blot on its rich beauty, a grotesque enigma that rooted the
 other visitors into paralyzed staring groups. Stepping out of the
 elevator, he had laid a course for the desk which loomed like an island
 in a moss-gray lake, and now he strode manfully toward it, ignoring the
 oversize trousers slapping around his stocking feet. Only the robots
 shared his self control.

   The clerk was the first to recover from the collective stupor.
 Frantically he pushed the button that would summon the robot guard.
 With a gasp of relief he saw the two massive manlike machines moving
 inexorably forward. He pointed to Harper. "Get that patient!" he
 ordered. "Take him to the—to the mud-baths!"

   "No you don't!" yelled Harper. "I want to see the manager!" Nimbly he
 circled the guard and leaped behind the desk. He began to throw things
 at the robots. Things like inkwells and typewriters and card indexes.
 Especially, card indexes.

   "Stop it!" begged the clerk. "You'll wreck the system! We'll never get
 it straight again! Stop it!"

   "Call them off!" snarled Harper. "Call them off or I'll ruin your
 switchboard!" He put a shoulder against it and prepared to heave.

   With one last appalled glare at the madman, the clerk picked up an
 electric finger and pointed it at the approaching robots. They became
 oddly inanimate.

   "That's better!" Harper straightened up and meticulously smoothed the
 collar of his flapping coat. "Now—the manager, please."

   "This—this way, sir." With shrinking steps the clerk led Harper across
 the width of the lobby among the fascinated guests. He was beyond
 speech. Opening the inconspicuous door, he waved Harper inside and
 returned doggedly to his desk, where he began to pick up things and at
 the same time phrase his resignation in his mind.

   Brushing aside the startled secretary in the outer cubicle, Harper
 flapped and shuffled straight into the inner sanctum. The manager, who
 was busy chewing a cigar to shreds behind his fortress of gun metal
 desk, jerked hastily upright and glared at the intruder. "My good
 man—" he began.

   "Don't 'my-good-man' me!" snapped Harper. He glared back at the
 manager. Reaching as far across the expanse of desktop as he could
 stretch, he shook his puny fist. "Do you know who I am? I'm Harper
 S. Breen, of Breen and Helgart, Incorporated! And do you know why I
 haven't even a card to prove it? Do you know why I have to make my way
 downstairs in garb that makes a laughing stock of me? Do you know why?
 Because that assinine clerk of yours put me in the wrong room and those
 damnable robots of yours then proceeded to make a prisoner of me! Me,
 Harper S. Breen! Why, I'll sue you until you'll be lucky if you have a
 sheet of writing-paper left in this idiot's retreat!"

   Hayes, the manager, blanched. Then he began to mottle in an apoplectic
 pattern. And suddenly with a gusty sigh, he collapsed into his chair.
 With a shaking hand he mopped his forehead. "

    My

   robots!" he muttered.
 "As if I invented the damned things!"

   Despondently he looked at Harper. "Go ahead and sue, Mr. Breen. If you
 don't, somebody else will. And if nobody sues, we'll go broke anyway,
 at the rate our guest list is declining. I'm ready to hand in my
 resignation."

   Again he sighed. "The trouble," he explained, "is that those fool
 robots are completely logical, and people aren't. There's no way to mix
 the two. It's dynamite. Maybe people can gradually learn to live with
 robots, but they haven't yet. Only we had to find it out the hard way.
 We—" he grimaced disgustedly—"had to pioneer in the use of robots.
 And it cost us so much that we can't afford to reconvert to human help.
 So—Operation Robot is about to bankrupt the syndicate."

   Listening, an amazing calm settled on Harper. Thoughtfully now he
 hooked a chair to the desk with his stockinged foot, sat down and
 reached for the cigar that Hayes automatically offered him. "Oh, I
 don't know," he said mildly.

   Hayes leaned forward like a drowning man sighting a liferaft. "What
 do you mean, you don't know? You're threatening to take our shirts,
 aren't you?"

   Meticulously Harper clipped and lit his cigar. "It seems to me that
 these robots might be useful in quite another capacity. I might even
 make a deal with your syndicate to take them off your hands—at a
 reasonable price, of course—and forget the outrages I've suffered at
 your establishment."

   Hayes leaned toward him incredulous. "You mean you want these robots
 after what you've seen and experienced?"

   Placidly Harper puffed a smoke ring. "Of course, you'd have to take
 into consideration that it would be an experiment for me, too. And
 there's the suit I'm clearly justified in instituting. However, I'm
 willing to discuss the matter with your superiors."

   With hope burgeoning for the first time in weeks, Hayes lifted his
 head. "My dear Mr. Breen, to get rid of these pestiferous robots, I'll
 back you to the hilt! I'll notify the owners at once. At once, Mr.
 Breen! And while we wait for them, allow me to put you up as a guest of
 the hotel." Coming around to Harper, he effusively shook Harp's scrawny
 hand, and then personally escorted him not merely to the door but
 across the lobby to the elevator.

   Harper gazed out at the stunned audience. This was more like the
 treatment he was accustomed to! Haughtily he squared his bony shoulders
 inside the immense jacket and stepped into the elevator. He was ready
 for the second step of his private Operation Robot.

   Back on Earth it was a warm, misty spring day—the kind of day unknown
 to the planet Mars. Bella and Scribney, superb in new spring outfits,
 waited restlessly while the rocket cooled and the passengers recovered
 from deceleration.

   "Look, Scrib!" Bella clutched Scribney's substantial arm. "It's finally
 opening."

   They watched the airlock open and the platform wheel into place. They
 watched the passengers descend, looking a trifle dazed.

   "There he is!" cried Bella. "Why, doesn't he look wonderful! Scrib,
 it's amazing! Look at him!

   And indeed, Harper was stepping briskly downward, looking spry and fit
 and years younger. He came across to them actually beaming. It was the
 first pleasant expression they had seen on his face in years.

   "Well, you old dog!" exclaimed Scribney affectionately. "So you did it
 again!"

   Harper smirked. "Yep, I turned a neat little deal. I bought out
 Hagerty's Enzymes and staffed the plant with the hotel's robots. Got
 both of 'em dirt cheap. Both concerns going bankrupt because they
 didn't have sense enough to swap their workers. Feel I owe you a bit
 for that tip about enzymes, Scrib, so I made out a block of stock to
 you. All right?"

   "All right?" Scribney gulped. Why, the dried-up little turnip was human
 after all. "All right! Yes, sir! But aren't you going to use some of
 those robots for office help? Aren't they efficient and all that?"

   Harper's smile vanished. "Don't even mention such a thing!" he yelped.
 "You don't know what you're saying! I lived with those things for
 weeks. I wouldn't have one around! Keep 'em in the factory where they
 belong!"

   He glimpsed the composed, wonderfully human face of his secretary,
 waiting patiently in the background. "Oh there you are, Smythe." He
 turned to his relatives. "Busy day ahead. See you later, folks—"

   "Same old Harp," observed Scribney. Then he thought of the block of
 stock. "What say we celebrate our rise to a position in the syndicate,
 honey?"

   "Wonderful!" She squeezed his arm, and smiling at each other, they left
 the port.

Question and Possible Answers:
Why was Harper able to buy the hotel's robots for such a cheap price?

