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:
The end of the web

In the past year, as we have witnessed the upending of the political order, the internet has been the theatre where many of the battles have been fought: from the hacking and leaking of Democratic party emails, to the proliferation of fake news and alternative facts, and yes, the outpourings of @realDonaldTrump.
With domestic and geopolitical tensions rising, governments are finding it increasingly hard to function amid a constant barrage of uncontrollable information and potential cyber-attacks, making them grow more wary both of the internet's influence and their ability to control it.
The fallout from this means we are facing the prospect of countries around the world pulling the plug on the open, global internet and creating their own independent networks. We might be about to see the end of the world wide internet as we know it.
With globalisation under attack, the ultimate bastion of borderlessness – the global internet – might very well be one the biggest scalps taken by the newly emerging world order heralded in by Brexit and Trump. If a global orthodoxy of free trade, soft power and international organisations is overpowered by belligerent nations and isolationism, the net will inevitably be swept away with it.
Yet although fragmentation – and ultimately also Balkanisation – will carry great social and economic cost, it could also be an opportunity. Europe, which has already been flexing its muscles when it comes to internet policy, now finds itself forced to rely less on US cooperation. It should therefore become a frontrunner in developing an alternative, decentralised internet, with its root values of fairness, openness and democracy restored. This could help the net – and indeed Europe – to become more resilient again. As much as we fear the 'splinternet', we should welcome the Euronet.
Weaponisation of the internet
Since we've become dependent on the internet for almost everything we do, dangers to the network's integrity threaten devastating effects. Governments may be tempted to turn inwards in an attempt to shield themselves and their citizens from cyber-attacks.
Last October, unknown hackers used an array of badly secured 'internet of things' (IoT) devices to bring down most of the internet on the east coast of America in one of the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks to date. While depriving Americans of Amazon and Facebook for several hours was surely an inconvenience, the potential of the weaponised internet to do harm is infinitely greater.
As more of the components of a country's critical infrastructure move online, the number of possible targets grows too. Hackers shut down a significant part of Ukraine's electricity grid in 2015, and crippled several important Estonian industries, including its banks, in 2007.
Many cyber-security experts warn about the lacklustre defence of everything from air traffic control towers and voting machines to nuclear plants. One well-placed attack could do more damage than the most aggressive of traditional military campaigns, at a fraction of the cost. Because of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding cyber-capabilities – 'know your enemy' is a hard adage to follow if potential culprits and their capabilities are so tough to track – it has become impossible for governments to completely shield their countries from cyber-attacks.
The growing urge to control the internet has also become apparent over the influence of so-called fake news. Distorting public opinion and fact as a manipulation technique is nothing new: it's been used since Roman times. But the relentless pace and scope with which the internet allows information to disseminate is quite unprecedented. Governments and the media (who have themselves often swapped truth for clicks) are having an increasingly hard time stemming the flow of biased or misleading news stories. So the democratic process suffers.
The solutions offered by the reluctant tech giants providing a platform for fake news won't be sufficient to stop it altogether. This will prompt more countries to follow Russia and China in building their own platforms like VKontakte and Baidu, thus reducing foreign influence and allowing for extensive censorship and monitoring. The desire of developing countries to establish their own social networks will see them retreat into their own national bubbles.
Fragile infrastructure
While cyber attacks and false information campaigns use the internet to attack the infrastructure by which our societies function, the internet's own infrastructure is also at risk. Despite the internet's ephemeral, lawless appeal, its underlying network of cables, tubes and wires is very much rooted in the physical world. Over 99 per cent of all global internet communications are facilitated by an impressive web of undersea cables, connecting all corners of the world. A submarine deliberately destroying one of these cables in a hard-to-reach place could bring down access to parts of the internet for weeks; and so, by extension, all the systems that rely upon it.
The fallibility of this shared infrastructure also makes it impossible to keep foreign or hostile actors out of domestic affairs. Though governments that heavily restrict internet access might find it easier to prevent information from flowing in and out of the country, they are still reliant on the same co-owned systems, with some parts inevitably falling under other countries' jurisdictions.
