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:
DUST UNTO DUST

   By LYMAN D. HINCKLEY

   It was alien but was it dead, this towering, sinister

   city of metal that glittered malignantly before the

   cautious advance of three awed space-scouters.

   Martin set the lifeboat down carefully, with all the attention one
 usually exercises in a situation where the totally unexpected has
 occurred, and he and his two companions sat and stared in awed silence
 at the city a quarter-mile away.

   He saw the dull, black walls of buildings shouldering grimly into the
 twilight sky, saw the sheared edge where the metal city ended and the
 barren earth began ... and he remembered observing, even before they
 landed, the too-strict geometry imposed on the entire construction.

   He frowned. The first impression was ... malignant.

   Wass, blond and slight, with enough nose for three or four men,
 unbuckled his safety belt and stood up. "Shall we, gentlemen?" and with
 a graceful movement of hand and arm he indicated the waiting city.

   Martin led Wass, and the gangling, scarecrow-like Rodney, through the
 stillness overlaying the barren ground. There was only the twilight
 sky, and harsh and black against it, the convoluted earth. And the
 city. Malignant. He wondered, again, what beings would choose to build
 a city—even a city like this one—in such surroundings.

   The men from the ship knew only the surface facts about this waiting
 geometric discovery. Theirs was the eleventh inter-planetary flight,
 and the previous ten, in the time allowed them for exploration while
 this planet was still close enough to their own to permit a safe return
 in their ships, had not spotted the city. But the eleventh expedition
 had, an hour ago, with just thirteen hours left during which a return
 flight could be safely started. So far as was known, this was the only
 city on the planet—the planet without any life at all, save tiny
 mosses, for a million years or more. And no matter which direction from
 the city a man moved, he would always be going north.

   "Hey, Martin!" Rodney called through his helmet radio. Martin paused.
 "Wind," Rodney said, coming abreast of him. He glanced toward the black
 pile, as if sharing Martin's thoughts. "That's all we need, isn't it?"

   Martin looked at the semi-transparent figures of wind and dust
 cavorting in the distance, moving toward them. He grinned a little,
 adjusting his radio. "Worried?"

   Rodney's bony face was without expression. "Gives me the creeps, kind
 of. I wonder what they were like?"

   Wass murmured, "Let us hope they aren't immortal."

   Three feet from the edge of the city Martin stopped and stubbed at the
 sand with the toe of his boot, clearing earth from part of a shining
 metal band.

   Wass watched him, and then shoved aside more sand, several feet away.
 "It's here, too."

   Martin stood up. "Let's try farther on. Rodney, radio the ship, tell
 them we're going in."

   Rodney nodded.

   After a time, Wass said, "Here, too. How far do you think it goes?"

   Martin shrugged. "Clear around the city? I'd like to know what it
 is—was—for."

   "Defense," Rodney, several yards behind, suggested.

   "Could be," Martin said. "Let's go in."

   The three crossed the metal band and walked abreast down a street,
 their broad soft soled boots making no sound on the dull metal. They
 passed doors and arches and windows and separate buildings. They moved
 cautiously across five intersections. And they stood in a square
 surrounded by the tallest buildings in the city.

   Rodney broke the silence, hesitantly. "Not—not very big. Is it?"

   Wass looked at him shrewdly. "Neither were the—well, shall we call
 them, people? Have you noticed how low everything is?"

   Rodney's laughter rose, too. Then, sobering—"Maybe they crawled."

   A nebulous image, product of childhood's vivid imagination, moved
 slowly across Martin's mind. "All right!" he rapped out—and the image
 faded.

   "Sorry," Rodney murmured, his throat working beneath his lantern jaw.
 Then—"I wonder what it's like here in the winter when there's no light
 at all?"

   "I imagine they had illumination of some sort," Martin answered, dryly.
 "If we don't hurry up and get through this place and back to the ship,
 we're very likely to find out."

   Rodney said quickly, "I mean outside."

   "Out there, too, Rodney, they must have had illumination." Martin
 looked back along the straight, metal street they'd walked on, and past
 that out over the bleak, furrowed slopes where the ship's lifeboat
 lay ... and he thought everything outside the city seemed, somehow,
 from here, a little dim, a little hazy.

   He straightened his shoulders. The city was alien, of course, and that
 explained most of it ... most of it. But he felt the black city was
 something familiar, yet twisted and distorted.

   "Well," Wass said, his nose wrinkling a bit, "now that we're here...."

   "Pictures," Martin decided. "We have twelve hours. We'll start here.
 What's the matter, Wass?"

   The blond man grinned ruefully. "I left the camera in the lifeboat."
 There was a pause. Then Wass, defensively—"It's almost as if the city
 didn't want to be photographed."

   Martin ignored the remark. "Go get it. Rodney and I will be somewhere
 along this street."

   Wass turned away. Martin and Rodney started slowly down the wide metal
 street, at right angles to their path of entrance.

   Again Martin felt a tug of twisted, distorted familiarity. It was
 almost as if ... they were human up to a certain point, the point
 being, perhaps, some part of their minds.... Alien things, dark and
 subtle, things no man could ever comprehend.

   Parallel evolution on two inner planets of the same system? Somewhere,
 sometime, a common ancestor? Martin noted the shoulder-high doors, the
 heavier gravity, remembered the inhabitants of the city vanished before
 the thing that was to become man ever emerged from the slime, and he
 decided to grin at himself, at his own imagination.

   Rodney jerked his scarecrow length about quickly, and a chill sped up
 Martin's spine. "What's the matter?"

   The bony face was white, the gray eyes were wide. "I saw—I thought I
 saw—something—moving—"

   Anger rose in Martin. "You didn't," he said flatly, gripping the
 other's shoulder cruelly. "You couldn't have. Get hold of yourself,
 man!"

   Rodney stared. "The wind. Remember? There isn't any, here."

   "... How could there be? The buildings protect us now. It was blowing
 from the other direction."

   Rodney wrenched free of Martin's grip. He gestured wildly. "That—"

   "Martin!" Wass' voice came through the receivers in both their radios.
 "Martin, I can't get out!"

   Rodney mumbled something, and Martin told him to shut up.

   Wass said, more quietly, "Remember that metal band? It's all clear now,
 and glittering, as far as I can see. I can't get across it; it's like a
 glass wall."

   "We're trapped, we're trapped, they are—"

   "Shut up, Rodney! Wass, I'm only two sections from the edge. I'll check
 here."

   Martin clapped a hand on Rodney's shoulder again, starting him moving,
 toward the city's edge, past the black, silent buildings.

   The glittering band was here, too, like a halo around a silhouette.

   "No go," Martin said to Wass. He bit at his lower lip. "I think it must
 be all around us." He was silent for a time, exploring the consequences
 of this. Then—"We'll meet you in the middle of the city, where we
 separated."

   Walking with Rodney, Martin heard Wass' voice, flat and metallic
 through the radio receiver against his ear. "What do you suppose caused
 this?"

   He shook his head angrily, saying, "Judging by reports of the rest of
 the planet, it must have been horribly radioactive at one time. All of
 it."

   "Man-made radiation, you mean."

   Martin grinned faintly. Wass, too, had an active imagination. "Well,
 alien-made, anyhow. Perhaps they had a war."

   Wass' voice sounded startled. "Anti-radiation screen?"

   Rodney interrupted, "There hasn't been enough radiation around here for
 hundreds of thousands of years to activate such a screen."

   Wass said coldly, "He's right, Martin."

   Martin crossed an intersection, Rodney slightly behind him. "You're
 both wrong," he said. "We landed here today."

   Rodney stopped in the middle of the metal street and stared down at
 Martin. "The wind—?"

   "Why not?"

   "That would explain why it stopped so suddenly, then." Rodney stood
 straighter. When he walked again, his steps were firmer.

   They reached the center of the city, ahead of the small, slight Wass,
 and stood watching him labor along the metal toward them.

   Wass' face, Martin saw, was sober. "I tried to call the ship. No luck."

   "The shield?"

   Wass nodded. "What else?"

   "I don't know—"

   "If we went to the roof of the tallest building," Rodney offered, "we
 might—"

   Martin shook his head. "No. To be effective, the shield would have to
 cover the city."

   Wass stared down at the metal street, as if he could look through it.
 "I wonder where it gets its power?"

   "Down below, probably. If there is a down below." Martin hesitated. "We
 may have to...."

   "What?" Rodney prompted.

   Martin shrugged. "Let's look."

   He led the way through a shoulder-high arch in one of the tall
 buildings surrounding the square. The corridor inside was dim and
 plain, and he switched on his flashlight, the other two immediately
 following his example. The walls and the rounded ceiling of the
 corridor were of the same dull metal as the buildings' facades, and
 the streets. There were a multitude of doors and arches set into
 either side of the corridor.

   It was rather like ... entering a gigantic metal beehive.

   Martin chose an arch, with beyond it a metal ramp, which tilted
 downward, gleaming in the pale circle of his torch.

   A call from Rodney halted him. "Back here," the tall man repeated. "It
 looks like a switchboard."

   The three advanced to the end of the central corridor, pausing before a
 great arch, outlined in the too-careful geometrical figures Martin had
 come to associate with the city builders. The three torches, shining
 through the arch, picked out a bank of buttons, handles ... and a thick
 rope of cables which ran upward to vanish unexpectedly in the metal
 roof.

   "Is this it," Wass murmured, "or an auxiliary?"

   Martin shrugged. "The whole city's no more than a machine, apparently."

   "Another assumption," Wass said. "We have done nothing but make
 assumptions ever since we got here."

   "What would you suggest, instead?" Martin asked calmly.

   Rodney furtively, extended one hand toward a switch.

   "No!" Martin said, sharply. That was one assumption they dared not make.

   Rodney turned. "But—"

   "No. Wass, how much time have we?"

   "The ship leaves in eleven hours."

   "Eleven hours," Rodney repeated. "Eleven hours!" He reached out for the
 switch again. Martin swore, stepped forward, pulled him back roughly.

   He directed his flashlight at Rodney's thin, pale face. "What do you
 think you're doing?"

   "We have to find out what all this stuff's for!"

   "Going at it blindly, we'd probably execute ourselves."

   "We've got to—"

   "No!" Then, more quietly—"We still have eleven hours to find a way
 out."