 (A) Harper befriended the hotel manager and convinced him to sell the robots to him for cheap.
 (B) The hotel could not find anyone other than Harper to sell the robots to.
 (C) Harper had threatened to put the hotel out of business if they did not sell the robots to him.
 (D) The hotel was failing, so the company was happy to get rid of the robots.

Answer:

Output: D


Input:
You are provided a story and a multiple-choice question with 4 possible answers (marked by A, B, C, D). Choose the best answer by writing its corresponding letter (either A, B, C, or D).

Story:
Jinx Ship To The Rescue

   By ALFRED COPPEL, JR.

   Stand by for

    T.R.S. Aphrodite

   , butt of the Space

   Navy. She's got something terrific in her guts and only

   her ice-cold lady engineer can coax it out of her!

   Brevet Lieutenant Commander David Farragut Strykalski III of the
 Tellurian Wing, Combined Solarian Navies, stood ankle deep in the
 viscous mud of Venusport Base and surveyed his new command with a
 jaundiced eye. The hot, slimy, greenish rain that drenched Venusport
 for two-thirds of the 720-hour day had stopped at last, but now a
 miasmic fog was rising from the surrounding swampland, rolling across
 the mushy landing ramp toward the grounded spaceship. Visibility was
 dropping fast, and soon porto-sonar sets would have to be used to find
 the way about the surface Base. It was an ordinary day on Venus.

   Strike cursed Space Admiral Gorman and all his ancestors with a wealth
 of feeling. Then he motioned wearily to his companion, and together
 they sloshed through the mud toward the ancient monitor.

   The scaly bulk of the Tellurian Rocket Ship

    Aphrodite

   loomed
 unhappily into the thick air above the two men as they reached the
 ventral valve. Strike raised reluctant eyes to the sloping flank of the
 fat spaceship.

   "It looks," he commented bitterly, "like a pregnant carp."

   Senior Lieutenant Coburn Whitley—"Cob" to his friends—nodded in
 agreement. "That's our Lover-Girl ... old Aphrodisiac herself. The ship
 with the poison personality." Cob was the

    Aphrodite's

   Executive,
 and he had been with her a full year ... which was a record for Execs
 on the

    Aphrodite

   . She generally sent them Earthside with nervous
 breakdowns in half that time.

   "Tell me, Captain," continued Cob curiously, "how does it happen
 that you of all people happened to draw this tub for a command? I
 thought...."

   "You know Gorman?" queried Strykalski.

   Cob nodded. "Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Old Brass-bottom Gorman?"

   "The same."

   "Well," Cob ran a hand over his chin speculatively, "I know Gorman's
 a prize stinker ... but you were in command of the

    Ganymede

   . And,
 after all, you come from an old service family and all that. How come
 this?" He indicated the monitor expressively.

   Strike sighed. "Well, now, Cob, I'll tell you. You'll be spacing with
 me and I guess you've a right to know the worst ... not that you
 wouldn't find it out anyway. I come from a long line of very sharp
 operators. Seven generations of officers and gentlemen. Lousy with
 tradition.

   "The first David Farragut Strykalski, son of a sea-loving Polish
 immigrant, emerged from World War II a four-striper and Congressional
 Medal winner. Then came David Farragut Strykalski, Jr., and, in the
 abortive Atomic War that terrified the world in 1961, he won a United
 Nations Peace Citation. And then came David Farragut Strykalski III ...
 me.

   "From such humble beginnings do great traditions grow. But something
 happened when I came into the picture. I don't fit with the rest of
 them. Call it luck or temperament or what have you.

   "In the first place I seem to have an uncanny talent for saying the
 wrong thing to the wrong person. Gorman for example. And I take too
 much on my own initiative. Gorman doesn't like that. I lost the

    Ganymede

   because I left my station where I was supposed to be running
 section-lines to take on a bunch of colonists I thought were in
 danger...."

   "The Procyon A people?" asked Cob.

   "So you've heard about it." Strike shook his head sadly. "My tactical
 astrophysicist warned me that Procyon A might go nova. I left my
 routine post and loaded up on colonists." He shrugged. "Wrong guess. No
 nova. I made an ass of myself and lost the

    Ganymede

   . Gorman gave it
 to his former aide. I got this."

   Cob coughed slightly. "I heard something about Ley City, too."

   "Me again. The

    Ganymede's

   whole crew ended up in the Luna Base brig.
 We celebrated a bit too freely."

   Cob Whitley looked admiringly at his new Commander. "That was the night
 after the

    Ganymede

   broke the record for the Centaurus B-Earth run,
 wasn't it? And then wasn't there something about...."

   "Canalopolis?"

   Whitley nodded.

   "That time I called the Martian Ambassador a spy. It was at a Tellurian
 Embassy Ball."

   "I begin to see what you mean, Captain."

   "Strike's the name, Cob."

   Whitley's smile was expansive. "Strike, I think you're going to like
 our old tin pot here." He patted the

    Aphrodite's

   nether belly
 affectionately. "She's old ... but she's loose. And we're not likely to
 meet any Ambassadors or Admirals with her, either."

   Strykalski sighed, still thinking of his sleek

    Ganymede

   . "She'll
 carry the mail, I suppose. And that's about all that's expected of her."

   Cob shrugged philosophically. "Better than tanking that stinking rocket
 fuel, anyway. Deep space?"

   Strike shook his head. "Venus-Mars."

   Cob scratched his chin speculatively. "Perihelion run. Hot work."

   Strike was again looking at the spaceship's unprepossessing exterior.
 "A surge-circuit monitor, so help me."

   Cob nodded agreement. "The last of her class."

   And she was not an inspiring sight. The fantastically misnamed

    Aphrodite

   was a surge-circuit monitor of twenty guns built some ten
 years back in the period immediately preceding the Ionian Subjugation
 Incident. She had been designed primarily for atomics, with a
 surge-circuit set-up for interstellar flight. At least that was the
 planner's view. In those days, interstellar astrogation was in its
 formative stage, and at the time of the

    Aphrodite's

   launching the
 surge-circuit was hailed as the very latest in space drives.

   Her designer, Harlan Hendricks, had been awarded a Legion of Merit
 for her, and every silver-braided admiral in the Fleet had dreamed
 of hoisting his flag on one of her class. There had been three. The

    Artemis

   , the

    Andromeda

   , and the prototype ... old Aphrodisiac. The
 three vessels had gone into action off Callisto after the Phobos Raid
 had set off hostilities between the Ionians and the Solarian Combine.

   All three were miserable failures.

   The eager officers commanding the three monitors had found the circuit
 too appealing to their hot little hands. They used it ... in some way,
 wrongly.

   The

    Artemis

   exploded. The

    Andromeda

   vanished in the general
 direction of Coma Berenices glowing white hot from the heat of a
 ruptured fission chamber and spewing gamma rays in all directions.
 And the

    Aphrodite's

   starboard tubes blew, causing her to spend her
 store of vicious energy spinning like a Fourth of July pinwheel under
 20 gravities until all her interior fittings ... including crew were a
 tangled, pulpy mess within her pressure hull.

