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

<passage>:
Score one or one million was not enough for the human race. It had to be all or nothing ... with one man doing every bit of scoring! his head. The outsized eight-legged parody of a mosquito did a neat half roll and zoomed out of range, hanging motionless on vibrating inches short of disaster, buzzed angrily and retreated to the shelter of a nearby broadleaf, where it executed another half roll and hung upside down, watching its intended meal with avid anticipation. repellent and applied the smelly stuff liberally to his face and neck. It wouldn't do much good. In an hour, his sweat would remove whatever the rain missed—but for that time, it should discourage the sith. As far as permanent discouraging went, the repellent was useless. Once one of those eight-legged horrors checked you off, there were only two possible endings to the affair—either you were bitten or you killed It was as simple as that. He had hoped that he would be fast enough to get the sith before it got him. He had been bitten once already and the memory of those paralyzed three minutes while the bloodsucker fed was enough to last him for a lifetime. He readjusted his helmet, tucking its fringe of netting beneath his collar. The netting, he reflected gloomily, was like its owner—much the worse for wear. However, this trek would be over in another week and he would be able to spend the next six months at a comfortable desk job at the Base, while some other poor devil did the chores of field work. He looked down the rain-swept trail winding through the jungle. from an impenetrable overcast, fat wet drops that formed a grieving background sound that never ceased, sobbing with soft mournful noises Everywhere there was water, running in rivulets of tear-streaks down blended into broad shallow rivers that wound their mourners' courses one stayed in the highlands—a perpetual series of fords and river crossings. And it was hot, a seasonless, unchanging, humid heat that made a protection suit an instrument of torture that slowly boiled its wearer Nature adapts the humanoid form for survival on different worlds. bones that gave his limbs four major articulations rather than the things they apparently enjoyed. Tastes differed—enormously so between which had a well-developed philosophy and an amazing comprehension of take a good many years before the first native mechanic would set up a machine shop on this planet. we can sleep tonight?" managed to last through the others and this one could be no worse. At 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 airless rooms filled with natives. He sighed wearily as he followed Kron along the dim path through the turned on every faucet and the sheets of rain that fell during the day like to get caught away from shelter during the night. The three moved onward, immersed in a drumming wilderness of rain—the plowing painfully through it, and the sith flitting from the shelter of one broadleaf to the next, waiting for a chance to feed. and the sith fell to the ground, satisfactorily swatted. Lanceford grinned—score one for the human race. walls enclosing a packed-dirt floor and lined with a single deck of together with clouds of smoke and steam that rose upward through the tangled mass of greasy cobwebs filling the upper reaches of the most of it hung in an acrid undulating layer some six feet above the floor. his pack, pulled off his mud-encrusted boots and lay back with a grunt of relaxation. After a day like this, it was good to get off his feet. Weariness flowed over him. He took a place by the fire, watching with concealed distaste as one eaten during their past month of travel on Niobe, Kron had persistently refused. After all, there were limits. But polite convention required that he eat something, so he took a small portion of the barbecued meat and dutifully finished it. The he lay back on the resilient vines and fell into a sleep of exhaustion. across a swampy landscape that stretched interminably ahead. The The climax was horror. One of the siths slipped through his frantically wouldn't normally have been bad, but the sith bite he had suffered a week ago had sensitized him. He was developing an anaphylactic reaction—a severe one, judging from the swelling. worked. If it wasn't, he reflected grimly, he wouldn't be long for this world. He sighed and lay back. There wasn't anything more to do now. All he could do was wait and see if the anti-allergen worked. three years ago, yet already the planet was famous not only for its peculiar climate, but also for the number of men who had died upon its watery surface. Knowledge of this planet was bought with life, grim had to be understood in minimum time. It was the source of a complex of alkaloids known as gerontin, and gerontin had the property of tripling or quadrupling the normal life span of mammals. distribution throughout the Confederation worlds. But unfortunately the Despite the fact that most life is based on carbon, oxygen and water, the Confederation are semi-arid, with the outstanding exceptions of humanoid power for so long that all of their swampland had been drained and reclaimed centuries ago. cultures, were only Class VII, and that Class level steps took several thousands of years to make, a policy of waiting for synthesis was not worth considering. proceeded at all possible speed. With so many considerations weighed of humanoids in the Confederation, their sacrifice was worthwhile even if only a few days or hours were saved between discovery and exploitation. anti-allergin apparently wasn't going to work, for it should have had some effect by now. He shrugged mentally—it was the chance one took in this business. But he couldn't say that he hadn't been warned. Even old do a thing like this without reason. And whatever it was, he wasn't going to worry about it. In fact, there wasn't much time left to worry. The reaction was observably and painfully worse. was useless. The blinding agony that swept through him at the slightest movement left no doubt that he would never finish the business of their range, limited at best, was practically nonexistent on a planet that literally seemed to be one entire "dead spot." A fixed-frequency could cover distance, and that required a little technical know-how to reacted like his own people. He scratched his head and pulled thoughtfully at one of his short ears. It went to extremes—even with life at stake, a person's wishes and The human was apparently resolved to die. He had told Kron his last 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 was uncomfortable, like inhaling liquid fire, and then there was the constant desire to cough and the physical inability to do so. "Dirty luck," he whispered. "Only a week more and I'd have had it made—the longest trek a man's made on this benighted planet." Kron nodded, but then belatedly realized that the human was muttering to himself. He listened. There might be something important in these much choice of where he dies in the BEE." of your living plan?" 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." Niobian equivalent of laughter. "And all the time we thought—" he began, and then broke off abruptly. Already too much time was wasted without losing any more in meditating upon the ironies of life. wasn't a pleasant way to die. And then, quite suddenly, the pain eased. A creeping numbness spread its lack, of bewildered admiration for the grim persistence of the here—what the true reasons were for their death-defying persistence It was a strangely jumbled kaleidoscopic flash that burned across the

<question>:
How much time passes over the course of the story?

<options>:
A About a day
B About a year
C About a week
D About a month

<answer>:

A