Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
the critter. owner—much the worse for wear. However, this trek would be over in too bad that Earthmen weren't as naturally repellent to insects as the dominant native life. Like all Niobians, the native guide wore no clothing—ideal garb for a climate like this. His white, hairless hide, with its faint sheen of oil, was beautifully water-repellent. Nature adapts the humanoid form for survival on different worlds. Like the dominant species on every intelligent planet in the explored galaxy, he was an erect, bipedal, mammalian being with hands that possessed an opposable thumb. Insofar as that general description went, muscles like those of a terrestrial seal, argued an originally aquatic environment, and the large intelligent eyes set forward in the skull to give binocular vision, together with the sharp white carnassial teeth and pointed canines, indicated a carnivorous ancestry. But the modern Niobians, although excellent swimmers, were land dwellers and ate anything. Lanceford couldn't repress an involuntary shudder at some of the things they apparently enjoyed. Tastes differed—enormously so between Earthmen and Niobians. There was no doubt that the native was intelligent, yet he, like the hunthouse with its darkness and its smells. He shrugged. He could that, even an airless room full of natives was preferable to spending a night outside. And the sith wouldn't follow them. It didn't like turned on every faucet and the sheets of rain that fell during the day changed abruptly into a deluge. Even the semi-aquatic natives didn't like to get caught away from shelter during the night. The three moved onward, immersed in a drumming wilderness of rain—the squat thatch-roofed bulk of a hunthouse, a place of shelter for the members of the hunters' guild who provided fresh meat for the Niobian his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom within, but his nose told him even before his eyes that the house was occupied. The natives, he familiarity with the odor of a Niobian bred contempt—nausea was the right word. most of it hung in an acrid undulating layer some six feet above the floor. The glow outlined the squatting figures of a dozen or so natives clustered around the pit, watching the slowly rotating carcass of a small deerlike rodent called a sorat, which was broiling on a spit above the flames. Kron was already in the ring, talking earnestly to one of the hunters—a fellow-tribesman, judging from the tattoo on his chest. Clustered around the fire, the hunters turned to look at him curiously and, after a single eye-filling stare, turned back again. Niobians were almost painfully polite. Although Earthmen were still enough of a curiosity to draw attention, one searching look was all their customs allowed. Thereafter, they minded their own business. In some ways, Lanceford reflected, native customs had undeniable merit. food is cooked," the Niobian said, "and you are welcomed to share it." Lanceford nodded, his stomach crawling with unpleasant anticipation. A native meal was something he would prefer to avoid. His digestive system could handle the unsavory mess, but his taste buds shrank from the forthcoming assault. What the natives classed as a delicate and elusive flavor was sheer torture to an Earthman. Possibly there was some connection between their inefficient olfactory food was an ordeal. Yet he couldn't refuse. That would be discourteous and offensive, and one simply didn't offend the natives. The BEE was explicit about that. Courtesy was a watchword on Niobe. He took a place by the fire, watching with concealed distaste as one of the hunters reached into the boiling vat beside the firepit with a Kron offered. The Niobian never seemed to learn. At every meal they had eaten during their past month of travel on Niobe, Kron had persistently offered him samples of the mess. With equal persistence, he had refused. After all, there were limits. But polite convention required that he eat something, so he took a hunters eyed him curiously, apparently wondering how an entity who were strange and unaccountable. The hunters didn't protest when he retired to his sleeping platform and the more acceptable concentrates from his pack. His hunger satisfied, Confederation's supply of the drug was strictly rationed to those whom were old during the Dark Ages before the Atomic Revolution, sending foot parties to explore a world in the chance that they might discover reacted like his own people. He scratched his head and pulled thoughtfully at one of his short ears. had denied his help for weeks, and Niobians simply didn't disregard another's wishes. Kron scowled, the action lending a ferocious cast to his doglike face. Tolerance was a custom hallowed by ages of practice. It went to extremes—even with life at stake, a person's wishes and beliefs must be respected. The human was apparently resolved to die. He had told Kron his last wishes, which didn't include a request for help, but merely to get his pack back to the others in their glass dome. It was astonishing that such an obviously intelligent species should have so little flexibility. They didn't understand the first principles of adaptation. Always and forever, they held to their own ways, trying with insensate stubbornness to mold nature to their will—and when nature overcome their artificial defenses, they died, stubborn, unregenerate, inflexible to the end. They were odd, these humans—odd and a little frightening. Kron nodded, but then belatedly realized that the human was muttering to himself. He listened. There might be something important in these dying murmurings, something that might explain their reasons for being here and their strange driving haste that cared nothing for life. "Not even if it is in accord with your customs and rituals?" "What customs?" alive, particularly on jobs like this one. We don't wear these suits and repellent because we like to. We do it to stay alive. If we could, we'd go around nearly as naked as you do." "I'd take a helping hand from the devil himself, if it would do any good." Kron's eyes were brilliant. He hummed softly under his breath, the hunthouse was deserted save for himself and the Earthman. With characteristic Niobian delicacy, the hunters had left, preferring to thankful that they were gone, for what he was about to do would shock their conservative souls. Lanceford was dimly conscious of Kron prying his swollen jaws apart and forcing something wet and slippery down his throat. He swallowed, dimly grateful, even though the primitive native nostrum would probably do no good other than to ease the pain. through an open door into the living room of a stranger's house. He was aware of the incredible complexity and richness of Kron's thoughts, of oddly sardonic laughter, of pity and regret that such a little thing as understanding should cause death and suffering through its lack, of bewildered admiration for the grim persistence of the alien Earthmen, mixed with a wondering curiosity about what kept them here—what the true reasons were for their death-defying persistence and stubbornness—of an ironic native paraphrase for the Terran saying, "Every man to his own taste," and a profound speculation upon what fruits might occur from true understanding between his own race and the aliens. come, as though an invisible door had closed upon it. But one thing in that briefly shocking contact stood out with great clarity. The Niobians were as eager as the BEE to establish a true contact, a true understanding, for the message was there, plain in Kron's mind that he was thinking not only for himself but for a consensus of his people, a decision arrived at as a result of discussion and thought—a decision of which every Niobian was aware and with which most Niobians agreed.

<question>:
How do the hunters treat the narrator?

<options>:
A They are cautiously accepting of his presence
B They wish to learn from him
C They are tolerant but disgusted
D They are openly friendly and inviting

<answer>:

A