   The

    Aphrodite

   was refitted for space. And because it was an integral
 part of her design, the circuit was rebuilt ... and sealed. She became
 a workhorse, growing more cantankerous with each passing year. She
 carried personnel.... She trucked ores. She ferried skeeterboats and
 tanked rocket fuel. Now, she would carry the mail. She would lift from
 Venusport and jet to Canalopolis, Mars, without delay or variation.
 Regulations, tradition and Admiral Gorman of the Inner Planet Fleet
 required it. And it was now up to David Farragut Strykalski III to see
 to it that she did....

   The Officer of the Deck, a trim blonde girl in spotless greys saluted
 smartly as Strike and Cob stepped through the valve.

   Strike felt vaguely uncomfortable. He knew, of course, that at least a
 third of the personnel on board non-combat vessels of the Inner Planet
 Fleet was female, but he had never actually had women on board a ship
 of his own, and he felt quite certain that he preferred them elsewhere.

   Cob sensed his discomfort. "That was Celia Graham, Strike. Ensign.
 Radar Officer. She's good, too."

   Strike shook his head. "Don't like women in space. They make me
 uncomfortable."

   Cob shrugged. "Celia's the only officer. But about a quarter of our
 ratings are women." He grinned maliciously. "Equal rights, you know."

   "No doubt," commented the other sourly. "Is that why they named
 this ... ship 'Aphrodite'?"

   Whitley saw fit to consider the question rhetorical and remained silent.

   Strike lowered his head to clear the arch of the flying-bridge
 bulkhead. Cob followed. He trailed his Captain through a jungle
 of chrome piping to the main control panels. Strike sank into an
 acceleration chair in front of the red DANGER seal on the surge-circuit
 rheostat.

   "Looks like a drug-store fountain, doesn't it?" commented Cob.

   Strykalski nodded sadly, thinking of the padded smoothness of the

    Ganymede's

   flying-bridge. "But she's home to us, anyway."

   The thick Venusian fog had closed in around the top levels of the ship,
 hugging the ports and cutting off all view of the field outside. Strike
 reached for the squawk-box control.

   "Now hear this. All officer personnel will assemble in the flying
 bridge at 600 hours for Captain's briefing. Officer of the Deck will
 recall any enlisted personnel now on liberty...."

   Whitley was on his feet, all the slackness gone from his manner.
 "Orders, Captain?"

   "We can't do anything until the new Engineering Officer gets here.
 They're sending someone down from the

    Antigone

   , and I expect him by
 600 hours. In the meantime you'll take over his part of the work. See
 to it that we are fueled and ready to lift ship by 602. Base will start
 loading the mail at 599:30. That's about all."

   "Yes, sir." Whitley saluted and turned to go. At the bulkhead, he
 paused. "Captain," he asked, "Who is the new E/O to be?"

   Strike stretched his long legs out on the steel deck. "A Lieutenant
 Hendricks, I. V. Hendricks, is what the orders say."

   Cob thought hard for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders. "I. V.
 Hendricks." He shook his head. "Don't know him."

   The other officers of the

    T.R.S. Aphrodite

   were in conference with
 the Captain when Cob and the girl at his side reached the flying
 bridge. She was tall and dark-haired with regular features and pale
 blue eyes. She wore a service jumper with two silver stripes on the
 shoulder-straps, and even the shapeless garment could not hide the
 obvious trimness of her figure.

   Strike's back was toward the bulkhead, and he was addressing the others.

   "... and that's about the story. We are to jet within 28,000,000 miles
 of Sol. Orbit is trans-Mercurian hyperbolic. With Mars in opposition,
 we have to make a perihelion run and it won't be pleasant. But I'm
 certain this old boiler can take it. I understand the old boy who
 designed her wasn't as incompetent as they say. But Space Regs are
 specific about mail runs. This is important to you, Evans. Your
 astrogation has to be accurate to within twenty-five miles plus or
 minus the shortest route. And there'll be no breaking orbit. Now be
 certain that the refrigeration units are checked, Mister Wilkins,
 especially in the hydroponic cells. Pure air is going to be important."

   "That's about all there is to tell you. As soon as our rather
 leisurely E/O gets here, we can jet with Aunt Nelly's postcard." He
 nodded. "That's the story. Lift ship in...." He glanced at his wrist
 chronograph, "... in an hour and five."

   The officers filed out and Cob Whitley stuck his head into the room.
 "Captain?"

   "Come in, Cob." Strike's dark brows knit at the sight of the uniformed
 girl in the doorway.

   Cob's face was sober, but hidden amusement was kindling behind his
 eyes. "Captain, may I present Lieutenant Hendricks? Lieutenant

    I-vy

   Hendricks?"

   Strike looked blankly at the girl.

   "Our new E/O, Captain," prompted Whitley.

   "Uh ... welcome aboard, Miss Hendricks," was all the Captain could find
 to say.

   The girl's eyes were cold and unfriendly. "Thank you, Captain." Her
 voice was like cracked ice tinkling in a glass. "If I may have your
 permission to inspect the drives, Captain, I

    may

   be able to
 convince you that the designer of this vessel was not ... as you seem
 to think ... a senile incompetent."

   Strike was perplexed, and he showed it. "Why, certainly ... uh ...
 Miss ... but why should you be so...."

   The girl's voice was even colder than before as she said, "Harlan
 Hendricks, Captain, is my father."

   A week in space had convinced Strike that he commanded a jinx ship.
 Jetting sunward from Venus, the cantankerous

    Aphrodite

   had burned a
 steering tube through, and it had been necessary to go into free-fall
 while Jenkins, the Assistant E/O, and a damage control party effected
 repairs. When the power was again applied, Old Aphrodisiac was running
 ten hours behind schedule, and Strike and Evans, the Astrogation
 Officer, were sweating out the unforeseen changes introduced into the
 orbital calculations by the time spent in free-fall.

   The

    Aphrodite

   rumbled on toward the orbit of Mercury....

   For all the tension between the occupants of the flying-bridge, Strike
 and Ivy Hendricks worked well together. And after a second week in
 space, a reluctant admiration was replacing the resentment between
 them. Ivy spent whatever time she could spare tinkering with her
 father's pet surge-circuit and Strike began to realize that there was
 little she did not know about spaceship engineering. Then, too, Ivy
 spent a lot of time at the controls, and Strike was forced to admit
 that he had never seen a finer job of piloting done by man or woman.

   And finally, Ivy hated old Brass-bottom Gorman even more than Strike
 did. She felt that Gorman had ruined her father's career, and she was
 dedicating her life to proving her father right and Brass-bottom wrong.
 There's nothing in the cosmos to nurture friendship like a common enemy.

   At 30,000,000 miles from the sun, the

    Aphrodite's

   refrigeration
 units could no longer keep the interior of the ship at a comfortable
 temperature. The thermometer stood at 102°F, the very metal of
 the ship's fittings hot to the touch. Uniforms were discarded,
 insignia of rank vanished. The men dressed in fiberglass shorts and
 spaceboots, sweat making their naked bodies gleam like copper under the
 sodium-vapor lights. The women in the crew added only light blouses to
 their shorts ... and suffered from extra clothing.

   Strike was in the observation blister forward, when Ensign Graham
 called to say that she had picked up a radar contact sunward. The
 IFF showed the pips to be the

    Lachesis

   and the

    Atropos

   . The two
 dreadnaughts were engaged in coronary research patrol ... a purely
 routine business. But the thing that made Strike curse under his breath
 was Celia Graham's notation that the

    Atropos

   carried none other than
 Space Admiral Horatio Gorman, Cominch Inplan.