   "Ten hours and forty-five minutes," Wass disagreed softly. "Minus the
 time it takes us to get to the lifeboat, fly to the ship, land, stow
 it, get ourselves aboard, and get the big ship away from the planet.
 And Captain Morgan can't wait for us, Martin."

   "You too, Wass?"

   "Up to the point of accuracy, yes."

   Martin said, "Not necessarily. You go the way the wind does, always
 thinking of your own tender hide, of course."

   Rodney cursed. "And every second we stand here doing nothing gives us
 that much less time to find a way out. Martin—"

   "Make one move toward that switchboard and I'll stop you where you
 stand!"

   Wass moved silently through the darkness beyond the torches. "We all
 have guns, Martin."

   "I'm holding mine." Martin waited.

   After a moment, Wass switched his flashlight back on. He said quietly,
 "He's right, Rodney. It would be sure death to monkey around in here."

   "Well...." Rodney turned quickly toward the black arch. "Let's get out
 of here, then!"

   Martin hung back waiting for the others to go ahead of him down the
 metal hall. At the other arch, where the ramp led downward, he called a
 halt. "If the dome, or whatever it is, is a radiation screen there must
 be at least half-a-dozen emergency exits around the city."

   Rodney said, "To search every building next to the dome clean around
 the city would take years."

   Martin nodded. "But there must be central roads beneath this main level
 leading to them. Up here there are too many roads."

   Wass laughed rudely.

   "Have you a better idea?"

   Wass ignored that, as Martin hoped he would. He said slowly, "That
 leads to another idea. If the band around the city is responsible for
 the dome, does it project down into the ground as well?"

   "You mean

    dig

   out?" Martin asked.

   "Sure. Why not?"

   "We're wearing heavy suits and bulky breathing units. We have no
 equipment."

   "That shouldn't be hard to come by."

   Martin smiled, banishing Wass' idea.

   Rodney said, "They may have had their digging equipment built right in
 to themselves."

   "Anyway," Martin decided, "we can take a look down below."

   "In the pitch dark," Wass added.

   Martin adjusted his torch, began to lead the way down the metal ramp.
 The incline was gentle, apparently constructed for legs shorter, feet
 perhaps less broad than their own. The metal, without mark of any sort,
 gleamed under the combined light of the torches, unrolling out of the
 darkness before the men.

   At length the incline melted smoothly into the next level of the city.

   Martin shined his light upward, and the others followed his example.
 Metal as smooth and featureless as that on which they stood shone down
 on them.

   Wass turned his light parallel with the floor, and then moved slowly in
 a circle. "No supports. No supports anywhere. What keeps all that up
 there?"

   "I don't know. I have no idea." Martin gestured toward the ramp with
 his light. "Does all this, this whole place, look at all familiar to
 you?"

   Rodney's gulp was clearly audible through the radio receivers. "Here?"

   "No, no," Martin answered impatiently, "not just here. I mean the whole
 city."

   "Yes," Wass said dryly, "it does. I'm sure this is where all my
 nightmares stay when they're not on shift."

   Martin turned on his heel and started down a metal avenue which, he
 thought, paralleled the street above. And Rodney and Wass followed him
 silently. They moved along the metal, past unfamiliar shapes made more
 so by gloom and moving shadows, past doors dancing grotesquely in the
 three lights, past openings in the occasional high metal partitions,
 past something which was perhaps a conveyor belt, past another
 something which could have been anything at all.

   The metal street ended eventually in a blank metal wall.

   The edge of the city—the city which was a dome of force above and a
 bowl of metal below.

   After a long time, Wass sighed. "Well, skipper...?"

   "We go back, I guess," Martin said.

   Rodney turned swiftly to face him. Martin thought the tall man was
 holding his gun. "To the switchboard, Martin?"

   "Unless someone has a better idea," Martin conceded. He waited. But
 Rodney was holding the gun ... and Wass was.... Then—"I can't think of
 anything else."

   They began to retrace their steps along the metal street, back past
 the same dancing shapes of metal, the partitions, the odd windows, all
 looking different now in the new angles of illumination.

   Martin was in the lead. Wass followed him silently. Rodney, tall,
 matchstick thin, even in his cumbersome suit, swayed with jaunty
 triumph in the rear.

   Martin looked at the metal street lined with its metal objects and he
 sighed. He remembered how the dark buildings of the city looked at
 surface level, how the city itself looked when they were landing, and
 then when they were walking toward it. The dream was gone again for
 now. Idealism died in him, again and again, yet it was always reborn.
 But—The only city, so far as anyone knew, on the first planet they'd
 ever explored. And it had to be like this. Nightmares, Wass said, and
 Martin thought perhaps the city was built by a race of beings who at
 some point twisted away from their evolutionary spiral, plagued by a
 sort of racial insanity.

   No, Martin thought, shaking his head. No, that couldn't be.
 Viewpoint ... his viewpoint. It was the haunting sense of familiarity,
 a faint strain through all this broad jumble, the junkpile of alien
 metal, which was making him theorize so wildly.

   Then Wass touched his elbow. "Look there, Martin. Left of the ramp."

   Light from their torches was reflected, as from glass.

   "All right," Rodney said belligerently into his radio. "What's holding
 up the procession?"

   Martin was silent.

   Wass undertook to explain. Why not, after all? Martin asked himself. It
 was in Wass' own interest. In a moment, all three were standing before
 a bank of glass cases which stretched off into the distance as far as
 the combined light of their torches would reach.

   "Seeds!" Wass exclaimed, his faceplate pressed against the glass.

   Martin blinked. He thought how little time they had. He wet his lips.

   Wass' gloved hands fumbled awkwardly at a catch in the nearest section
 of the bank.

   Martin thought of the dark, convoluted land outside the city. If they
 wouldn't grow there.... Or had they, once? "Don't, Wass!"

   Torchlight reflected from Wass' faceplate as he turned his head. "Why
 not?"

   They were like children.... "We don't know, released, what they'll do."

   "Skipper," Wass said carefully, "if we don't get out of this place by
 the deadline we may be eating these."

   Martin raised his arm tensely. "Opening a seed bank doesn't help us
 find a way out of here." He started up the ramp. "Besides, we've no
 water."

   Rodney came last up the ramp, less jaunty now, but still holding the
 gun. His mind, too, was taken up with childhood's imaginings. "For
 a plant to grow in this environment, it wouldn't need much water.
 Maybe—" he had a vision of evil plants attacking them, growing with
 super-swiftness at the air valves and joints of their suits "—only the
 little moisture in the atmosphere."

   They stood before the switchboard again. Martin and Wass side by side,
 Rodney, still holding his gun, slightly to the rear.

   Rodney moved forward a little toward the switches. His breathing was
 loud and rather uneven in the radio receivers.

   Martin made a final effort. "Rodney, it's still almost nine hours to
 take off. Let's search awhile first. Let this be a last resort."

   Rodney jerked his head negatively. "No. Now, I know you, Martin.
 Postpone and postpone until it's too late, and the ship leaves without
 us and we're stranded here to eat seeds and gradually dehydrate
 ourselves and God only knows what else and—"

   He reached out convulsively and yanked a switch.

   Martin leaped, knocking him to the floor. Rodney's gun skittered away
 silently, like a live thing, out of the range of the torches.

   The radio receivers impersonally recorded the grating sounds of
 Rodney's sobs.

   "Sorry," Martin said, without feeling. He turned quickly. "Wass?"

   The slight, blond man stood unmoving. "I'm with you, Martin, but, as
 a last resort it might be better to be blown sky high than to die
 gradually—"

   Martin was watching Rodney, struggling to get up. "I agree. As a last
 resort. We still have a little time."

   Rodney's tall, spare figure looked bowed and tired in the torchlight,
 now that he was up again. "Martin, I—"

   Martin turned his back. "Skip it, Rodney," he said gently.

   "Water," Wass said thoughtfully. "There must be reservoirs under this
 city somewhere."

   Rodney said, "How does water help us get out?"

   Martin glanced at Wass, then started out of the switchboard room, not
 looking back. "It got in and out of the city some way. Perhaps we can
 leave the same way."

   Down the ramp again.

   "There's another ramp," Wass murmured.

   Rodney looked down it. "I wonder how many there are, all told."

   Martin placed one foot on the metal incline. He angled his torch down,
 picking out shadowy, geometrical shapes, duplicates of the ones on the
 present level. "We'll find out," he said, "how many there are."

   Eleven levels later Rodney asked, "How much time have we now?"

   "Seven hours," Wass said quietly, "until take-off."

   "One more level," Martin said, ignoring the reference to time. "I ...
 think it's the last."

   They walked down the ramp and stood together, silent in a dim pool of
 artificial light on the bottom level of the alien city.

   Rodney played his torch about the metal figures carefully placed about
 the floor. "Martin, what if there are no reservoirs? What if there are
 cemeteries instead? Or cold storage units? Maybe the switch I pulled—"

   "Rodney! Stop it!"

   Rodney swallowed audibly. "This place scares me...."

   "The first time I was ever in a rocket, it scared me. I was thirteen."

   "This is different," Wass said. "Built-in traps—"

   "They had a war," Martin said.

   Wass agreed. "And the survivors retired here. Why?"

   Martin said, "They wanted to rebuild. Or maybe this was already built
 before the war as a retreat." He turned impatiently. "How should I
 know?"

   Wass turned, too, persistent. "But the planet was through with them."

   "In a minute," Martin said, too irritably, "we'll have a sentient
 planet." From the corner of his eye he saw Rodney start at that. "Knock
 it off, Wass. We're looking for reservoirs, you know."

   They moved slowly down the metal avenue, between the twisted shadow
 shapes, looking carefully about them.

   Rodney paused. "We might not recognize one."

   Martin urged him on. "You know what a man-hole cover looks like." He
 added dryly, "Use your imagination."

   They reached the metal wall at the end of the avenue and paused again,
 uncertain.

   Martin swung his flashlight, illuminating the distorted metal shapes.

   Wass said, "All this had a purpose, once...."

   "We'll disperse and search carefully," Martin said.

   "I wonder what the pattern was."

   "... The reservoirs, Wass. The pattern will still be here for later
 expeditions to study. So will we if we don't find a way to get out."

   Their radios recorded Rodney's gasp. Then—"Martin! Martin! I think
 I've found something!"

   Martin began to run. After a moment's hesitation, Wass swung in behind
 him.

   "Here," Rodney said, as they came up to him, out of breath. "Here. See?
 Right here."