This became very clear after the 2013 Snowden revelations, which showed that the US routinely tapped into foreign internet traffic routed through the country. The massive scale of this monitoring even led then president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff to call for the construction of an undersea cable from Brazil directly to Europe, bypassing the prying eyes of the National Security Agency altogether. And US intelligence agencies are by no means the only ones doing this kind of snooping, as we know all too well.
With various nations eyeing each other suspiciously and traditional alliances crumbling, building alternative structures to make foreign interference more difficult seems a logical consequence.
Who rules the internet?
It won't just be the actual infrastructure and 'hard' elements of the internet where governments will seek more independence. Internet governance, the catch-all term to describe the processes and decisions that determine how the internet is managed, and how its technical norms and standards are set, is increasingly complex.
In principle, no single actor should be in charge of the internet governance processes. Ideally, these should be overseen by a multi-stakeholder model where governments, the private sector and advocacy groups would have an equal voice and where anyone could be allowed to become involved. In practice, however, it is US government institutions and companies – yes, the usual suspects – that set the rules. They tend to be over-represented in meetings, and in charge of some of the largest regulatory bodies. American stewardship over the internet has long been an area of contention. Countries like China, Russia, and many (mainly developing) countries want more control over their own domestic networks, preferring to see the current model replaced by something more Westphalian, perhaps resembling the United Nations.
This discussion will likely flair up again soon as the Trump administration seeks ways to reverse the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition: an arcane but highly controversial policy issue. IANA is the agency in charge of maintaining the global DNS (Domain Name System) as well as managing Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation and other important basic structural functions of the internet. The internet’s IANA functions had traditionally been managed by the non-profit ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), but remained under contract of the US Department of Commerce, which oversaw its processes – effectively leaving it under US government control. After almost 20 years of bickering and international kowtowing, IANA was brought under full ICANN control last October, finally becoming fully independent. This to the great dismay of many Republican lawmakers; particularly senator Ted Cruz, who has been fighting to stop the process for years.
If the US government does decide to overturn the transition (and Trump has certainly shown enthusiasm for overturning decisions of the previous administration), it will do a lot of damage to the American-led governance process. How much credibility can it have when the most important partner doesn't even play by the rules?
As these tensions increase, we'll likely see a push for more government bodies to take control of internet governance (such as the short-lived, Brazil-led NETMundial initiative), abandoning the more inclusive and cooperative approach involving businesses and civil society organisations. Then if the process fell even further apart, it would be a substantial challenge to the interoperable global internet, as regulations and standards swiftly went in different directions.
The Big Four
Though the internet was initially heralded as the greatest democratiser of information since Gutenberg, most data now flows through only a handful of companies. Silicon Valley tech giants, with the 'Big Four' of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon at the helm, rake in most of the spoils of the all-conquering global online economy.
In their ambition to expand even further, these tech companies are themselves also an important cause of internet fragmentation, erecting 'walled gardens' all over the world. Facebook's controversial Free Basics service, which offers free data plans to users in developing countries, but which restricts access to a small number of Facebook-approved websites, is a prime example. Some call it digital colonialism.
These moves aimed at generating even more revenue, concentrated in the hands of the few as inequality rises, understandably cause concern among governments and citizens alike. But our main worry should not be about economics. The Big Four – controlling our data, as well as our access to information – wield an inordinate amount of power. Indeed, Denmark recently announced it would appoint a igital ambassador specifically to deal with these technology giants, citing their influence as larger than that of many countries.
Citizens worldwide have become so dependent on these platforms that there are effectively no readily available alternatives to move to if things turn sour. The sheer scale of the Women's March and similar demonstrations in recent weeks would not have been possible without the ability to organise online. What if these channels fall away, their freedom restricted by companies under the yoke of a hostile government?
Though many American technology companies have already pledged they will not assist with the creation of a 'Muslim registry' – and have pushed back on Trump’s latest immigration restrictions
–