   Strike thought it a pity that old Brass-bottom couldn't fall into
 Hell's hottest pit ... and he told Ivy so.

   And she agreed.

   Old Aphrodisiac had reached perihelion when it happened. The
 thermometer stood at 135° and tempers were snapping. Cob and Celia
 Graham had tangled about some minor point concerning Lover-Girl's
 weight and balance. Ivy went about her work on the bridge without
 speaking, and Strike made no attempt to brighten her sudden depression.
 Lieutenant Evans had punched Bayne, the Tactical Astrophysicist,
 in the eye for some disparaging remark about Southern California
 womanhood. The ratings were grumbling about the food....

   And then it happened.

   Cob was in the radio room when Sparks pulled the flimsy from the
 scrambler. It was a distress signal from the

    Lachesis

   . The

    Atropos

   had burst a fission chamber and was falling into the sun.
 Radiation made a transfer of personnel impossible, and the

    Atropos

   skeeterboats didn't have the power to pull away from the looming star.
 The

    Lachesis

   had a line on the sister dreadnaught and was valiantly
 trying to pull the heavy vessel to safety, but even the thundering
 power of the

    Lachesis'

   mighty drive wasn't enough to break Sol's
 deathgrip on the battleship.

   A fleet of souped-up space-tugs was on its way from Luna and Venusport,
 but they could not possibly arrive on time. And it was doubtful that
 even the tugs had the necessary power to drag the crippled

    Atropos

   away from a fiery end.

   Cob snatched the flimsy from Sparks' hands and galloped for the
 flying-bridge. He burst in and waved the message excitedly in front of
 Strykalski's face.

   "Have a look at this! Ye gods and little catfish! Read it!"

   "Well, dammit, hold it still so I can!" snapped Strike. He read the
 message and passed it to Ivy Hendricks with a shake of his head.

   She read it through and looked up exultantly. "This is

    it

   ! This is
 the chance I've been praying for, Strike!"

   He returned her gaze sourly. "For Gorman to fall into the sun? I recall
 I said something of the sort myself, but there are other men on those
 ships. And, if I know Captain Varni on the

    Lachesis

   , he won't let go
 that line even if he fries himself."

   Ivy's eyes snapped angrily. "That's not what I meant, and you know it!
 I mean this!" She touched the red-sealed surge-circuit rheostat.

   "That's very nice, Lieutenant," commented Cob drily. "And I know that
 you've been very busy adjusting that gismo. But I seem to recall that
 the last time that circuit was uncorked everyone aboard became part of
 the woodwork ... very messily, too."

   "Let me understand you, Ivy," said Strike in a flat voice. "What you
 are suggesting is that I risk my ship and the lives of all of us trying
 to pull old Gorman's fat out of the fire with a drive that's blown
 skyhigh three times out of three. Very neat."

   There were tears bright in Ivy Hendricks' eyes and she sounded
 desperate. "But we can save those ships! We can, I

    know

   we can! My
 father designed this ship! I know every rivet of her! Those idiots off
 Callisto didn't know what they were doing. These ships needed specially
 trained men. Father told them that! And I'm trained! I can take her in
 and save those ships!" Her expression turned to one of disgust. "Or are
 you afraid?"

   "Frankly, Ivy, I haven't enough sense to be afraid. But are you so
 certain that we can pull this off? If I make a mistake this time ...
 it'll be the last. For all of us."

   "We can do it," said Ivy Hendricks simply.

   Strike turned to Cob. "What do you say, Cob? Shall we make it hotter in
 here?"

   Whitley shrugged. "If you say so, Strike. It's good enough for me."

   Celia Graham left the bridge shaking her head. "We'll all be dead soon.
 And me so young and pretty."

   Strike turned to the squawk-box. "Evans!"

   "Evans here," came the reply.

   "Have Sparks get a DF fix on the

    Atropos

   and hold it. We'll home on
 their carrier wave. They're in trouble and we're going after them. Plot
 the course."

   "Yes, Captain."

   Strike turned to Cob. "Have the gun-crews stand by to relieve the
 black-gang in the tube rooms. It's going to get hotter than the hinges
 of hell down there and we'll have to shorten shifts."

   "Yes, sir!" Cob saluted and was gone.

   Strike returned to the squawk-box. "Radar!"

   "Graham here," replied Celia from her station.

   "Get a radar fix on the

    Lachesis

   and hold it. Send your dope up to
 Evans and tell him to send us a range estimate."

   "Yes, Captain," the girl replied crisply.

   "Gun deck!"

   "Gun deck here, sir," came a feminine voice.

   "Have number two starboard torpedo tube loaded with a fish and a spool
 of cable. Be ready to let fly on short notice ... any range."

   "Yes, sir!" The girl switched off.

   "And now you, Miss Hendricks."

   "Yes, Captain?" Her voice was low.

   "Take over Control ... and Ivy...."

   "Yes?"

   "Don't kill us off." He smiled down at her.

   She nodded silently and took her place at the control panel. Smoothly
 she turned old Aphrodisiac's nose sunward....

   Lashed together with a length of unbreakable beryllium steel cable,
 the

    Lachesis

   and the

    Atropos

   fell helplessly toward the sun. The
 frantic flame that lashed out from the

    Lachesis'

   tube was fading, her
 fission chambers fusing under the terrific heat of splitting atoms.
 Still she tried. She could not desert her sister ship, nor could she
 save her. Already the two ships had fallen to within 18,000,000 miles
 of the sun's terrifying atmosphere of glowing gases. The prominences
 that spouted spaceward seemed like great fiery tentacles reaching for
 the trapped men on board the warships. The atmospheric guiding fins,
 the gun-turrets and other protuberances on both ships were beginning
 to melt under the fierce radiance. Only the huge refrigeration plants
 on the vessels made life within them possible. And, even so, men were
 dying.

   Swiftly, the fat, ungainly shape of old Aphrodisiac drew near. In her
 flying-bridge, Strike and Ivy Hendricks watched the stricken ships in
 the darkened viewport.

   The temperature stood at 140° and the air was bitter with the smell
 of hot metal. Ivy's blouse clung to her body, soaked through with
 perspiration. Sweat ran from her hair into her eyes and she gasped
 for breath in the oven hot compartment. Strike watched her with
 apprehension.

   Carefully, Ivy circled the two warships. From the starboard tube on
 the gun-deck, a homing rocket leapt toward the

    Atropos

   . It plunged
 straight and true, spilling cable as it flew. It slammed up against
 the hull, and stuck there, fast to the battleship's flank. Quickly,
 a robocrane drew it within the ship and the cable was made secure.
 Like cosmic replicas of the ancient South American "bolas," the three
 spacecraft whirled in space ... and all three began that sunward plunge
 together.

    They were diving into the sun.

   The heat in the

    Aphrodite's

   bridge was unbearable. The thermometer
 showed 145° and it seemed to Strike that Hell must be cool by
 comparison.