   Three flashlights centered on a dark, metal disk raised a foot or more
 from the floor.

   "Well, they had hands." With his torch Wass indicated a small wheel of
 the same metal as everything else in the city, set beside the disk.

   From its design Martin assumed that the disk was meant to be grasped
 and turned. He wondered what precisely they were standing over.

   "Well, Skipper, are you going to do the honors?"

   Martin kneeled, grasped the wheel. It turned easily—almost too
 easily—rotating the disk as it turned.

   Suddenly, without a sound, the disk rose, like a hatch, on a concealed
 hinge.

   The three men, clad in their suits and helmets, grouped around the
 six-foot opening, shining their torches down into the thing that
 drifted and eddied directly beneath them.

   Rodney's sudden grip on Martin's wrist nearly shattered the bone.
 "Martin! It's all alive! It's moving!"

   Martin hesitated long enough for a coil to move sinuously up toward the
 opening. Then he spun the wheel and the hatch slammed down.

   He was shaking.

   After a time he said, "Rodney, Wass, it's dust, down there. Remember
 the wind? Air currents are moving it."

   Rodney sat down on the metal flooring. For a long time he said nothing.
 Then—"It wasn't.... Why did you close the hatch then?"

   Martin did not say he thought the other two would have shot him,
 otherwise. He said merely, "At first I wasn't sure myself."

   Rodney stood up, backing away from the closed hatch. He held his gun
 loosely, and his hand shook. "Then prove it. Open it again."

   Martin went to the wheel. He noticed Wass was standing behind Rodney
 and he, too, had drawn his gun.

   The hatch rose again at Martin's direction. He stood beside it,
 outlined in the light of two torches.

   For a little while he was alone.

   Then—causing a gasp from Wass, a harsh expletive from Rodney—a
 tenuous, questing alien limb edged through the hatch, curling about
 Martin, sparkling in ten thousand separate particles in the torchlight,
 obscuring the dimly seen backdrop of geometrical processions of strange
 objects.

   Martin raised an arm, and the particles swirled in stately, shimmering
 spirals.

   Rodney leaned forward and looked over the edge of the hatch. He said
 nothing. He eyed the sparkling particles swirling about Martin, and
 now, himself.

   "How deep," Wass said, from his safe distance.

   "We'll have to lower a flashlight," Martin answered.

   Rodney, all eagerness to be of assistance now, lowered a rope with a
 torch swinging wildly on the end of it.

   The torch came to rest about thirty feet down. It shone on gently
 rolling mounds of fine, white stuff.

   Martin anchored the rope soundly, and paused, half across the lip
 of the hatch to stare coldly at Wass. "You'd rather monkey with the
 switches and blow yourself to smithereens?"

   Wass sighed and refused to meet Martin's gaze. Martin looked at him
 disgustedly, and then began to descend the rope, slowly, peering into
 the infinite, sparkling darkness pressing around him. At the bottom
 of the rope he sank to his knees in dust, and then was held even. He
 stamped his feet, and then, as well as he was able, did a standing
 jump. He sank no farther than his knees.

   He sighted a path parallel with the avenue above, toward the nearest
 edge of the city. "I think we'll be all right," he called out, "as long
 as we avoid the drifts."

   Rodney began the descent. Looking up, Martin saw Wass above Rodney.

   "All right, Wass," Martin said quietly, as Rodney released the rope and
 sank into the dust.

   "Not me," the answer came back quickly. "You two fools go your way,
 I'll go mine."

   "Wass!"

   There was no answer. The light faded swiftly away from the opening.

   The going was hard. The dust clung like honey to their feet, and eddied
 and swirled about them until the purifying systems in their suits were
 hard-pressed to remove the fine stuff working in at joints and valves.

   "Are we going straight?" Rodney asked.

   "Of course," Martin growled.

   There was silence again, the silence of almost-exhausted determination.
 The two men lifted their feet out of the dust, and then laboriously
 plunged forward, to sink again to the knees, repeated the act, times
 without number.

   Then Wass broke his silence, taunting. "The ship leaves in two hours,
 Martin. Two hours. Hear me, Rodney?"

   Martin pulled his left foot from the sand and growled deep in his
 throat. Ahead, through the confusing patterns of the sparkling dust,
 his flashlight gleamed against metal. He grabbed Rodney's arm, pointed.

   A grate.

   Rodney stared. "Wass!" he shouted. "We've found a way out!"

   Their radios recorded Wass' laughter. "I'm at the switchboard now,
 Martin. I—"

   There was a tinkle of breaking glass, breaking faceplate.

   The grate groaned upward and stopped.

   Wass babbled incoherently into the radio for a moment, and then he
 began to scream.

   Martin switched off his radio, sick.

   He turned it on again when they reached the opening in the metal wall.
 "Well?"

   "I've been trying to get you," Rodney said, frantically. "Why didn't
 you answer?"

   "We couldn't do anything for him."

   Rodney's face was white and drawn. "But he did this for us."

   "So he did," Martin said, very quietly.

   Rodney said nothing.

   Then Martin said, "Did you listen until the end?"

   Rodney nodded, jerkily. "He pulled three more switches. I couldn't
 understand it all. But—Martin, dying alone like that in a place like
 this—!"

   Martin crawled into the circular pipe behind the grate. It tilted up
 toward the surface. "Come on, Rodney. Last lap."

   An hour later they surfaced about two hundred yards away from the
 edge of the city. Behind them the black pile rose, the dome of force
 shimmering, almost invisible, about it.

   Ahead of them were the other two scoutships from the mother ship.
 Martin called out faintly, pulling Rodney out of the pipe. Crew members
 standing by the scoutships, and at the edge of the city, began to run
 toward them.

   "Radio picked you up as soon as you entered the pipe," someone said. It
 was the last thing Martin heard before he collapsed.

Question and Possible Answers:
Why does Wass end up being sent back to the lifeboat?

 (A) He cannot be trusted, and the others make him leave.
 (B) He must make contact with the mother ship because one of the others was injured.
 (C) He forgot the camera and has to go back to get it.
 (D) His attitude is bringing the rest of them down, so they make him leave.

Answer:

Output: C


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:
INNOCENT AT LARGE

   By POUL AND KAREN ANDERSON

   Illustrated by WOOD

   A hayseed Martian among big-planet slickers ... of course

    he would get into trouble. But that was nothing compared

    to the trouble he would be in if he did not get into trouble!

   The visiphone chimed when Peri had just gotten into her dinner gown.
 She peeled it off again and slipped on a casual bathrobe: a wisp of
 translucence which had set the president of Antarctic Enterprise—or
 had it been the chairman of the board?—back several thousand dollars.
 Then she pulled a lock of lion-colored hair down over one eye, checked
 with a mirror, rumpled it a tiny bit more and wrapped the robe loosely
 on top and tight around the hips.

   After all, some of the men who knew her private number were important.

   She undulated to the phone and pressed its Accept. "Hello-o, there,"
 she said automatically. "So sorry to keep you waiting. I was just
 taking a bath and—Oh. It's you."

   Gus Doran's prawnlike eyes popped at her. "Holy Success," he whispered
 in awe. "You sure the wires can carry that much voltage?"

   "Well, hurry up with whatever it is," snapped Peri. "I got a date
 tonight."

   "I'll say you do! With a Martian!"

   Peri narrowed her silver-blue gaze and looked icily at him. "You must
 have heard wrong, Gus. He's the heir apparent of Indonesia, Inc.,
 that's who, and if you called up to ask for a piece of him, you can
 just blank right out again. I saw him first!"

   Doran's thin sharp face grinned. "You break that date, Peri. Put it off
 or something. I got this Martian for you, see?"

   "So? Since when has all Mars had as much spending money as one big-time
 marijuana rancher? Not to mention the heir ap—"

   "Sure, sure. But how much are those boys going to spend on any girl,
 even a high-level type like you? Listen, I need you just for tonight,
 see? This Martian is strictly from gone. He is here on official
 business, but he is a yokel and I do mean hayseed. Like he asked me
 what the Christmas decorations in all the stores were! And here is the
 solar nexus of it, Peri, kid."

   Doran leaned forward as if to climb out of the screen. "He has got a
 hundred million dollars expense money, and they are not going to audit
 his accounts at home. One hundred million good green certificates,
 legal tender anywhere in the United Protectorates. And he has about
 as much backbone as a piece of steak alga. Kid, if I did not happen to
 have experience otherwise with a small nephew, I would say this will be
 like taking candy from a baby."

   Peri's peaches-and-cream countenance began to resemble peaches and
 cream left overnight on Pluto. "Badger?" she asked.

   "Sure. You and Sam Wendt handle the routine. I will take the go-between
 angle, so he will think of me as still his friend, because I have other
 plans for him too. But if we can't shake a million out of him for this
 one night's work, there is something akilter. And your share of a
 million is three hundred thirty-three—"

   "Is five hundred thousand flat," said Peri. "Too bad I just got an
 awful headache and can't see Mr. Sastro tonight. Where you at, Gus?"

   The gravity was not as hard to take as Peter Matheny had expected.
 Three generations on Mars might lengthen the legs and expand the chest
 a trifle, but the genes had come from Earth and the organism readjusts.
 What set him gasping was the air. It weighed like a ton of wool and had
 apparently sopped up half the Atlantic Ocean. Ears trained to listen
 through the Martian atmosphere shuddered from the racket conducted by
 Earth's. The passport official seemed to bellow at him.

   "Pardon me for asking this. The United Protectorates welcome all
 visitors to Earth and I assure you, sir, an ordinary five-year visa
 provokes no questions. But since you came on an official courier boat
 of your planet, Mr. Matheny, regulations force me to ask your business."

   "Well—recruiting."

   The official patted his comfortable stomach, iridescent in neolon, and
 chuckled patronizingly. "I am afraid, sir, you won't find many people
 who wish to leave. They wouldn't be able to see the Teamsters Hour on
 Mars, would they?"

   "Oh, we don't expect immigration," said Matheny shyly. He was a fairly
 young man, but small, with a dark-thatched, snub-nosed, gray-eyed
 head that seemed too large for his slender body. "We learned long ago
 that no one is interested any more in giving up even second-class
 citizenship on Earth to live in the Republic. But we only wanted to
 hire——uh, I mean engage—an, an advisor. We're not businessmen. We
 know our export trade hasn't a chance among all your corporations
 unless we get some—a five-year contract...?"