we have to be very aware that the amount of personal data they have on each of us would make it far too easy for them to do so.
Foreign governments, which in the current political climate cannot rely on Google abiding by its mantra, 'Don't be evil', will aggressively start to pursue the construction of domestic alternatives. It is something we are already seeing happening worldwide.
The splinternet
Though the dream of the web internet pioneers was one of a completely open, non-hierarchical internet, over the years barriers have been springing up that restrict this freedom. Bit by bit, the internet is becoming more cordoned off.
The idea of splitting up the internet into different, Balkanised internets – with a completely separate infrastructure – is not new. After the Snowden revelations, Germany took action and started looking into the construction of the 'Internetz', a German-only network (although one that allows for the possibility of expanding to the rest of the EU).
We do not currently have an example of a real internet island in place, but the closest version we see is probably the Great Firewall of China. Though China hasn't built an entirely separate infrastructure, its internet looks entirely different from what we are used to, with content heavily censored and many platforms and websites completely banned.
Russia appears to be following suit. Last November, Russia banned LinkedIn from operating in the country because the social network did not adhere to a new law decreeing that all data generated by Russian users should be stored within Russia itself. In recent weeks, news has also emerged that Moscow has been working with Beijing to implement something similar to the Great Firewall for its own domestic users. Democracies and autocracies alike have long come to understand the great power of the internet and have learned how to both harness and restrict it.
Who will be the first to go it alone? It's difficult to say yet but the usual suspects are lining up: China; Russia; Europe; even Trump's America
.
Other countries like Brazil or Turkey might see a compelling reason to do so as well.
Now that we are so used to a ubiquitous and global internet, it's hard to imagine what a world of fragmented, national internets might look like. What we do know is that the internet of fun and games, of unfettered access, is quickly coming to an end. When it does, it will be another big nail in the coffin for globalisation.
Breaking free
The idea of a Balkanised internet, of different national and supranational internet islands, is a dark one. What living in such a future would look like, no one knows. Inevitably, though, it would herald a world of less mutual understanding, less shared prosperity and shrinking horizons.
However, the fragmentation of the internet need not be bad news. As the limitations of its original incarnation are becoming increasingly clear, starting from scratch provides us with an important opportunity to right our initial wrongs. We can build a network or networks that are more ethical, inclusive and resilient to outside threats.
While this is a moment of disharmony and uncertainty for the European project, the EU has much it agrees upon when it comes to policy and regulating the internet's mostly American corporate giants: from its ambitious data protection policies and the right to be forgotten, to Apple tax case. But it could do more. The global internet as we know it today began as a public space where everyone had an equal opportunity to use it as we liked. But it has quickly privatised, locking us into platforms that 'harvest' our data. As European citizens grow increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the internet, the EU has a great opportunity.
The EU should take a different approach to the internet and, rather than making it an unregulated free-for-all, consider it a 'commons': a public good open to all, excluding none. The EU could create and fund the infrastructure for this and help ensure safety for all. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals would do their bit by creating a variety of tools to add to this commons, which would become fully interoperable through shared standards and underpinning technologies.
One necessary component of such an internet commons is that it should be decentralised. Decentralising the internet and rethinking its structure would allow users to take back control over the network of networks, letting them manage their own personal data rather than giving it away to large companies, as well as offering them more choice over the tools they use. It is also often said that distributed internets would also inherently be much safer: largescale cyber-attacks are easier to prevent if we reduce the number of central nodes that traffic can travel through.
But a European internet would above all need to be radically ambitious – especially with the EU in a fractured state. The rules for the decentralised, new internet are still wide open, and we have the opportunity to set them. The emergence of a new world order is forcing Europe to rethink itself, come closer together and defend its values in the world. Creating a completely new internet built around these values – and open to any like-minded country to join – might be one extraordinarily effective way of achieving it.
This is an extended version of a piece originally published in Nesta's 10 predictions for 2017 series
Correction 20 February 2017: this article was updated to correct a few instances of 'web' to 'internet'
This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