   Ivy fought her reeling senses and the bucking ship as the slack came
 out of the cable. Blackness was flickering at the edges of her field
 of vision. She could scarcely lift her hand to the red-sealed circuit
 rheostat. Shudderingly, she made the effort ... and failed. Conscious,
 but too spent to move, she collapsed over the blistering hot instrument
 panel.

   "

    Ivy!

   " Strike was beside her, cradling her head in his arm.

   "I ... I ... can't make it ... Strike. You'll ... have to run ... the
 show ... after ... all."

   Strike laid her gently in an acceleration chair and turned toward the
 control panel. His head was throbbing painfully as he broke the seal on
 the surge-circuit.

   Slowly he turned the rheostat. Relays chattered. From deep within
 old Lover-Girl's vitals came a low whine. He fed more power into the
 circuit. Cadmium rods slipped into lead sheaths decks below in the
 tube-rooms. The whining rose in pitch. The spinning of the ships in
 space slowed. Stopped. With painful deliberation, they swung into line.

   More power. The whine changed to a shriek. A banshee wail.

   Cob's voice came through the squawk-box, soberly. "Strike, Celia's
 fainted down here. We can't take much more of this heat."

   "We're trying, Cob!" shouted Strike over the whine of the circuit. The
 gauges showed the accumulators full. "

    Now!

   " He spun the rheostat to
 the stops, and black space burst over his brain....

   The last thing he remembered was a voice. It sounded like Bayne's. And
 it was shouting. "We're moving 'em! We're pulling away! We're...." And
 that was all.

   The space-tug

    Scylla

   found them.

   The three ships ...

    Atropos

   ,

    Lachesis

   , and old Aphrodisiac ...
 lashed together and drifting in space. Every man and woman aboard out
 cold from the acceleration, and

    Aphrodite's

   tanks bone dry. But they
 were a safe 80,000,000 miles from Sol....

   The orchestra was subdued, the officer's club softly lighted. Cob
 leaned his elbow on the bar and bent to inspect the blue ribbon of the
 Spatial Cross on Strike's chest. Then he inspected his own and nodded
 with tipsy satisfaction. He stared out at the Martian night beyond the
 broad windows and back again at Strike. His frown was puzzled.

   "All right," said Strike, setting down his glass. "What's on your mind,
 Cob? Something's eating you."

   Whitley nodded very slowly. He took a long pull at his highball. "I
 understand that you goofballed your chances of getting the

    Ganymede

   back when Gorman spoke his piece to you...."

   "All I said to him...."

   "I know. I know what you said ... and it won't bear repeating. But
 you're not fooling me. You've fallen for old Lover-Girl and you don't
 want to leave her. Ver-ry commendable. Loyal! Stout fellah! But what
 about Ivy?"

   "Ivy?"

   Cob looked away. "I thought that you and she ... well, I thought that
 when we got back ... well...."

   Strike shook his head. "She's gone to the Bureau of Ships with a
 designing job."

   Cob waved an expressive arm in the air. "But dammit, man, I thought...."

   "The answer is

    no

   . Ivy's a nice girl ... but...." He paused and
 sighed. "Since she was promoted to her father's old rank ... well...."
 He shrugged. "Who wants a wife that ranks you?"

   "Never thought of that," mused Cob. For a long while he was silent;
 then he pulled out an address book and leafed through until he came to
 the pages marked "Canalopolis, Mars."

   And he was gratified to see that Lieutenant Commander David Farragut
 Strykalski III was doing the same.

Question and Possible Answers:
How are the events of the story best summated?

 (A) A delivery ship discovers and saves two other ships
 (B) A passenger ship transiting Earth - Venus accidentally starts falling into the sun
 (C) Strike’s ship breaks down and has to be rescued from being pulled into the sun
 (D) A war ship disguised as a cargo ship changes course and saves lives from pulling into sun’s gravity

Answer:

Output: A


Input:
You are provided a story and a multiple-choice question with 4 possible answers (marked by A, B, C, D). Choose the best answer by writing its corresponding letter (either A, B, C, or D).

Story:
Doorway to Kal-Jmar

   By Stuart Fleming

   Two men had died before Syme Rector's guns

   to give him the key to the ancient city of

   Kal-Jmar—a city of untold wealth, and of

   robots that made desires instant commands.

   The tall man loitered a moment before a garish window display, his eyes
 impassive in his space-burned face, as the Lillis patrolman passed.
 Then he turned, burying his long chin in the folds of his sand cape,
 and took up the pursuit of the dark figure ahead once more.

   Above, the city's multicolored lights were reflected from the
 translucent Dome—a distant, subtly distorted Lillis, through which the
 stars shone dimly.

   Getting through that dome had been his first urgent problem, but now he
 had another, and a more pressing one. It had been simple enough to pass
 himself off as an itinerant prospector and gain entrance to the city,
 after his ship had crashed in the Mare Cimmerium. But the rest would
 not be so simple. He had to acquire a spaceman's identity card, and he
 had to do it fast. It was only a matter of time until the Triplanet
 Patrol gave up the misleading trail he had made into the hill country,
 and concluded that he must have reached Lillis. After that, his only
 safety lay in shipping out on a freighter as soon as possible. He had
 to get off Mars, because his trail was warm, and the Patrol thorough.

   They knew, of course, that he was an outlaw—the very fact of the
 crashed, illegally-armed ship would have told them that. But they
 didn't know that he was Syme Rector, the most-wanted and most-feared
 raider in the System. In that was his only advantage.

   He walked a little faster, as his quarry turned up a side street and
 then boarded a moving ramp to an upper level. He watched until the
 short, wide-shouldered figure in spaceman's harness disappeared over
 the top of the ramp, and then followed.

   The man was waiting for him at the mouth of the ascending tunnel.

   Syme looked at him casually, without a flicker of expression, and
 started to walk on, but the other stepped into his path. He was quite
 young, Syme saw, with a fighter's shoulders under the white leather,
 and a hard, determined thrust to his firm jaw.

   "All right," the boy said quietly. "What is it?"

   "I don't understand," Syme said.

   "The game, the angle. You've been following me. Do you want trouble?"

   "Why, no," Syme told him bewilderedly. "I haven't been following you.
 I—"

   The boy knuckled his chin reflectively. "You could be lying," he said
 finally. "But maybe I've made a mistake." Then—"Okay, citizen, you can
 clear—but don't let me catch you on my tail again."

   Syme murmured something and turned away, feeling the spaceman's eyes
 on the small of his back until he turned the corner. At the next
 street he took a ramp up, crossed over and came down on the other side
 a block away. He waited until he saw the boy's broad figure pass the
 intersection, and then followed again more cautiously.

   It was risky, but there was no other way. The signatures, the data,
 even the photograph on the card could be forged once Syme got his hands
 on it, but the identity card itself—that oblong of dark diamondite,
 glowing with the tiny fires of radioactivity—that could not be
 imitated, and the only way to get it was to kill.

   Up ahead was the Founders' Tower, the tallest building in Lillis. The
 boy strode into the entrance lobby, bought a ticket for the observation
 platform, and took the elevator. As soon as his car was out of sight in
 the transparent tube, Syme followed. He put a half-credit slug into the
 machine, took the punctured slip of plastic that came out. The ticket
 went into a scanning slot in the wall of the car, and the elevator
 whisked him up.