   He heard his words trailing off idiotically, and swore at himself.

   "Well, good luck." The official's tone was skeptical. He stamped the
 passport and handed it back. "There, now, you are free to travel
 anywhere in the Protectorates. But I would advise you to leave the
 capital and get into the sticks—um, I mean the provinces. I am sure
 there must be tolerably competent sales executives in Russia or
 Congolese Belgium or such regions. Frankly, sir, I do not believe you
 can attract anyone out of Newer York."

   "Thanks," said Matheny, "but, you see, I—we need—that is.... Oh,
 well. Thanks. Good-by."

   He backed out of the office.

   A dropshaft deposited him on a walkway. The crowd, a rainbow of men in
 pajamas and robes, women in Neo-Sino dresses and goldleaf hats, swept
 him against the rail. For a moment, squashed to the wire, he stared a
 hundred feet down at the river of automobiles.

    Phobos!

   he thought
 wildly.

    If the barrier gives, I'll be sliced in two by a dorsal fin
 before I hit the pavement!

   The August twilight wrapped him in heat and stickiness. He could see
 neither stars nor even moon through the city's blaze. The forest of
 multi-colored towers, cataracting half a mile skyward across more
 acreage than his eyes reached, was impressive and all that, but—he
 used to stroll out in the rock garden behind his cottage and smoke a
 pipe in company with Orion. On summer evenings, that is, when the
 temperature wasn't too far below zero.

    Why did they tap me for this job?

   he asked himself in a surge of
 homesickness.

    What the hell is the Martian Embassy here for?

   He, Peter Matheny, was no more than a peaceful professor of
 sociodynamics at Devil's Kettle University. Of course, he had advised
 his government before now—in fact, the Red Ankh Society had been his
 idea—but still he was at ease only with his books and his chess and
 his mineral collection, a faculty poker party on Tenthday night and an
 occasional trip to Swindletown—

    My God

   , thought Matheny,

    here I am, one solitary outlander in the
 greatest commercial empire the human race has ever seen, and I'm
 supposed to find my planet a con man!

   He began walking, disconsolately, at random. His lizardskin shirt and
 black culottes drew glances, but derisive ones: their cut was forty
 years out of date. He should find himself a hotel, he thought drearily,
 but he wasn't tired; the spaceport would pneumo his baggage to him
 whenever he did check in. The few Martians who had been to Earth had
 gone into ecstasies over the automation which put any service you could
 name on a twenty-four-hour basis. But it would be a long time before
 Mars had such machines. If ever.

   The city roared at him.

   He fumbled after his pipe.

    Of course

   , he told himself,

    that's why
 the Embassy can't act. I may find it advisable to go outside the law.
 Please, sir, where can I contact the underworld?

   He wished gambling were legal on Earth. The Constitution of the Martian
 Republic forbade sumptuary and moral legislation; quite apart from the
 rambunctious individualism which that document formulated, the article
 was a practical necessity. Life was bleak enough on the deserts,
 without being denied the pleasure of trying to bottom-deal some friend
 who was happily trying to mark the cards. Matheny would have found a
 few spins of roulette soothing: it was always an intellectual challenge
 to work out the system by which the management operated a wheel. But
 more, he would have been among people he understood.

   The frightful thing about the Earthman was the way he seemed to
 exist only in organized masses. A gypsy snake oil peddler, plodding
 his syrtosaur wagon across Martian sands, just didn't have a prayer
 against, say, the Grant, Harding & Adams Public Relations Agency.

   Matheny puffed smoke and looked around. His feet ached from the weight
 on them. Where could a man sit down? It was hard to make out any
 individual sign through all that flimmering neon. His eye fell on one
 that was distinguished by relative austerity.

   THE CHURCH OF CHOICE

    Enter, Play, Pray

   That would do. He took an upward slideramp through several hundred feet
 of altitude, stepped past an aurora curtain, and found himself in a
 marble lobby next to an inspirational newsstand.

   "Ah, brother, welcome," said a red-haired usherette in demure black
 leotards. "The peace that passeth all understanding be with you. The
 restaurant is right up those stairs."

   "I—I'm not hungry," stammered Matheny. "I just wanted to sit in—"

   "To your left, sir."

   The Martian crossed the lobby. His pipe went out in the breeze from an
 animated angel. Organ music sighed through an open doorway. The series
 of rooms beyond was dim, Gothic, interminable.

   "Get your chips right here, sir," said the girl in the booth.

   "Hm?" said Matheny.

   She explained. He bought a few hundred-dollar tokens, dropped a
 fifty-buck coin down a slot marked CONTRIBUTIONS, and sipped the
 martini he got back while he strolled around studying the games.
 He stopped, frowned. Bingo? No, he didn't want to bother learning
 something new. He decided that the roulette wheels were either honest
 or too deep for him. He'd have to relax with a crap game instead.

   He had been standing at the table for some time before the rest of the
 congregation really noticed him. Then it was with awe. The first few
 passes he had made were unsuccessful. Earth gravity threw him off.
 But when he got the rhythm of it, he tossed a row of sevens. It was a
 customary form of challenge on Mars. Here, though, they simply pushed
 chips toward him. He missed a throw, as anyone would at home: simple
 courtesy. The next time around, he threw for a seven just to get the
 feel. He got a seven. The dice had not been substituted on him.

   "I say!" he exclaimed. He looked up into eyes and eyes, all around the
 green table. "I'm sorry. I guess I don't know your rules."

   "You did all right, brother," said a middle-aged lady with an obviously
 surgical bodice.

   "But—I mean—when do we start actually

    playing

   ? What happened to the
 cocked dice?"

   The lady drew herself up and jutted an indignant brow at him. "Sir!
 This is a church!"

   "Oh—I see—excuse me, I, I, I—" Matheny backed out of the crowd,
 shuddering. He looked around for some place to hide his burning ears.

   "You forgot your chips, pal," said a voice.

   "Oh. Thanks. Thanks ever so much. I, I, that is—" Matheny cursed
 his knotting tongue.

    Damn it, just because they're so much more
 sophisticated than I, do I have to talk like a leaky boiler?

   The helpful Earthman was not tall. He was dark and chisel-faced and
 sleekly pomaded, dapper in blue pajamas with a red zigzag, a sleighbell
 cloak and curly-toed slippers.

   "You're from Mars, aren't you?" he asked in the friendliest tone
 Matheny had yet heard.

   "Yes. Yes, I am. M-my name's Peter Matheny. I, I—" He stuck out his
 hand to shake and chips rolled over the floor. "Damn! Oh, excuse me, I
 forgot this was a church. Never mind the chips. No, please. I just want
 to g-g-get the hell out of here."

   "Good idea. How about a drink? I know a bar downshaft."

   Matheny sighed. "A drink is what I need the very most."

   "My name's Doran. Gus Doran. Call me Gus."

   They walked back to the deaconette's booth and Matheny cashed what
 remained of his winnings.

   "I don't want to—I mean if you're busy tonight, Mr. Doran—"

   "Nah. I am not doing one thing in particular. Besides, I have never met
 a Martian. I am very interested."

   "There aren't many of us on Earth," agreed Matheny. "Just a small
 embassy staff and an occasional like me."

   "I should think you would do a lot of traveling here. The old mother
 planet and so on."

   "We can't afford it," said Matheny. "What with gravitation and
 distance, such voyages are much too expensive for us to make them for
 pleasure. Not to mention our dollar shortage." As they entered the
 shaft, he added wistfully: "You Earth people have that kind of money,
 at least in your more prosperous brackets. Why don't you send a few
 tourists to us?"

   "I always wanted to," said Doran. "I would like to see the what they
 call City of Time, and so on. As a matter of fact, I have given my
 girl one of those Old Martian rings last Ike's Birthday and she was
 just gazoo about it. A jewel dug out of the City of Time, like,
 made a million years ago by a, uh, extinct race ... I tell you, she

    appreciated

   me for it!" He winked and nudged.

   "Oh," said Matheny.

   He felt a certain guilt. Doran was too pleasant a little man to
 deserve—

   "Of course," Matheny said ritually, "I agree with all the archeologists
 it's a crime to sell such scientifically priceless artifacts, but what
 can we do? We must live, and the tourist trade is almost nonexistent."

   "Trouble with it is, I hear Mars is not so comfortable," said Doran. "I
 mean, do not get me wrong, I don't want to insult you or anything, but
 people come back saying you have given the planet just barely enough
 air to keep a man alive. And there are no cities, just little towns and
 villages and ranches out in the bush. I mean you are being pioneers and
 making a new nation and all that, but people paying half a megabuck for
 their ticket expect some comfort and, uh, you know."

   "I do know," said Matheny. "But we're poor—a handful of people trying
 to make a world of dust and sand and scrub thorn into fields and woods
 and seas. We can't do it without substantial help from Earth, equipment
 and supplies—which can only be paid for in Earth dollars—and we can't
 export enough to Earth to earn those dollars."

   By that time, they were entering the Paul Bunyan Knotty Pine Bar &
 Grill, on the 73rd Level. Matheny's jaw clanked down.

   "Whassa matter?" asked Doran. "Ain't you ever seen a ecdysiastic
 technician before?"

   "Uh, yes, but—well, not in a 3-D image under ten magnifications."

   Matheny followed Doran past a sign announcing that this show was for
 purely artistic purposes, into a booth. There a soundproof curtain
 reduced the noise level enough so they could talk in normal voices.

   "What'll you have?" asked Doran. "It's on me."

   "Oh, I couldn't let you. I mean—"

   "Nonsense. Welcome to Earth! Care for a thyle and vermouth?"

   Matheny shuddered. "Good Lord, no!"

   "Huh? But they make thyle right on Mars, don't they?"

   "Yes. And it all goes to Earth and sells at 2000 dollars a fifth. But
 you don't think we'd

    drink

   it, do you? I mean—well, I imagine it
 doesn't absolutely

    ruin

   vermouth. But we don't see those Earthside
 commercials about how sophisticated people like it so much."

   "Well, I'll be a socialist creeper!" Doran's face split in a grin. "You
 know, all my life I've hated the stuff and never dared admit it!" He
 raised a hand. "Don't worry, I won't blabbo. But I am wondering, if you
 control the thyle industry and sell all those relics at fancy prices,
 why do you call yourselves poor?"