Question and Possible Answers:
The author is afraid

 (A) that the dark web is going to cause long-lasting issues.
 (B) government is going to cause a revolt through their internet sanctions.
 (C) people have lost sight of what the internet is for.
 (D) that huge problems can come from not having proper defenses in place on the internet.

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:
<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ -->

   The Anglers of Arz

   By Roger Dee

   Illustrated by BOB MARTIN

   [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
 Fiction January 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
 that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

    There were two pinkish, bipedal fishermen on the tiny
 islet.

   In order to make Izaak Walton's sport complete, there must
 be an angler, a fish, and some bait. All three existed on Arz but there
 was a question as to which was which.

   The third night of the

    Marco Four's

   landfall on the moonless Altarian
 planet was a repetition of the two before it, a nine-hour intermission
 of drowsy, pastoral peace. Navigator Arthur Farrell—it was his turn to
 stand watch—was sitting at an open-side port with a magnoscanner ready;
 but in spite of his vigilance he had not exposed a film when the
 inevitable pre-dawn rainbow began to shimmer over the eastern ocean.

   Sunrise brought him alert with a jerk, frowning at sight of two pinkish,
 bipedal Arzian fishermen posted on the tiny coral islet a quarter-mile
 offshore, their blank triangular faces turned stolidly toward the beach.

   "They're at it again," Farrell called, and dropped to the mossy turf
 outside. "Roll out on the double! I'm going to magnofilm this!"

   Stryker and Gibson came out of their sleeping cubicles reluctantly,
 belting on the loose shorts which all three wore in the balmy Arzian
 climate. Stryker blinked and yawned as he let himself through the port,
 his fringe of white hair tousled and his naked paunch sweating. He
 looked, Farrell thought for the thousandth time, more like a retired
 cook than like the veteran commander of a Terran Colonies expedition.

   Gibson followed, stretching his powerfully-muscled body like a wrestler
 to throw off the effects of sleep. Gibson was linguist-ethnologist of
 the crew, a blocky man in his early thirties with thick black hair and
 heavy brows that shaded a square, humorless face.

   "Any sign of the squids yet?" he asked.

   "They won't show up until the dragons come," Farrell said. He adjusted
 the light filter of the magnoscanner and scowled at Stryker. "Lee, I
 wish you'd let me break up the show this time with a dis-beam. This
 butchery gets on my nerves."

   Stryker shielded his eyes with his hands against the glare of sun on
 water. "You know I can't do that, Arthur. These Arzians may turn out to
 be Fifth Order beings or higher, and under Terran Regulations our
 tampering with what may be a basic culture-pattern would amount to armed
 invasion. We'll have to crack that cackle-and-grunt language of theirs
 and learn something of their mores before we can interfere."

   Farrell turned an irritable stare on the incurious group of Arzians
 gathering, nets and fishing spears in hand, at the edge of the
 sheltering bramble forest.

   "What stumps me is their motivation," he said. "Why do the fools go out
 to that islet every night, when they must know damned well what will
 happen next morning?"

   Gibson answered him with an older problem, his square face puzzled. "For
 that matter, what became of the city I saw when we came in through the
 stratosphere? It must be a tremendous thing, yet we've searched the
 entire globe in the scouter and found nothing but water and a scattering
 of little islands like this one, all covered with bramble. It wasn't a
 city these pink fishers could have built, either. The architecture was
 beyond them by a million years."

   Stryker and Farrell traded baffled looks. The city had become something
 of a fixation with Gibson, and his dogged insistence—coupled with an
 irritating habit of being right—had worn their patience thin.

   "There never was a city here, Gib," Stryker said. "You dozed off while
 we were making planetfall, that's all."

   Gibson stiffened resentfully, but Farrell's voice cut his protest short.
 "Get set! Here they come!"

   Out of the morning rainbow dropped a swarm of winged lizards, twenty
 feet in length and a glistening chlorophyll green in the early light.
 They stooped like hawks upon the islet offshore, burying the two Arzian
 fishers instantly under their snapping, threshing bodies. Then around
 the outcrop the sea boiled whitely, churned to foam by a sudden
 uprushing of black, octopoid shapes.

   "The squids," Stryker grunted. "Right on schedule. Two seconds too late,
 as usual, to stop the slaughter."

   A barrage of barbed tentacles lashed out of the foam and drove into the
 melee of winged lizards. The lizards took the air at once, leaving
 behind three of their number who disappeared under the surface like
 harpooned seals. No trace remained of the two Arzian natives.

   "A neat example of dog eat dog," Farrell said, snapping off the
 magnoscanner. "Do any of those beauties look like city-builders, Gib?"

   Chattering pink natives straggled past from the shelter of the thorn
 forest, ignoring the Earthmen, and lined the casting ledges along the
 beach to begin their day's fishing.

