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

<passage>:
BY RANDALL GARRETT Illustrated by Bernklau [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] A fearsome thing is a thing you're afraid of—and it has nothing whatever to do with whether others are afraid, nor with whether it blackness, but a mind-enveloping darkness that was filled with the through the darkness like tiny glowing mice, fleeing from something scurrying, moving, changing—each half recognizable as it between the data-bits began pulling them back together again as the the frightened little things together as they drifted back in from vast vast jigsaw puzzle in five dimensions, little clots and patches formed as the bits were snuggled into place here and there. What? He rubbed his head and looked around more carefully. It was not just He tried to force his memory to give him the information he was looking but not extraordinarily so. A door in one wall led into another room of before. He looked down at the floor. It was soft, almost as soft as a bed, covered with a thick, even, resilient layer of fine material of some kind. It was some sort of carpeting that covered the floor from seemed to be made of some glowing, semitranslucent metal that cast a shadowless glow over everything. There was a large, bulky table near the wall away from the door it looked almost normal, except that the objects on it were like nothing that had ever existed. Their purposes were unknown, and their shapes meaningless. He jerked his head away, not wanting to look at the things on the table. The walls, at least, looked familiar. They seemed to be paneled in some fine wood. He walked over and touched it. And knew immediately that, no matter what it looked like, it wasn't wood. The illusion was there to the eye, but no wood ever had such a hard, smooth, glasslike surface as this. He jerked his fingertips away. woodlike wall? He turned around again and looked deliberately at the big, bulky table. There was a faint humming noise coming from it which had escaped his notice before. He walked over to it and looked at the queerly-shaped table was no more wood than the wall, and a touch of a finger to the surface verified the decision. The only thing that looked at all familiar on the table was a sheaf of written material. He picked it up and glanced over the pages, noticing the neat characters, so unlike any that he knew. He couldn't read a word of it. He grinned and put the sheets back down on the smooth table top. The humming appeared to be coming from a metal box on the other side of the table. He circled around and took a look at the thing. It had levers and knobs and other projections, but their functions were not immediately discernible. There were several rows of studs with various unrecognizable symbols on them. He reached out a tentative finger and touched one of the symbol-marked There was a loud click! back from the device. He watched it warily for a moment, but nothing Time? What had Contarini said about time? Something about its being like a ... something else. What? He shook his head. The more he tried to remember what his fellow well explore his surroundings a little more. He resolved to keep his hands off anything that wasn't readily identifiable. There was a single oddly-shaped chair by the bulky table, and behind the —And gasped! impressions intelligently to his brain. What they were recording was so unfamiliar that his brain could not decode the messages they sent. immediate surroundings, looked almost homey after seeing that monstrous, endless city outside. He skirted the table with its still-humming machine and walked toward the door that led to the other room. A picture hanging on a nearby wall caught his eye, and he stopped. It was a portrait of a man in It wasn't, of course it was only a painting. But the lifelike, somber chair. Broom's footsteps sounded loud in the room, the echoes rebounding it had a square, mosaic pattern, as though it might be composed of tile of some kind. And yet, though it was harder that he had a weapon of some kind. Even a knife would have made him feel better. But there had been no chance of that, of course. Prisoners of war are sleeping for hundreds of years and waking up in a strange world." Well, it was that, all right. nothing. There was no sound except the faint humming from the device in the room behind him, and a deeper, almost inaudible, rushing, rumbling sound that seemed to come from far below. trapped in this strange, silent room. He could see a light shining through a door at the far end of the room—perhaps it was a way out. He The door had a pane of translucent glass in it, and there were more of the unreadable characters on it. He wished fervently that he could decipher them Carefully, he grasped the handle of the door, twisted it, and pulled. He looked down at it, wondering if there were any way the door could be locked. There was a tiny vertical slit set in a small metal panel in the door, but it was much too tiny to be a keyhole. Still— It didn't matter. If necessary, he could smash the glass to get through door. The hallway stretched away to either side, lined with doors similar to anyway? The door behind him was pressing against his hand with a patient insistence, as though it wanted to close itself. He almost let it close, , he thought to himself. He went back into the office and looked around for something to prop the door open. He found a small, beautifully formed porcelain dish on one of the desks, picked it up, and went back to the door. The dish held the door open an inch or so. That was good enough. If someone locked the door, he could still smash in the glass if he wanted to, but the absence this mysterious place. They were all locked. He knew that he could break into any of them, but None of them had any lights behind them. Only the one door that he had stone-walled dungeon, with its smelly straw beds, lit only by the faint shaft of sunlight that came from the barred window high overhead. battlefield, dealing death in hand-to-hand combat, and the Italian hadn't impressed him as a coward. will die. This does not frighten me, death. I am not afraid of what men may do to me." He stopped and frowned. "But, of as myself does not have? I think so. "Oh, I have no doubt that you could do it, if you but would. And then, chains of fear." The door was as he had left it, the porcelain dish still in place. He the door shut itself behind him. He ran on, through the large room with He did not hear the intruder until the man's voice echoed in the room. doorway of the office. property, but all I ask is help." The little man was blinking and backing away, as though he were going to turn and bolt at any moment. Broom laughed. "You have nothing to fear from me, little man. Permit me But Richard Plantagenet just stared at the little dish that he still held in his hand, the fear still in his heart. Men would still call him And, nearly eight centuries away in time and thousands of miles away in space, a Mr. Edward Jasperson was speaking hurriedly into the telephone that stood by the electric typewriter on his desk. "That's right, Officer Suite 8601, Empire State Building. I was working late, and I left the lights on in my office when I went out to get a cup of coffee. When I came back, he was here—a big, bearded man, wearing a thing that looked like a monk's robe made out of gunny sack. What? No, I locked the door when I left. What? Well, the only thing that's missing as far as I can tell is a ceramic ash tray from one of the desks holding that in his hand when I saw him. What? Oh. Where did he go?" Mr. where he went. I must have fainted. "But I think you can pick him up if you hurry. With that getup on, he

<question>:
What is the metal box that makes a humming sound?

<options>:
A A television
B A typewriter
C A telephone
D A computer

<answer>:

B