   The tower was high, more than a hundred meters above the highest level
 of the city, and the curved dome that kept air in Lillis was close
 overhead. Syme looked up, after his first appraising glance about the
 platform, and saw the bright-blue pinpoint of Earth. The sight stirred
 a touch of nostalgia in him, as it always did, but he put it aside.

   The boy was hunched over the circular balustrade a little distance
 away. Except for him, the platform was empty. Syme loosened his slim,
 deadly energy pistol in its holster and padded catlike toward the
 silent figure.

   It was over in a minute. The boy whirled as he came up, warned by
 some slight sound, or by the breath of Syme's passage in the still
 air. He opened his mouth to shout, and brought up his arm in a swift,
 instinctive gesture. But the blow never landed. Syme's pistol spat its
 silent white pencil of flame, and the boy crumpled to the floor with a
 minute, charred hole in the white leather over his chest.

   Syme stooped over him swiftly, found a thick wallet and thrust it into
 his pocket without a second glance. Then he raised the body in his arms
 and thrust it over the parapet.

   It fell, and in the same instant Syme felt a violent tug at his wrist.
 Before he could move to stop himself, he was over the edge. Too late,
 he realized what had happened—one of the hooks on the dead spaceman's
 harness had caught the heavy wristband of his chronometer. He was
 falling, linked to the body of his victim!

   Hardly knowing what he did, he lashed out wildly with his other arm,
 felt his fingertips catch and bite into the edge of the balustrade. His
 body hit the wall of the tower with a thump, and, a second later, the
 corpse below him hit the wall. Then they both hung there, swaying a
 little and Syme's fingers slipped a little with each motion.

   Gritting his teeth, he brought the magnificent muscles of his arm into
 play, raising the forearm against the dead weight of the dangling body.
 Fraction by slow fraction of an inch, it came up. Syme could feel the
 sweat pouring from his brow, running saltily into his eyes. His arms
 felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. Then the hook
 slipped free, and the tearing, unbearable weight vanished.

   The reaction swung Syme against the building again, and he almost
 lost his slippery hold on the balustrade. After a moment he heard the
 spaceman's body strike with a squashy thud, somewhere below.

   He swung up his other arm, got a better grip on the balustrade. He
 tried cautiously to get a leg up, but the motion loosened his hold on
 the smooth surface again. He relaxed, thinking furiously. He could hold
 on for another minute at most; then it was the final blast-off.

   He heard running footsteps, and then a pale face peered over the ledge
 at him. He realized suddenly that the whole incident could have taken
 only a few seconds. He croaked, "Get me up."

   Wordlessly, the man clasped thin fingers around his wrist. The other
 pulled, with much puffing and panting, and with his help Syme managed
 to get a leg over the edge and hoist his trembling body to safety.

   "Are you all right?"

   Syme looked at the man, nursing the tortured muscles of his arms. His
 rescuer was tall and thin, of indeterminate age. He had light, sandy
 hair, a sharp nose, and—oddly conflicting—pale, serious eyes and a
 humorous wide mouth. He was still panting.

   "I'm not hurt," Syme said. He grinned, his white teeth flashing in his
 dark, lean face. "Thanks for giving me a hand."

   "You scared hell out of me," said the man. "I heard a thud. I
 thought—you'd gone over." He looked at Syme questioningly.

   "That was my bag," the outlaw said quickly. "It slipped out of my hand,
 and I overbalanced myself when I grabbed for it."

   The man sighed. "I need a drink.

    You

   need a drink. Come on." He
 picked up a small black suitcase from the floor and started for the
 elevator, then stopped. "Oh—your bag. Shouldn't we do something about
 that?"

   "Never mind," said Syme, taking his arm. "The shock must have busted it
 wide open. My laundry is probably all over Lillis by now."

   They got off at the amusement level, three tiers down, and found a
 cafe around the corner. Syme wasn't worried about the man he had just
 killed. He had heard no second thud, so the body must have stayed on
 the first outcropping of the tower it struck. It probably wouldn't be
 found until morning.

   And he had the wallet. When he paid for the first round of

    culcha

   , he
 took it out and stole a glance at the identification card inside. There
 it was—his ticket to freedom. He began feeling expansive, and even
 friendly toward the slender, mouse-like man across the table. It was
 the

    culcha

   , of course. He knew it, and didn't care. In the morning
 he'd find a freighter berth—in as big a spaceport as Lillis, there
 were always jobs open. Meanwhile, he might as well enjoy himself, and
 it was safer to be seen with a companion than to be alone.

   He listened lazily to what the other was saying, leaning his tall,
 graceful body back into the softly-cushioned seat.

   "Lissen," said Harold Tate. He leaned forward on one elbow, slipped,
 caught himself, and looked at the elbow reproachfully. "Lissen," he
 said again, "I trust you, Jones. You're obvi-obviously an adventurer,
 but you have an honest face. I can't see it very well at the moment,
 but I hic!—pardon—seem to recall it as an honest face. I'm going to
 tell you something, because I need your help!—help." He paused. "I
 need a guide. D'you know this part of Mars well?"

   "Sure," said Syme absently. Out in the center of the floor, an AG
 plate had been turned on. Five Venusian girls were diving and twisting
 in its influence, propelling themselves by the motion of their
 delicately-webbed feet and trailing long gauzy streamers of synthesilk
 after them. Syme watched them through narrowed lids, feeling the glow
 of

    culcha

   inside him.

   "I wanta go to Kal-Jmar," said Tate.

   Syme snapped to attention, every nerve tingling. An indefinable sense,
 a hunch that had served him well before, told him that something big
 was coming—something that promised adventure and loot for Syme Rector.
 "Why?" he asked softly. "Why to Kal-Jmar?"

   Harold Tate told him, and later, when Syme had taken him to his rooms,
 he showed him what was in his little black suitcase. Syme had been
 right; it was big.

   Kal-Jmar was the riddle of the Solar System. It was the only remaining
 city of the ancient Martian race—the race that, legends said, had
 risen to greater heights than any other Solar culture. The machines,
 the artifacts, the records of the Martians were all there, perfectly
 preserved inside the city's bubble-like dome, after God knew how many
 thousands of years. But they couldn't be reached.

   For Kal-Jmar's dome was not the thing of steelite that protected
 Lillis: it was a tenuous, globular field of force that defied analysis
 as it defied explosives and diamond drills. The field extended both
 above and below the ground, and tunneling was of no avail. No one knew
 what had happened to the Martians, whether they were the ancestors of
 the present decadent Martian race, or a different species. No one knew
 anything about them or about Kal-Jmar.

   In the early days, when the conquest of Mars was just beginning, Earth
 scientists had been wild to get into the city. They had observed it
 from every angle, taken photographs of its architecture and the robots
 that still patrolled its fantastically winding streets, and then they
 had tried everything they knew to pierce the wall.

   Later, however, when every unsuccessful attempt had precipitated a
 bloody uprising of the present-day Martians—resulting in a rapid
 dwindling of the number of Martians—the Mars Protectorate had stepped
 in and forbidden any further experiments; forbidden, in fact, any
 Earthman to go near the place.

   Thus matter had stood for over a hundred years, until Harold Tate.
 Tate, a physicist, had stumbled on a field that seemed to be identical
 in properties to the Kal-Jmar dome; and what is more, he had found a
 force that would break it down.