   "Nothing we've seen yet could have built that city," Gibson said
 stubbornly. "But it's here somewhere, and I'm going to find it. Will
 either of you be using the scouter today?"

   Stryker threw up his hands. "I've a mountain of data to collate, and
 Arthur is off duty after standing watch last night. Help yourself, but
 you won't find anything."

   The scouter was a speeding dot on the horizon when Farrell crawled into
 his sleeping cubicle a short time later, leaving Stryker to mutter over
 his litter of notes. Sleep did not come to him at once; a vague sense of
 something overlooked prodded irritatingly at the back of his
 consciousness, but it was not until drowsiness had finally overtaken him
 that the discrepancy assumed definite form.

   He recalled then that on the first day of the

    Marco's

   planetfall one
 of the pink fishers had fallen from a casting ledge into the water, and
 had all but drowned before his fellows pulled him out with extended
 spear-shafts. Which meant that the fishers could not swim, else some
 would surely have gone in after him.

   And the Marco's crew had explored Arz exhaustively without finding any
 slightest trace of boats or of boat landings. The train of association
 completed itself with automatic logic, almost rousing Farrell out of his
 doze.

   "I'll be damned," he muttered. "No boats, and they don't swim.

    Then how
 the devil do they get out to that islet?

   "

   He fell asleep with the paradox unresolved.

   Stryker was still humped over his records when Farrell came out of his
 cubicle and broke a packaged meal from the food locker. The visicom over
 the control board hummed softly, its screen blank on open channel.

   "Gibson found his lost city yet?" Farrell asked, and grinned when
 Stryker snorted.

   "He's scouring the daylight side now," Stryker said. "Arthur, I'm going
 to ground Gib tomorrow, much as I dislike giving him a direct order.
 He's got that phantom city on the brain, and he lacks the imagination to
 understand how dangerous to our assignment an obsession of that sort can
 be."

   Farrell shrugged. "I'd agree with you offhand if it weren't for Gib's
 bullheaded habit of being right. I hope he finds it soon, if it's here.
 I'll probably be standing his watch until he's satisfied."

   Stryker looked relieved. "Would you mind taking it tonight? I'm
 completely bushed after today's logging."

   Farrell waved a hand and took up his magnoscanner. It was dark outside
 already, the close, soft night of a moonless tropical world whose moist
 atmosphere absorbed even starlight. He dragged a chair to the open port
 and packed his pipe, settling himself comfortably while Stryker mixed a
 nightcap before turning in.

   Later he remembered that Stryker dissolved a tablet in his glass, but at
 the moment it meant nothing. In a matter of minutes the older man's
 snoring drifted to him, a sound faintly irritating against the velvety
 hush outside.

   Farrell lit his pipe and turned to the inconsistencies he had uncovered.
 The Arzians did not swim, and without boats....

   It occurred to him then that there had been two of the pink fishers on
 the islet each morning, and the coincidence made him sit up suddenly,
 startled. Why two? Why not three or four, or only one?

   He stepped out through the open lock and paced restlessly up and down on
 the springy turf, feeling the ocean breeze soft on his face. Three days
 of dull routine logwork had built up a need for physical action that
 chafed his temper; he was intrigued and at the same time annoyed by the
 enigmatic relation that linked the Arzian fishers to the dragons and
 squids, and his desire to understand that relation was aggravated by the
 knowledge that Arz could be a perfect world for Terran colonization.
 That is, he thought wryly, if Terran colonists could stomach the weird
 custom pursued by its natives of committing suicide in pairs.

   He went over again the improbable drama of the past three mornings, and
 found it not too unnatural until he came to the motivation and the means
 of transportation that placed the Arzians in pairs on the islet, when
 his whole fabric of speculation fell into a tangled snarl of
 inconsistencies. He gave it up finally; how could any Earthman
 rationalize the outlandish compulsions that actuated so alien a race?

   He went inside again, and the sound of Stryker's muffled snoring fanned
 his restlessness. He made his decision abruptly, laying aside the
 magnoscanner for a hand-flash and a pocket-sized audicom unit which he
 clipped to the belt of his shorts.

   He did not choose a weapon because he saw no need for one. The torch
 would show him how the natives reached the outcrop, and if he should
 need help the audicom would summon Stryker. Investigating without
 Stryker's sanction was, strictly speaking, a breach of Terran
 Regulations, but—

   "Damn Terran Regulations," he muttered. "I've got to

    know

   ."