   "Because we are," said Matheny. "By the time the shipping costs have
 been paid on a bottle, and the Earth wholesaler and jobber and sales
 engineer and so on, down to the retailer, have taken their percentage,
 and the advertising agency has been paid, and about fifty separate
 Earth taxes—there's very little profit going back to the distillery
 on Mars. The same principle is what's strangling us on everything. Old
 Martian artifacts aren't really rare, for instance, but freight charges
 and the middlemen here put them out of the mass market."

   "Have you not got some other business?"

   "Well, we do sell a lot of color slides, postcards, baggage labels and
 so on to people who like to act cosmopolitan, and I understand our
 travel posters are quite popular as wall decoration. But all that has
 to be printed on Earth, and the printer and distributor keep most of
 the money. We've sold some books and show tapes, of course, but only
 one has been really successful—

    I Was a Slave Girl on Mars

   .

   "Our most prominent novelist was co-opted to ghostwrite that one.
 Again, though, local income taxes took most of the money; authors
 never have been protected the way a businessman is. We do make a high
 percentage of profit on those little certificates you see around—you
 know, the title deeds to one square inch of Mars—but expressed
 absolutely, in dollars, it doesn't amount to much when we start
 shopping for bulldozers and thermonuclear power plants."

   "How about postage stamps?" inquired Doran. "Philately is a big
 business, I have heard."

   "It was our mainstay," admitted Matheny, "but it's been overworked.
 Martian stamps are a drug on the market. What we'd like to operate is a
 sweepstakes, but the anti-gambling laws on Earth forbid that."

   Doran whistled. "I got to give your people credit for enterprise,
 anyway!" He fingered his mustache. "Uh, pardon me, but have you tried
 to, well, attract capital from Earth?"

   "Of course," said Matheny bitterly. "We offer the most liberal
 concessions in the Solar System. Any little mining company or transport
 firm or—or anybody—who wanted to come and actually invest a few
 dollars in Mars—why, we'd probably give him the President's daughter
 as security. No, the Minister of Ecology has a better-looking one.
 But who's interested? We haven't a thing that Earth hasn't got more
 of. We're only the descendants of a few scientists, a few political
 malcontents, oddballs who happen to prefer elbow room and a bill of
 liberties to the incorporated state—what could General Nucleonics
 hope to get from Mars?"

   "I see. Well, what are you having to drink?"

   "Beer," said Matheny without hesitation.

   "Huh? Look, pal, this is on me."

   "The only beer on Mars comes forty million miles, with interplanetary
 freight charges tacked on," said Matheny. "Heineken's!"

   Doran shrugged, dialed the dispenser and fed it coins.

   "This is a real interesting talk, Pete," he said. "You are being very
 frank with me. I like a man that is frank."

   Matheny shrugged. "I haven't told you anything that isn't known to
 every economist."

    Of course I haven't. I've not so much as mentioned the Red Ankh, for
 instance. But, in principle, I have told him the truth, told him of our
 need; for even the secret operations do not yield us enough.

   The beer arrived. Matheny engulfed himself in it. Doran sipped at a
 whiskey sour and unobtrusively set another full bottle in front of the
 Martian.

   "Ahhh!" said Matheny. "Bless you, my friend."

   "A pleasure."

   "But now you must let me buy you one."

   "That is not necessary. After all," said Doran with great tact, "with
 the situation as you have been describing—"

   "Oh, we're not

    that

   poor! My expense allowance assumes I will
 entertain quite a bit."

   Doran's brows lifted a few minutes of arc. "You're here on business,
 then?"

   "Yes. I told you we haven't any tourists. I was sent to hire a business
 manager for the Martian export trade."

   "What's wrong with your own people? I mean, Pete, it is not your fault
 there are so many rackets—uh, taxes—and middlemen and agencies and et
 cetera. That is just the way Earth is set up these days."

   Matheny's finger stabbed in the general direction of Doran's pajama
 top. "Exactly. And who set it up that way? Earthmen. We Martians are
 babes in the desert. What chance do we have to earn dollars on the
 scale we need them, in competition with corporations which could buy
 and sell our whole planet before breakfast? Why, we couldn't afford
 three seconds of commercial time on a Lullaby Pillow 'cast. What we
 need, what we have to hire, is an executive who knows Earth, who's an
 Earthman himself. Let him tell us what will appeal to your people, and
 how to dodge the tax bite and—and—well, you see how it goes, that
 sort of, uh, thing."

   Matheny felt his eloquence running down and grabbed for the second
 bottle of beer.

   "But where do I start?" he asked plaintively, for his loneliness smote
 him anew. "I'm just a college professor at home. How would I even get
 to see—"

   "It might be arranged," said Doran in a thoughtful tone. "It just
 might. How much could you pay this fellow?"

   "A hundred megabucks a year, if he'll sign a five-year contract. That's
 Earth years, mind you."

   "I'm sorry to tell you this, Pete," said Doran, "but while that is not
 bad money, it is not what a high-powered sales scientist gets in Newer
 York. Plus his retirement benefits, which he would lose if he quit
 where he is now at. And I am sure he would not want to settle on Mars
 permanently."

   "I could offer a certain amount of, uh, lagniappe," said Matheny. "That
 is, well, I can draw up to a hundred megabucks myself for, uh, expenses
 and, well ... let me buy you a drink!"

   Doran's black eyes frogged at him. "You might at that," said the
 Earthman very softly. "Yes, you might at that."

   Matheny found himself warming. Gus Doran was an authentic bobber. A
 hell of a swell chap. He explained modestly that he was a free-lance
 business consultant and it was barely possible that he could arrange
 some contacts....

   "No, no, no commission, all done in the interest of interplanetary
 friendship ... well, anyhow, let's not talk business now. If you have
 got to stick to beer, Pete, make it a chaser to akvavit. What is
 akvavit? Well, I will just take and show you."

   A hell of a good bloke. He knew some very funny stories, too, and
 he laughed at Matheny's, though they were probably too rustic for a
 big-city taste like his.

   "What I really want," said Matheny, "what I really want—I mean what
 Mars really needs, get me?—is a confidence man."

   "A what?"

   "The best and slickest one on Earth, to operate a world-size con game
 for us and make us some real money."

   "Con man? Oh. A slipstring."

   "A con by any other name," said Matheny, pouring down an akvavit.

   Doran squinted through cigarette smoke. "You are interesting me
 strangely, my friend. Say on."

   "No." Matheny realized his head was a bit smoky. The walls of the booth
 seemed odd, somehow. They were just leatheroid walls, but they had an
 odd quality.

   "No, sorry, Gus," he said. "I spoke too much."

   "Okay. Forget it. I do not like a man that pries. But look, let's bomb
 out of here, how about it? Go have a little fun."

   "By all means." Matheny disposed of his last beer. "I could use some
 gaiety."

   "You have come to the right town then. But let us get you a hotel room
 first and some more up-to-date clothes."

   "

    Allez

   ," said Matheny. "If I don't mean

    allons

   , or maybe

    alors

   ."

   The drop down to cab-ramp level and the short ride afterward sobered
 him; the room rate at the Jupiter-Astoria sobered him still more.

    Oh, well

   , he thought,

    if I succeed in this job, no one at home will
 quibble.

   And the chamber to which he and Doran were shown was spectacular
 enough, with a pneumo direct to the bar and a full-wall transparency to
 show the vertical incandescence of the towers.

   "Whoof!" Matheny sat down. The chair slithered sensuously about his
 contours. He jumped. "What the dusty hell—Oh." He tried to grin, but
 his face burned. "I see."

   "That is a sexy type of furniture, all right," agreed Doran. He lowered
 himself into another chair, cocked his feet on the 3-D and waved a
 cigarette. "Which speaking of, what say we get some girls? It is not
 too late to catch them at home. A date here will usually start around
 2100 hours earliest."

   "What?"

   "You know. Dames. Like a certain blonde warhead with twin radar and
 swivel mounting, and she just loves exotics. Such as you."

   "Me?" Matheny heard his voice climb to a schoolboy squeak. "Me?
 Exotic? Why, I'm just a little college professor. I g-g-g, that is—"
 His tongue got stuck on his palate. He pulled it loose and moistened
 uncertain lips.

   "You are from Mars. Okay? So you fought bushcats barehanded in an
 abandoned canal."

   "What's a bushcat? And we don't have canals. The evaporation rate—"

   "Look, Pete," said Doran patiently. "She don't have to know that, does
 she?"

   "Well—well, no. I guess not No."

   "Let's order you some clothes on the pneumo," said Doran. "I recommend
 you buy from Schwartzherz. Everybody knows he is expensive."

   While Matheny jittered about, shaving and showering and struggling with
 his new raiment, Doran kept him supplied with akvavit and beer.

   "You said one thing, Pete," Doran remarked. "About needing a
 slipstring. A con man, you would call it."

   "Forget that. Please. I spoke out of turn."

   "Well, you see, maybe a man like that is just what Mars does need. And
 maybe I have got a few contacts."

   "What?" Matheny gaped out of the bathroom.

   Doran cupped his hands around a fresh cigarette, not looking at him.
 "I am not that man," he said frankly. "But in my line I get a lot of
 contacts, and not all of them go topside. See what I mean? Like if,
 say, you wanted somebody terminated and could pay for it, I could not
 do it. I would not want to know anything about it. But I could tell you
 a phone number."

   He shrugged and gave the Martian a sidelong glance. "Sure, you may not
 be interested. But if you are, well, Pete, I was not born yesterday. I
 got tolerance. Like the book says, if you want to get ahead, you have
 got to think positively."

   Matheny hesitated. If only he hadn't taken that last shot! It made him
 want to say yes, immediately, without reservations. And therefore maybe
 he became overcautious.

   They had instructed him on Mars to take chances if he must.

   "I could tell you a thing or two that might give you a better idea," he
 said slowly. "But it would have to be under security."

   "Okay by me. Room service can send us up an oath box right now."

   "What? But—but—" Matheny hung onto himself and tried to believe that
 he had landed on Earth less than six hours ago.

   In the end, he did call room service and the machine was trundled in.
 Doran swallowed the pill and donned the conditioner helmet without an
 instant's hesitation.

   "I shall never reveal to any person unauthorized by yourself whatever
 you may tell me under security, now or at any other time," he
 recited. Then, cheerfully: "And that formula, Pete, happens to be the
 honest-to-zebra truth."