   And so he had made his first trip to Mars, and within twenty-four
 hours, by the blindest of chances, blurted out his secret to Syme
 Rector, the scourge of the spaceways, the man with a thousand credits
 on his sleek, tigerish head.

   Syme's smile was not tigerish now; it was carefully, studiedly mild.
 For Tate was no longer drunk, and it was important that it should not
 occur to him that he had been indiscreet.

   "This is native territory we're coming to, Harold," he said. "Better
 strap on your gun."

   "Why. Are they really dangerous?"

   "They're unpredictable," Syme told him. "They're built differently, and
 they think differently. They breathe like us, down in their caverns
 where there's air, but they also eat sand, and get their oxygen that
 way."

   "Yes, I've heard about that," Tate said. "Iron oxide—very interesting
 metabolism." He got his energy pistol out of the compartment and
 strapped it on absently.

   Syme turned the little sand car up a gentle rise towards the tortuous
 hill country in the distance. "Not only that," he continued. "They
 eat the damndest stuff. Lichens and fungi and tumble-grass off the
 deserts—all full of deadly poisons, from arsenic up the line to
 xopite. They seem intelligent enough—in their own way—but they never
 come near our cities and they either can't or won't learn Terrestrial.
 When the first colonists came here, they had to learn

    their

   crazy
 language. Every word of it can mean any one of a dozen different
 things, depending on the inflection you give it. I can speak it some,
 but not much. Nobody can. We don't think the same."

   "So you think they might attack us?" Tate asked again, nervously.

   "They

    might

   do anything," Syme said curtly. "Don't worry about it."

   The hills were much closer than they had seemed, because of Mars'
 deceptively low horizon. In half an hour they were in the midst of a
 wilderness of fantastically eroded dunes and channels, laboring on
 sliding treads up the sides of steep hills only to slither down again
 on the other side.

   Syme stopped the car abruptly as a deep, winding channel appeared
 across their path. "Gully," he announced. "Shall we cross it, or follow
 it?"

   Tate peered through the steelite nose of the car. "Follow, I guess,"
 he offered. "It seems to go more or less where we're going, and if we
 cross it we'll only come to a couple dozen more."

   Syme nodded and moved the sand car up to the edge of the gully. Then he
 pressed a stud on the control board; a metal arm extruded from the tail
 of the car and a heavy spike slowly unscrewed from it, driving deep
 into the sand. A light on the board flashed, indicating that the spike
 was in and would bear the car's weight, and Syme started the car over
 the edge.

   As the little car nosed down into the gully, the metal arm left behind
 revealed itself to be attached to a length of thick, very strong wire
 cable, with a control cord inside. They inched down the almost vertical
 incline, unreeling the cable behind them, and starting minor landslides
 as they descended.

   Finally they touched bottom. Syme pressed another stud, and above, the
 metal spike that had supported them screwed itself out of the ground
 again and the cable reeled in.

   Tate had been watching with interest. "Very ingenious," he said. "But
 how do we get up again?"

   "Most of these gullies peter out gradually," said Syme, "but if we want
 or have to climb out where it's deep, we have a little harpoon gun that
 shoots the anchor up on top."

   "Good. I shouldn't like to stay down here for the rest of my
 natural life. Depressing view." He looked up at the narrow strip of
 almost-black sky visible from the floor of the gully, and shook his
 head.

   Neither Syme nor Tate ever had a chance to test the efficiency of their
 harpoon gun. They had traveled no more than five hundred meters, and
 the gully was as deep as ever, when Tate, looking up, saw a deeper
 blackness blot out part of the black sky directly overhead. He shouted,
 "Look out!" and grabbed for the nearest steering lever.

   The car wheeled around in a half circle and ran into the wall of the
 gully. Syme was saying, "What—?" when there was a thunderous crash
 that shook the sturdy walls of the car, as a huge boulder smashed into
 the ground immediately to their left.

   When the smoky red dust had cleared away, they saw that the left tread
 of the sand car was crushed beyond all recognition.

   Syme was cursing slowly and steadily with a deep, seething anger. Tate
 said, "I guess we walk from here on." Then he looked up again and
 caught a glimpse of the horde of beasts that were rushing up the gully
 toward them.

   "My God!" he said. "What are those?"

   Syme looked. "Those," he said bitterly, "are Martians."

   The natives, like all Martian fauna, were multi-legged. Also like all
 Martian fauna, they moved so fast that you couldn't see how many legs
 they did have. Actually, however, the natives had six legs apiece—or,
 more properly, four legs and two arms. Their lungs were not as large
 as they appeared, being collapsed at the moment. What caused the bulge
 that made their torsos look like sausages was a huge air bladder, with
 a valve arrangement from the stomach and feeding directly into the
 bloodstream.

   Their faces were vaguely canine, but the foreheads were high, and the
 lips were not split. They did resemble dogs, in that their thick black
 fur was splotched with irregulate patches of white. These patches of
 white were subject to muscular control and could be spread out fanwise;
 or, conversely, the black could be expanded to cover the white, which
 helped to take care of the extremes of Martian temperature. Right now
 they were mostly black.

   The natives slowed down and spread out to surround the wrecked sand
 car, and it could be seen that most of them were armed with spears,
 although some had the slim Benson energy guns—strictly forbidden to
 Martians.

   Syme stopped cursing and watched tensely. Tate said nothing, but he
 swallowed audibly.

   One Martian, who looked exactly like all the rest, stepped forward and
 motioned unmistakably for the two to come out. He waited a moment and
 then gestured with his energy gun. That gun, Syme knew from experience,
 could burn through a small thickness of steelite if held on the same
 spot long enough.

   "Come on," Syme said grimly. He rose and reached for a pressure suit,
 and Tate followed him.

   "What do you think they'll—" he began, and then stopped himself. "I
 know. They're unpredictable."

   "Yeah," said Syme, and opened the door. The air in the car

    whooshed

   into the near-vacuum outside, and he and Tate stepped out.

   The Martian leader looked at them enigmatically, then turned and
 started off. The other natives closed in on them, and they all bounded
 along under the weak gravity.

   They bounded along for what Syme figured as a good kilometer and a
 half, and they then reached a branch in the gully and turned down
 it, going lower all the time. Under the light of their helmet lamps,
 they could see the walls of the gully—a tunnel, now—getting darker
 and more solid. Finally, when Syme estimated they were about nine
 kilometers down, there was even a suggestion of moisture.

   The tunnel debouched at last into a large cavern. There was a
 phosphorescent gleam from fungus along the walls, but Syme couldn't
 decide how far away the far wall was. He noticed something else, though.

   "There's air here," he said to Tate. "I can see dust motes in it." He
 switched his helmet microphone from radio over to the audio membrane
 on the outside of the helmet. "

    Kalis methra

   ," he began haltingly,
 "

    seltin guna getal.

   "

   "Yes, there is air here," said the Martian leader, startlingly. "Not
 enough for your use, however, so do not open your helmets."

   Syme swore amazedly.

   "I thought you said they didn't speak Terrestrial," Tate said. Syme
 ignored him.

   "We had our reasons for not doing so," the Martian said.

   "But how—?"