   Farrell snapped on the torch at the edge of the thorn forest and entered
 briskly, eager for action now that he had begun. Just inside the edge of
 the bramble he came upon a pair of Arzians curled up together on the
 mossy ground, sleeping soundly, their triangular faces wholly blank and
 unrevealing.

   He worked deeper into the underbrush and found other sleeping couples,
 but nothing else. There were no humming insects, no twittering
 night-birds or scurrying rodents. He had worked his way close to the
 center of the island without further discovery and was on the point of
 turning back, disgusted, when something bulky and powerful seized him
 from behind.

   A sharp sting burned his shoulder, wasp-like, and a sudden overwhelming
 lassitude swept him into a darkness deeper than the Arzian night. His
 last conscious thought was not of his own danger, but of Stryker—asleep
 and unprotected behind the

    Marco's

   open port....

   He was standing erect when he woke, his back to the open sea and a
 prismatic glimmer of early-dawn rainbow shining on the water before him.
 For a moment he was totally disoriented; then from the corner of an eye
 he caught the pinkish blur of an Arzian fisher standing beside him, and
 cried out hoarsely in sudden panic when he tried to turn his head and
 could not.

   He was on the coral outcropping offshore, and except for the involuntary
 muscles of balance and respiration his body was paralyzed.

   The first red glow of sunrise blurred the reflected rainbow at his feet,
 but for some seconds his shuttling mind was too busy to consider the
 danger of predicament.

    Whatever brought me here anesthetized me first

   ,
 he thought.

    That sting in my shoulder was like a hypo needle.

   Panic seized him again when he remembered the green flying-lizards; more
 seconds passed before he gained control of himself, sweating with the
 effort. He had to get help. If he could switch on the audicom at his
 belt and call Stryker....

   He bent every ounce of his will toward raising his right hand, and
 failed.

   His arm was like a limb of lead, its inertia too great to budge. He
 relaxed the effort with a groan, sweating again when he saw a fiery
 half-disk of sun on the water, edges blurred and distorted by tiny
 surface ripples.

   On shore he could see the

    Marco Four

   resting between thorn forest and
 beach, its silvered sides glistening with dew. The port was still open,
 and the empty carrier rack in the bow told him that Gibson had not yet
 returned with the scouter.

   He grew aware then that sensation was returning to him slowly, that the
 cold surface of the audicom unit at his hip—unfelt before—was pressing
 against the inner curve of his elbow. He bent his will again toward
 motion; this time the arm tensed a little, enough to send hope flaring
 through him. If he could put pressure enough against the stud....

   The tiny click of its engaging sent him faint with relief.

   "Stryker!" he yelled. "Lee, roll out—

    Stryker

   !"

   The audicom hummed gently, without answer.

   He gathered himself for another shout, and recalled with a chill of
 horror the tablet Stryker had mixed into his nightcap the night before.
 Worn out by his work, Stryker had made certain that he would not be
 easily disturbed.

   The flattened sun-disk on the water brightened and grew rounder. Above
 its reflected glare he caught a flicker of movement, a restless
 suggestion of flapping wings.

   He tried again. "Stryker, help me! I'm on the islet!"

   The audicom crackled. The voice that answered was not Stryker's, but
 Gibson's.

   "Farrell! What the devil are you doing on that butcher's block?"

   Farrell fought down an insane desire to laugh. "Never mind that—get
 here fast, Gib! The flying-lizards—"

   He broke off, seeing for the first time the octopods that ringed the
 outcrop just under the surface of the water, waiting with barbed
 tentacles spread and yellow eyes studying him glassily. He heard the
 unmistakable flapping of wings behind and above him then, and thought
 with shock-born lucidity:

    I wanted a backstage look at this show, and
 now I'm one of the cast

   .

   The scouter roared in from the west across the thorn forest, flashing so
 close above his head that he felt the wind of its passage. Almost
 instantly he heard the shrilling blast of its emergency bow jets as
 Gibson met the lizard swarm head on.