   "I know." Matheny stared, embarrassed, at the carpet. "I'm sorry
 to—to—I mean of course I trust you, but—"

   "Forget it. I take a hundred security oaths a year, in my line of work.
 Maybe I can help you. I like you, Pete, damn if I don't. And, sure,
 I might stand to get an agent's cut, if I arrange—Go ahead, boy, go
 ahead." Doran crossed his legs and leaned back.

   "Oh, it's simple enough," said Matheny. "It's only that we already are
 operating con games."

   "On Mars, you mean?"

   "Yes. There never were any Old Martians. We erected the ruins fifty
 years ago for the Billingsworth Expedition to find. We've been
 manufacturing relics ever since."

   "

    Huh?

   Well, why, but—"

   "In this case, it helps to be at the far end of an interplanetary
 haul," said Matheny. "Not many Terrestrial archeologists get to Mars
 and they depend on our people to—Well, anyhow—"

   "I will be clopped! Good for you!"

   Doran blew up in laughter. "That is one thing I would never spill, even
 without security. I told you about my girl friend, didn't I?"

   "Yes, and that calls to mind the Little Girl," said Matheny
 apologetically. "She was another official project."

   "Who?"

   "Remember Junie O'Brien? The little golden-haired girl on Mars, a
 mathematical prodigy, but dying of an incurable disease? She collected
 Earth coins."

   "Oh, that. Sure, I remember—Hey! You didn't!"

   "Yes. We made about a billion dollars on that one."

   "I will be double damned. You know, Pete, I sent her a hundred-buck
 piece myself. Say, how is Junie O'Brien?"

   "Oh, fine. Under a different name, she's now our finance minister."
 Matheny stared out the wall, his hands twisting nervously behind his
 back. "There were no lies involved. She really does have a fatal
 disease. So do you and I. Every day we grow older."

   "Uh!" exclaimed Doran.

   "And then the Red Ankh Society. You must have seen or heard their ads.
 'What mysterious knowledge did the Old Martians possess? What was
 the secret wisdom of the Ancient Aliens? Now the incredibly powerful
 semantics of the Red Ankh (not a religious organization) is available
 to a select few—' That's our largest dollar-earning enterprise."

   He would have liked to say it was his suggestion originally, but it
 would have been too presumptuous. He was talking to an Earthman, who
 had heard everything already.

   Doran whistled.

   "That's about all, so far," confessed Matheny. "Perhaps a con is our
 only hope. I've been wondering, maybe we could organize a Martian
 bucket shop, handling Martian securities, but—well, I don't know."

   "I think—" Doran removed the helmet and stood up.

   "Yes?" Matheny faced around, shivering with his own tension.

   "I may be able to find the man you want," said Doran. "I just may. It
 will take a few days and might get a little expensive."

   "You mean.... Mr. Doran—Gus—you could actually—"

   "I cannot promise anything yet except that I will try. Now you finish
 dressing. I will be down in the bar. And I will call up this girl I
 know. We deserve a celebration!"

Question and Possible Answers:
What effect did Earth's anti-gambling laws have on Mars?

 (A) Gambling was not allowed on Mars
 (B) Martians were not able to run a sweepstakes for Earthlings
 (C) Earthlings were not allowed to gamble while on Mars
 (D) Martians were not allowed to gamble while on Earth

Answer:

Output: B


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:
AMBITION

   By WILLIAM L. BADE

   Illustrated by L. WOROMAY

   To the men of the future, the scientific

   goals of today were as incomprehensible

   as the ancient quest for the Holy Grail!

   There was a thump. Maitland stirred, came half awake, and opened his
 eyes. The room was dark except where a broad shaft of moonlight from
 the open window fell on the foot of his bed. Outside, the residential
 section of the Reservation slept silently under the pale illumination
 of the full Moon. He guessed sleepily that it was about three o'clock.

   What had he heard? He had a definite impression that the sound had come
 from within the room. It had sounded like someone stumbling into a
 chair, or—

   Something moved in the darkness on the other side of the room. Maitland
 started to sit up and it was as though a thousand volts had shorted his
 brain....

   This time, he awoke more normally. He opened his eyes, looked through
 the window at a section of azure sky, listened to the singing of birds
 somewhere outside. A beautiful day. In the middle of the process of
 stretching his rested muscles, arms extended back, legs tensed, he
 froze, looking up—for the first time really seeing the ceiling. He
 turned his head, then rolled off the bed, wide awake.

    This wasn't his room!

   The lawn outside wasn't part of the Reservation! Where the labs and
 the shops should have been, there was deep prairie grass, then a green
 ocean pushed into waves by the breeze stretching to the horizon. This
 wasn't the California desert! Down the hill, where the liquid oxygen
 plant ought to have been, a river wound across the scene, almost hidden
 beneath its leafy roof of huge ancient trees.

   Shock contracted Maitland's diaphragm and spread through his body.
 His breathing quickened.

    Now

   he remembered what had happened during
 the night, the sound in the darkness, the dimly seen figure, and
 then—what? Blackout....

   Where was he? Who had brought him here? For what purpose?

   He thought he knew the answer to the last of those questions. As
 a member of the original atomic reaction-motor team, he possessed
 information that other military powers would very much like to obtain.
 It was absolutely incredible that anyone had managed to abduct him from
 the heavily guarded confines of the Reservation, yet someone had done
 it. How?

   He pivoted to inspect the room. Even before his eyes could take in
 the details, he had the impression that there was something wrong
 about it. To begin with, the style was unfamiliar. There were no
 straight lines or sharp corners anywhere. The walls were paneled in
 featureless blue plastic and the doors were smooth surfaces of metal,
 half ellipses, without knobs. The flowing lines of the chair and table,
 built apparently from an aluminum alloy, somehow gave the impression
 of arrested motion. Even after allowances were made for the outlandish
 design, something about the room still was not right.

   His eyes returned to the doors, and he moved over to study the nearer
 one. As he had noticed, there was no knob, but at the right of this
 one, at about waist level, a push-button projected out of the wall. He
 pressed it; the door slid aside and disappeared. Maitland glanced in at
 the disclosed bathroom, then went over to look at the other door.

   There was no button beside this one, nor any other visible means of
 causing it to open.

   Baffled, he turned again and looked at the large open window—and
 realized what it was that had made the room seem so queer.

   It did not look like a jail cell. There were no bars....

   Striding across the room, he lunged forward to peer out and violently
 banged his forehead. He staggered back, grimacing with pain, then
 reached forward cautious fingers and discovered a hard sheet of stuff
 so transparent that he had not even suspected its presence. Not glass!
 Glass was never this clear or strong. A plastic, no doubt, but one he
 hadn't heard of. Security sometimes had disadvantages.

   He looked out at the peaceful vista of river and prairie. The character
 of the sunlight seemed to indicate that it was afternoon. He became
 aware that he was hungry.

   Where the devil could this place be? And—muscles tightened about his
 empty stomach—what was in store for him here?

   He stood trembling, acutely conscious that he was afraid and helpless,
 until a flicker of motion at the bottom of the hill near the river drew
 his attention. Pressing his nose against the window, he strained his
 eyes to see what it was.

   A man and a woman were coming toward him up the hill. Evidently they
 had been swimming, for each had a towel; the man's was hung around his
 neck, and the woman was still drying her bobbed black hair.

   Maitland speculated on the possibility that this might be Sweden; he
 didn't know of any other country where public bathing at this time
 of year was customary. However, that prairie certainly didn't look
 Scandinavian....

   As they came closer, he saw that both of them had dark uniform suntans
 and showed striking muscular development, like persons who had trained
 for years with weights. They vanished below his field of view,
 presumably into the building.

   He sat down on the edge of the cot and glared helplessly at the floor.

   About half an hour later, the door he couldn't open slid aside into the
 wall. The man Maitland had seen outside, now clad in gray trunks and
 sandals, stood across the threshold looking in at him. Maitland stood
 up and stared back, conscious suddenly that in his rumpled pajamas he
 made an unimpressive figure.

   The fellow looked about forty-five. The first details Maitland noticed
 were the forehead, which was quite broad, and the calm, clear eyes.
 The dark hair, white at the temples, was combed back, still damp from
 swimming. Below, there was a wide mouth and a firm, rounded chin.

   This man was intelligent, Maitland decided, and extremely sure of
 himself.

   Somehow, the face didn't go with the rest of him. The man had the head
 of a thinker, the body of a trained athlete—an unusual combination.

   Impassively, the man said, "My name is Swarts. You want to know where
 you are. I am not going to tell you." He had an accent, European, but
 otherwise unidentifiable. Possibly German. Maitland opened his mouth
 to protest, but Swarts went on, "However, you're free to do all the
 guessing you want." Still there was no suggestion of a smile.

   "Now, these are the rules. You'll be here for about a week. You'll have
 three meals a day, served in this room. You will not be allowed to
 leave it except when accompanied by myself. You will not be harmed in
 any way, provided you cooperate. And you can forget the silly idea that
 we want your childish secrets about rocket motors." Maitland's heart
 jumped. "My reason for bringing you here is altogether different. I
 want to give you some psychological tests...."

   "Are you crazy?" Maitland asked quietly. "Do you realize that at this
 moment one of the greatest hunts in history must be going on? I'll
 admit I'm baffled as to where we are and how you got me here—but it
 seems to me that you could have found someone less conspicuous to give
 your tests to."

   Briefly, then, Swarts did smile. "They won't find you," he said. "Now,
 come with me."

   After that outlandish cell, Swarts' laboratory looked rather
 commonplace. There was something like a surgical cot in the center, and
 a bench along one wall supported several electronics cabinets. A couple
 of them had cathode ray tube screens, and they all presented a normal
 complement of meters, pilot lights, and switches. Cables from them ran
 across the ceiling and came to a focus above the high flat cot in the
 center of the room.

   "Lie down," Swarts said. When Maitland hesitated, Swarts added,
 "Understand one thing—the more you cooperate, the easier things will
 be for you. If necessary, I will use coercion. I can get all my results
 against your will, if I must. I would prefer not to. Please don't make
 me."

   "What's the idea?" Maitland asked. "What is all this?"

   Swarts hesitated, though not, Maitland astonishedly felt, to evade an
 answer, but to find the proper words. "You can think of it as a lie
 detector. These instruments will record your reactions to the tests I
 give you. That is as much as you need to know. Now lie down."