   "We are telepaths, of course. On a planet which is nearly airless on
 its surface, we have to be. A tendency of the Terrestrial mind is to
 ignore the obvious. We have not had a spoken language of our own for
 several thousand years."

   He darted a glance at Syme's darkly scowling face. His own hairy face
 was expressionless, but Syme sensed that he was amused. "Yes, you're
 right," he said. "The language you and your fellows struggled to learn
 is a fraud, a hodge-podge concocted to deceive you."

   Tate looked interested. "But why this—this gigantic masquerade?"

   "You had nothing to give us," the Martian said simply.

   Tate frowned, then flushed. "You mean you avoided revealing yourselves
 because you—had nothing to gain from mental intercourse with us?"

   "Yes."

   Tate thought again. "But—"

   "No," the Martian interrupted him, "revealing the extent of our
 civilization would have spared us nothing at your people's hands. Yours
 is an imperialist culture, and you would have had Mars, whether you
 thought you were taking it from equals or not."

   "Never mind that," Syme broke in impatiently. "What do you want with
 us?"

   The Martian looked at him appraisingly. "You already suspect.
 Unfortunately, you must die."

   It was a weird situation, Syme thought. His mind was racing, but as yet
 he could see no way out. He began to wonder, if he did, could he keep
 the Martians from knowing about it? Then he realized that the Martian
 must have received that thought, too, and he was enraged. He stood,
 holding himself in check with an effort.

   "Will you tell us why?" Tate asked.

   "You were brought here for that purpose. It is part of our conception
 of justice. I will tell you and your—friend—anything you wish to
 know."

   Syme noticed that the other Martians had retired to the farther side of
 the cavern. Some were munching the glowing fungus. That left only the
 leader, who was standing alertly on all fours a short distance away
 from them, holding the Benson gun trained on them. Syme tried not to
 think about the gun, especially about making a grab for it. It was like
 trying not to think of the word "hippopotamus."

   Tate squatted down comfortably on the floor of the cavern, apparently
 unconcerned, but his hands were trembling slightly. "First why—" he
 began.

   "There are many secrets in Kal-Jmar," the Martian said, "among them a
 very simple catalyzing agent which could within fifty years transform
 Mars to a planet with Terrestrially-thick atmosphere."

   "I think I see," Tate said thoughtfully. "That's been the ultimate aim
 all along, but so far the problem has us licked. If we solved it, then
 we'd have all of Mars, not just the cities. Your people would die out.
 You couldn't have that, of course."

   He sighed deeply. He spread his gloved hands before him and looked
 at them with a queer intentness. "Well—how about the Martians—the
 Kal-Jmar Martians, I mean? I'd dearly love to know the answer to that
 one."

   "Neither of the alternatives in your mind is correct. They were not a
 separate species, although they were unlike us. But they were not our
 ancestors, either. They were the contemporaries of our ancestors."

   "Several thousand years ago Mars' loss of atmosphere began to make
 itself felt. There were two ways out. Some chose to seal themselves
 into cities like Kal-Jmar; our ancestors chose to adapt their bodies to
 the new conditions. Thus the race split. Their answer to the problem
 was an evasion; they remained static. Our answer was the true one, for
 we progressed. We progressed beyond the need of science; they remained
 its slaves. They died of a plague—and other causes.

   "You see," he finished gently, "our deception has caused a natural
 confusion in your minds. They were the degenerates, not we."

   "And yet," Tate mused, "you are being destroyed by contact with
 an—inferior—culture."

   "We hope to win yet," the Martian said.

   Tate stood up, his face very white. "Tell me one thing," he begged.
 "Will our two races ever live together in amity?"

   The Martian lowered his head. "That is for unborn generations." He
 looked at Tate again and aimed the energy gun. "You are a brave man,"
 he said. "I am sorry."

   Syme saw all his hopes of treasure and glory go glimmering down the
 sights of the Martian's Benson gun, and suddenly the pent-up rage in
 him exploded. Too swiftly for his intention to be telegraphed, before
 he knew himself what he meant to do, he hurled himself bodily into the
 Martian.

   It was like tangling with a draft horse. The Martian was astonishingly
 strong. Syme scrambled desperately for the gun, got it, but couldn't
 tear it out of the Martian's fingers. And all the time he could almost
 feel the Martian's telepathic call for help surging out. He heard the
 swift pad of his followers coming across the cavern.

   He put everything he had into one mighty, murderous effort. Every
 muscle fiber in his superbly trained body crackled and surged with
 power. He roared his fury. And the gun twisted out of the Martian's
 iron grip!

   He clubbed the prostrate leader with it instantly, then reversed the
 weapon and snapped a shot at the nearest Martian. The creature dropped
 his lance and fell without a sound.

   The next instant a ray blinked at him, and he rolled out of the way
 barely in time. The searing ray cut a swath over the leader's body and
 swerved to cut down on him. Still rolling, he fired at the holder of
 the weapon. The gun dropped and winked out on the floor.

   Syme jumped to his feet and faced his enemies, snarling like the
 trapped tiger he was. Another ray slashed at him, and he bent lithely
 to let it whistle over his head. Another, lower this time. He flipped
 his body into the air and landed upright, his gun still blazing. His
 right leg burned fiercely from a ray-graze, but he ignored it. And
 all the while he was mowing down the massed natives in great swaths,
 seeking out the ones armed with Bensons in swift, terrible slashes,
 dodging spears and other missiles in midair, and roaring at the top of
 his powerful lungs.

   At last there were none with guns left to oppose him. He scythed down
 the rest in two terrible, lightning sweeps of his ray, then dropped
 the weapon from blistered fingers.

   He was gasping for breath, and realized that he was losing air from
 the seared-open right leg of his suit. He reached for the emergency
 kit at his side, drawing in great, gasping breaths, and fumbled out
 a tube of sealing liquid. He spread the stuff on liberally, smearing
 it impartially over flesh and fabric. It felt like liquid hell on the
 burned, bleeding leg, but he kept on until the quick-drying fluid
 formed an airtight patch.

   Only then did he turn, to see Tate flattened against the wall behind
 him, his hands empty at his sides. "I'm sorry," Tate said miserably. "I
 could have grabbed a spear or something, but—I just couldn't, not even
 to save my own life. I—I halfway hoped they'd kill both of us."

   Syme glared at him and spat, too enraged to think of diplomacy. He
 turned and strode out of the cavern, carrying his right leg stiffly,
 but with his feral, tigerish head held high.

   He led the way, wordlessly, back to the wrecked sand car. Tate followed
 him with a hangdog, beaten air, as though he had just found something
 that shattered all his previous concepts of the verities in life, and
 didn't know what to do about it.

   Still silently, Syme refilled his oxygen tank, watched Tate do the
 same, and then picked up two spare tanks and the precious black
 suitcase and handed one of the tanks to Tate. Then he stumped around
 to the back of the car and inspected the damage. The cable reel, which
 might have drawn them out of the gully, was hopelessly smashed. That
 was that.

Question and Possible Answers:
If Syme weren't initially helped by Harold, what would've probably happened to him?

 (A) Syme would've been protected by the building's safety net.
 (B) Syme would've gotten help from someone else.
 (C) Syme would've fallen to his death.
 (D) Syme would've caught himself with his two backup harpoons.

Answer:

Output: C