   Gibson's voice came tinnily from the audicom. "Scattered them for the
 moment, Arthur—blinded the whole crew with the exhaust, I think. Stand
 fast, now. I'm going to pick you up."

   The scouter settled on the outcrop beside Farrell, so close that the hot
 wash of its exhaust gases scorched his bare legs. Gibson put out thick
 brown arms and hauled him inside like a straw man, ignoring the native.
 The scouter darted for shore with Farrell lying across Gibson's knees in
 the cockpit, his head hanging half overside.

   Farrell had a last dizzy glimpse of the islet against the rush of green
 water below, and felt his shaky laugh of relief stick in his throat. Two
 of the octopods were swimming strongly for shore, holding the rigid
 Arzian native carefully above water between them.

   "Gib," Farrell croaked. "Gib, can you risk a look back? I think I've
 gone mad."

   The scouter swerved briefly as Gibson looked back. "You're all right,
 Arthur. Just hang on tight. I'll explain everything when we get you safe
 in the

    Marco

   ."

   Farrell forced himself to relax, more relieved than alarmed by the
 painful pricking of returning sensation. "I might have known it, damn
 you," he said. "You found your lost city, didn't you?"

   Gibson sounded a little disgusted, as if he were still angry with
 himself over some private stupidity. "I'd have found it sooner if I'd
 had any brains. It was under water, of course."

   In the

    Marco Four

   , Gibson routed Stryker out of his cubicle and mixed
 drinks around, leaving Farrell comfortably relaxed in the padded control
 chair. The paralysis was still wearing off slowly, easing Farrell's fear
 of being permanently disabled.

   "We never saw the city from the scouter because we didn't go high
 enough," Gibson said. "I realized that finally, remembering how they
 used high-altitude blimps during the First Wars to spot submarines, and
 when I took the scouter up far enough there it was, at the ocean
 bottom—a city to compare with anything men ever built."

   Stryker stared. "A marine city? What use would sea-creatures have for
 buildings?"

   "None," Gibson said. "I think the city must have been built ages ago—by
 men or by a manlike race, judging from the architecture—and was
 submerged later by a sinking of land masses that killed off the original
 builders and left Arz nothing but an oversized archipelago. The squids
 took over then, and from all appearances they've developed a culture of
 their own."

   "I don't see it," Stryker complained, shaking his head. "The pink
 fishers—"

   "Are cattle, or less," Gibson finished. "The octopods are the dominant
 race, and they're so far above Fifth Order that we're completely out of
 bounds here. Under Terran Regulations we can't colonize Arz. It would be
 armed invasion."

   "Invasion of a squid world?" Farrell protested, baffled. "Why should
 surface colonization conflict with an undersea culture, Gib? Why
 couldn't we share the planet?"

   "Because the octopods own the islands too, and keep them policed,"
 Gibson said patiently. "They even own the pink fishers. It was one of
 the squid-people, making a dry-land canvass of his preserve here to pick
 a couple of victims for this morning's show, that carried you off last
 night."

   "Behold a familiar pattern shaping up," Stryker said. He laughed
 suddenly, a great irrepressible bellow of sound. "Arz is a squid's
 world, Arthur, don't you see? And like most civilized peoples, they're
 sportsmen. The flying-lizards are the game they hunt, and they raise the
 pink fishers for—"

   Farrell swore in astonishment. "Then those poor devils are put out there
 deliberately, like worms on a hook—angling in reverse! No wonder I
 couldn't spot their motivation!"

   Gibson got up and sealed the port, shutting out the soft morning breeze.
 "Colonization being out of the question, we may as well move on before
 the octopods get curious enough about us to make trouble. Do you feel up
 to the acceleration, Arthur?"

   Farrell and Stryker looked at each other, grinning. Farrell said: "You
 don't think I want to stick here and be used for bait again, do you?"

   He and Stryker were still grinning over it when Gibson, unamused,
 blasted the

    Marco Four

   free of Arz.

Question and Possible Answers:
Of the following options, what is a potential moral of this story?

 (A) Exploration of the unknown can lead to many surprises.
 (B) Discovery is fun and can be done without inherently endangering one's wellbeing.
 (C) Communication with other species and cultures is a delicate process that needs to be done with care.
 (D) Learning is a process that takes time and can be best done independently.

Answer:

Output: A