   Maitland stood there for a moment, deliberately relaxing his tensed
 muscles. "Make me."

   If Swarts was irritated, he didn't show it. "That was the first test,"
 he said. "Let me put it another way. I would appreciate it a lot if
 you'd lie down on this cot. I would like to test my apparatus."

   Maitland shook his head stubbornly.

   "I see," Swarts said. "You want to find out what you're up against."

   He moved so fast that Maitland couldn't block the blow. It was to the
 solar plexus, just hard enough to double him up, fighting for breath.
 He felt an arm under his back, another behind his knees. Then he was on
 the cot. When he was able to breathe again, there were straps across
 his chest, hips, knees, ankles, and arms, and Swarts was tightening a
 clamp that held his head immovable.

   Presently, a number of tiny electrodes were adhering to his temples and
 to other portions of his body, and a minute microphone was clinging to
 the skin over his heart. These devices terminated in cables that hung
 from the ceiling. A sphygmomanometer sleeve was wrapped tightly around
 his left upper arm, its rubber tube trailing to a small black box
 clamped to the frame of the cot. Another cable left the box and joined
 the others.

   So—Maitland thought—Swarts could record changes in his skin
 potential, heartbeat, and blood pressure: the involuntary responses of
 the body to stimuli.

   The question was, what were the stimuli to be?

   "Your name," said Swarts, "is Robert Lee Maitland. You are thirty-four
 years old. You are an engineer, specialty heat transfer, particularly
 as applied to rocket motors.... No, Mr. Maitland, I'm not going to
 question you about your work; just forget about it. Your home town is
 Madison, Wisconsin...."

   "You seem to know everything about me," Maitland said defiantly,
 looking up into the hanging forest of cabling. "Why this recital?"

   "I do not know everything about you—yet. And I'm testing the
 equipment, calibrating it to your reactions." He went on, "Your
 favorite recreations are chess and reading what you term science
 fiction. Maitland,

    how would you like to go to the Moon

   ?"

   Something eager leaped in Maitland's breast at the abrupt question, and
 he tried to turn his head. Then he forced himself to relax. "What do
 you mean?"

   Swarts was chuckling. "I really hit a semantic push-button there,
 didn't I? Maitland, I brought you here because you're a man who wants
 to go to the Moon. I'm interested in finding out

    why

   ."

   In the evening a girl brought Maitland his meal. As the door slid
 aside, he automatically stood up, and they stared at each other for
 several seconds.

   She had the high cheekbones and almond eyes of an Oriental, skin that
 glowed like gold in the evening light, yet thick coiled braids of
 blonde hair that glittered like polished brass. Shorts and a sleeveless
 blouse of some thick, reddish, metallic-looking fabric clung to her
 body, and over that she was wearing a light, ankle-length cloak of what
 seemed to be white wool.

   She was looking at him with palpable curiosity and something like
 expectancy. Maitland sighed and said, "Hello," then glanced down
 self-consciously at his wrinkled green pajamas.

   She smiled, put the tray of food on the table, and swept out, her cloak
 billowing behind her. Maitland remained standing, staring at the closed
 door for a minute after she was gone.

   Later, when he had finished the steak and corn on the cob and shredded
 carrots, and a feeling of warm well-being was diffusing from his
 stomach to his extremities, he sat down on the bed to watch the sunset
 and to think.

   There were three questions for which he required answers before he
 could formulate any plan or policy.

   Where was he?

   Who was Swarts?

   What was the purpose of the "tests" he was being given?

   It was possible, of course, that this was all an elaborate scheme
 for getting military secrets, despite Swarts' protestations to the
 contrary. Maitland frowned. This place certainly didn't have the
 appearance of a military establishment, and so far there had been
 nothing to suggest the kind of interrogation to be expected from
 foreign intelligence officers.

   It might be better to tackle the first question first. He looked at
 the Sun, a red spheroid already half below the horizon, and tried to
 think of a region that had this kind of terrain. That prairie out there
 was unique. Almost anywhere in the world, land like that would be
 cultivated, not allowed to go to grass.

   This might be somewhere in Africa....

   He shook his head, puzzled. The Sun disappeared and its blood-hued
 glow began to fade from the sky. Maitland sat there, trying to get
 hold of the problem from an angle where it wouldn't just slip away.
 After a while the western sky became a screen of clear luminous blue,
 a backdrop for a pure white brilliant star. As always at that sight,
 Maitland felt his worry drain away, leaving an almost mystical sense of
 peace and an undefinable longing.

   Venus, the most beautiful of the planets.

   Maitland kept track of them all in their majestic paths through the
 constellations, but Venus was his favorite. Time and time again he
 had watched its steady climb higher and higher in the western sky,
 its transient rule there as evening star, its progression toward the
 horizon, and loved it equally in its

    alter ego

   of morning star. Venus
 was an old friend. An old friend....

   Something icy settled on the back of his neck, ran down his spine, and
 diffused into his body. He stared at the planet unbelievingly, fists
 clenched, forgetting to breathe.

   Last night Venus hadn't been there.

   Venus was a morning star just now....

    Just now!

   He realized the truth in that moment.

   Later, when that jewel of a planet had set and the stars were out,
 he lay on the bed, still warm with excitement and relief. He didn't
 have to worry any more about military secrets, or who Swarts was.
 Those questions were irrelevant now. And now he could accept the
 psychological tests at their face value; most likely, they were what
 they purported to be.

   Only one question of importance remained:

   What year was this?

   He grimaced in the darkness, an involuntary muscular expression of
 jubilation and excitement. The

    future

   ! Here was the opportunity for
 the greatest adventure imaginable to 20th Century man.

   Somewhere, out there under the stars, there must be grand glittering
 cities and busy spaceports, roaring gateways to the planets.
 Somewhere, out there in the night, there must be men who had walked
 beside the Martian canals and pierced the shining cloud mantle of
 Venus—somewhere, perhaps, men who had visited the distant luring stars
 and returned. Surely, a civilization that had developed time travel
 could reach the stars!

   And

    he

   had a chance to become a part of all that! He could spend
 his life among the planets, a citizen of deep space, a voyager of the
 challenging spaceways between the solar worlds.

   "I'm adaptable," he told himself gleefully. "I can learn fast. There'll
 be a job for me out there...."

    If—

   Suddenly sobered, he rolled over and put his feet on the floor, sat
 in the darkness thinking. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would have to find a
 way of breaking down Swarts' reticence. He would have to make the man
 realize that secrecy wasn't necessary in this case. And if Swarts still
 wouldn't talk, he would have to find a way of forcing the issue. The
 fellow had said that he didn't need cooperation to get his results,
 but—

   After a while Maitland smiled to himself and went back to bed.

   He woke in the morning with someone gently shaking his shoulder. He
 rolled over and looked up at the girl who had brought him his meal the
 evening before. There was a tray on the table and he sniffed the smell
 of bacon. The girl smiled at him. She was dressed as before, except
 that she had discarded the white cloak.

   As he swung his legs to the floor, she started toward the door,
 carrying the tray with the dirty dishes from yesterday. He stopped her
 with the word, "Miss!"

   She turned, and he thought there was something eager in her face.

   "Miss, do you speak my language?"

   "Yes," hesitantly. She lingered too long on the hiss of the last
 consonant.

   "Miss," he asked, watching her face intently, "what year is this?"

   Startlingly, she laughed, a mellow peal of mirth that had nothing
 forced about it. She turned toward the door again and said over her
 shoulder, "You will have to ask Swarts about that. I cannot tell you."

   "Wait! You mean you don't know?"

   She shook her head. "I cannot tell you."

   "All right; we'll let it go at that."

   She grinned at him again as the door slid shut.

   Swarts came half an hour later, and Maitland began his planned
 offensive.

   "What year is this?"

   Swarts' steely eyes locked with his. "You know what the date is," he
 stated.

   "No, I don't. Not since yesterday."

   "Come on," Swarts said patiently, "let's get going. We have a lot to
 get through this morning."

   "I

    know

   this isn't 1950. It's probably not even the 20th Century.
 Venus was a morning star before you brought me here. Now it's an
 evening star."

   "Never mind that. Come."

   Wordlessly, Maitland climbed to his feet, preceded Swarts to the
 laboratory, lay down and allowed him to fasten the straps and attach
 the instruments, making no resistance at all. When Swarts started
 saying a list of words—doubtlessly some sort of semantic reaction
 test—Maitland began the job of integrating "csc
   3
   x dx" in his head.
 It was a calculation which required great concentration and frequent
 tracing back of steps. After several minutes, he noticed that Swarts
 had stopped calling words. He opened his eyes to find the other man
 standing over him, looking somewhat exasperated and a little baffled.

   "What year is this?" Maitland asked in a conversational tone.

   "We'll try another series of tests."

   It took Swarts nearly twenty minutes to set up the new apparatus. He
 lowered a bulky affair with two cylindrical tubes like the twin stacks
 of a binocular microscope over Maitland's head, so that the lenses at
 the ends of the tubes were about half an inch from the engineer's
 eyes. He attached tiny clamps to Maitland's eyelashes.

   "These will keep you from holding your eyes shut," he said. "You can
 blink, but the springs are too strong for you to hold your eyelids down
 against the tension."

   He inserted button earphones into Maitland's ears—

   And then the show began.

   He was looking at a door in a partly darkened room, and there were
 footsteps outside, a peremptory knocking. The door flew open,
 and outlined against the light of the hall, he saw a man with a
 twelve-gauge shotgun. The man shouted, "Now I've got you, you
 wife-stealer!" He swung the shotgun around and pulled the trigger.
 There was a terrible blast of sound and the flash of smokeless
 powder—then blackness.

   With a deliberate effort, Maitland unclenched his fists and tried to
 slow his breathing. Some kind of emotional reaction test—what was the
 countermove? He closed his eyes, but shortly the muscles around them
 declared excruciatingly that they couldn't keep that up.

   Now he was looking at a girl. She....

   Maitland gritted his teeth and fought to use his brain; then he had it.

   He thought of a fat slob of a bully who had beaten him up one day
 after school. He remembered a talk he had heard by a politician who had
 all the intelligent social responsibility of a rogue gorilla, but no
 more. He brooded over the damnable stupidity and short-sightedness of
 Swarts in standing by his silly rules and not telling him about this
 new world.

   Within a minute, he was in an ungovernable rage. His muscles tightened
 against the restraining straps. He panted, sweat came out on his
 forehead, and he began to curse. Swarts! How he hated....

   The scene was suddenly a flock of sheep spread over a green hillside.
 There was blood hammering in Maitland's temples. His face felt hot and
 swollen and he writhed against the restraint of the straps.

   The scene disappeared, the lenses of the projector retreated from his
 eyes and Swarts was standing over him, white-lipped. Maitland swore at
 him for a few seconds, then relaxed and smiled weakly. His head was
 starting to ache from the effort of blinking.

   "What year is this?" he asked.

   "All right," Swarts said. "A.D. 2634."

   Maitland's smile became a grin.

   "I really haven't the time to waste talking irrelevancies," Swarts said
 a while later. "Honestly. Maitland, I'm working against a time limit.
 If you'll cooperate, I'll tell Ching to answer your questions."'

   "Ching?"

   "Ingrid Ching is the girl who has been bringing you your meals."

   Maitland considered a moment, then nodded. Swarts lowered the projector
 to his eyes again, and this time the engineer did not resist.

   That evening, he could hardly wait for her to come. Too excited to sit
 and watch the sunset, he paced interminably about the room, sometimes
 whistling nervously, snapping his fingers, sitting down and jittering
 one leg. After a while he noticed that he was whistling the same theme
 over and over: a minute's thought identified it as that exuberant
 mounting phrase which recurs in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth
 Symphony.

   He forgot about it and went on whistling. He was picturing himself
 aboard a ship dropping in toward Mars, making planetfall at Syrtis
 Major; he was seeing visions of Venus and the awesome beauty of Saturn.
 In his mind, he circled the Moon, and viewed the Earth as a huge bright
 globe against the constellations....

   Finally the door slid aside and she appeared, carrying the usual tray
 of food. She smiled at him, making dimples in her golden skin and
 revealing a perfect set of teeth, and put the tray on the table.

   "I think you are wonderful," she laughed. "You get everything you
 want, even from Swarts, and I have not been able to get even a little
 of what I want from him. I want to travel in time, go back to your 20th
 Century. And I wanted to talk with you, and he would not let me." She
 laughed again, hands on her rounded hips. "I have never seen him so
 irritated as he was this noon."

   Maitland urged her into the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed.
 Eagerly he asked, "Why the devil do you want to go to the 20th Century?
 Believe me, I've been there, and what I've seen of this world looks a
 lot better."

   She shrugged. "Swarts says that I want to go back to the Dark Age of
 Technology because I have not adapted well to modern culture. Myself,
 I think I have just a romantic nature. Far times and places look more
 exciting...."

   "How do you mean—" Maitland wrinkled his brow—"adapt to modern
 culture? Don't tell me

    you're

   from another time!"

   "Oh, no! But my home is Aresund, a little fishing village at the head
 of a fiord in what you would call Norway. So far north, we are much
 behind the times. We live in the old way, from the sea, speak the old
 tongue."

   He looked at her golden features, such a felicitous blend of
 Oriental and European characteristics, and hesitantly asked, "Maybe
 I shouldn't.... This is a little personal, but ... you don't look
 altogether like the Norwegians of my time."

   His fear that she would be offended proved to be completely
 unjustified. She merely laughed and said, "There has been much
 history since 1950. Five hundred years ago, Europe was overrun by
 Pan-Orientals. Today you could not find anywhere a 'pure' European
 or Asiatic." She giggled. "Swarts' ancestors from your time must be
 cursing in their graves. His family is Afrikander all the way back, but
 one of his great-grandfathers was pure-blooded Bantu. His full name is
 Lassisi Swarts."

   Maitland wrinkled his brow. "Afrikander?"

   "The South Africans." Something strange came into her eyes. It might
 have been awe, or even hatred; he could not tell. "The Pan-Orientals
 eventually conquered all the world, except for North America—the
 last remnant of the American World Empire—and southern Africa. The
 Afrikanders had been partly isolated for several centuries then, and
 they had developed technology while the rest of the world lost it. They
 had a tradition of white supremacy, and in addition they were terrified
 of being encircled." She sighed. "They ruled the next world empire and
 it was founded on the slaughter of one and a half billion human beings.
 That went into the history books as the War of Annihilation."

   "So many? How?"

   "They were clever with machines, the Afrikanders. They made armies
 of them. Armies of invincible killing-machines, produced in robot
 factories from robot-mined ores.... Very clever." She gave a little
 shudder.

   "And yet they founded modern civilization," she added. "The grandsons
 of the technicians who built the Machine Army set up our robot
 production system, and today no human being has to dirty his hands
 raising food or manufacturing things. It could never have been done,
 either, before the population was—reduced to three hundred million."

   "Then the Afrikanders are still on top? Still the masters?"

   She shook her head. "There are no more Afrikanders."

   "Rebellion?"

   "No. Intermarriage. Racial blending. There was a psychology of guilt
 behind it. So huge a crime eventually required a proportionate
 expiation. Afrikaans is still the world language, but there is only one
 race now. No more masters or slaves."

   They were both silent for a moment, and then she sighed. "Let us not
 talk about them any more."

   "Robot factories and farms," Maitland mused. "What else? What means of
 transportation? Do you have interstellar flight yet?"

   "Inter-what?"

   "Have men visited the stars?"

   She shook her head, bewildered.

   "I always thought that would be a tough problem to crack," he agreed.
 "But tell me about what men are doing in the Solar System. How is life
 on Mars and Venus, and how long does it take to get to those places?"

   He waited, expectantly silent, but she only looked puzzled. "I don't
 understand. Mars? What are Mars?"

   After several seconds, Maitland swallowed. Something seemed to be the
 matter with his throat, making it difficult for him to speak. "Surely
 you have space travel?"

   She frowned and shook her head. "What does that mean—space travel?"

   He was gripping the edge of the bed now, glaring at her. "A
 civilization that could discover time travel and build robot factories
 wouldn't find it hard to send a ship to Mars!"

   "A

    ship

   ? Oh, you mean something like a

    vliegvlotter

   . Why, no, I
 don't suppose it would be hard. But why would anyone want to do a
 thing like that?"

   He was on his feet towering over her, fists clenched. She raised her
 arms as if to shield her face if he should hit her. "Let's get this
 perfectly clear," he said, more harshly than he realized. "So far as
 you know, no one has ever visited the planets, and no one wants to. Is
 that right?"

   She nodded apprehensively. "I have never heard of it being done."

   He sank down on the bed and put his face in his hands. After a while he
 looked up and said bitterly, "You're looking at a man who would give
 his life to get to Mars. I thought I would in my time. I was positive I
 would when I knew I was in your time. And now I know I never will."

   The cot creaked beside him and he felt a soft arm about his shoulders
 and fingers delicately stroking his brow. Presently he opened his eyes
 and looked at her. "I just don't understand," he said. "It seemed
 obvious to me that whenever men were able to reach the planets, they'd
 do it."

   Her pitying eyes were on his face. He hitched himself around so that he
 was facing her. "I've got to understand. I've got to know

    why

   . What
 happened? Why don't men want the planets any more?"

   "Honestly," she said, "I did not know they ever had." She hesitated.
 "Maybe you are asking the wrong question."

   He furrowed his brow, bewildered now by her.

   "I mean," she explained, "maybe you should ask why people in the 20th
 Century

    did

   want to go to worlds men are not suited to inhabit."

   Maitland felt his face become hot. "Men can go anywhere, if they want
 to bad enough."

   "But

    why

   ?"

   Despite his sudden irrational anger toward her, Maitland tried to stick
 to logic. "Living space, for one thing. The only permanent solution to
 the population problem...."

   "We have no population problem. A hundred years ago, we realized that
 the key to social stability is a limited population. Our economic
 system was built to take care of three hundred million people, and we
 have held the number at that."

   "Birth control," Maitland scoffed. "How do you make it work—secret
 police?"

   "No. Education. Each of us has the right to two children, and we
 cherish that right so much that we make every effort to see that those
 two are the best children we could possibly produce...."

   She broke off, looking a little self-conscious. "You understand, what
 I have been saying applies to

    most

   of the world. In some places like
 Aresund, things are different. Backward. I still do not feel that I
 belong here, although the people of the town have accepted me as one of
 them."

   "Even," he said, "granting that you have solved the population problem,
 there's still the adventure of the thing. Surely, somewhere, there must
 be men who still feel that.... Ingrid, doesn't it fire something in
 your blood, the idea of going to Mars—just to go there and see what's
 there and walk under a new sky and a smaller Sun? Aren't you interested
 in finding out what the canals are? Or what's under the clouds of
 Venus? Wouldn't you like to see the rings of Saturn from, a distance
 of only two hundred thousand miles?" His hands were trembling as he
 stopped.

   She shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Go into the past—yes! But go out
 there? I still cannot see why."

   "Has the spirit of adventure

    evaporated

   from the human race, or

    what

   ?"

   She smiled. "In a room downstairs there is the head of a lion. Swarts
 killed the beast when he was a young man. He used a spear. And time
 traveling is the greatest adventure there is. At least, that is the
 way I feel. Listen, Bob." She laid a hand on his arm. "You grew up in
 the Age of Technology. Everybody was terribly excited about what could
 be done with machines—machines to blow up a city all at once, or fly
 around the world, or take a man to Mars. We have had our fill of—what
 is the word?—gadgets. Our machines serve us, and so long as they
 function right, we are satisfied to forget about them.

   "Because this is the Age of

    Man

   . We are terribly interested in what
 can be done with people. Our scientists, like Swarts, are studying
 human rather than nuclear reactions. We are much more fascinated by the
 life and death of cultures than by the expansion or contraction of the
 Universe. With us, it is the people that are important, not gadgets."

   Maitland stared at her, his face blank. His mind had just manufactured
 a discouraging analogy. His present position was like that of an
 earnest 12th Century crusader, deposited by some freak of nature into
 the year 1950, trying to find a way of reanimating the anti-Mohammedan
 movement. What chance would he have? The unfortunate knight would argue
 in vain that the atomic bomb offered a means of finally destroying the
 infidel....

   Maitland looked up at the girl, who was regarding him silently with
 troubled eyes. "I think I'd like to be alone for a while," he said.

Question and Possible Answers:
What made Maitland realize he was in the future?

 (A) A planet
 (B) The terrain
 (C) The people
 (D) The sun

Answer:

Output: A