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

<passage>:
Blane and Splinter Wood, their space-ship wrecked, could not follow orders—their weapons were useless on the Water-world. Splinter rolled his six foot three of lanky body into a more comfortable position on the air-bunk. He yawned tremendously, fumbled a small box from his shirt pocket, and removed a marble-like capsule. moodily at the capsules that bounced for a moment against the pilot room's walls before hanging motionless in the air. "Mister Wood," he said icily, "I was flying a space ship while they "Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!" Splinter reached out lazily, plucked the capsules from the air, one by one. "All right, all right!" Splinter tucked the capsule box back into his pocket, grinned mockingly. "But don't say I didn't warn you. With this gonna be begging for some of my vitamin, super-concentrated pills before we get back to Earth." formal education had been fairly well neglected. Now, the two of them rode the pounding jets of a DX cruiser, bound loosened collar. "Of course!" Splinter grinned. Kerry Blane exploded, words spewing volcanically forth. Splinter "Seventy-eight what?" Kerry Blane asked sullenly, the old twinkle beginning to light again deep in his eyes. "Seventy-eight new words—and you swore them beautifully!" Splinter beamed. "Some day you can teach them to me." They laughed then, Old Kerry Blane and young Splinter Wood, and the warmth of their friendship was a tangible thing in the small control-room of the cruiser. And in the midst of their laughter, Old Kerry Blane choked in agony, surged desperately against his bunk straps. He screamed unknowingly, feeling only the horrible excruciating agony of his body, tasting the blood that gushed from his mouth and nostrils. His muscles were knotted cords that he could not loosen, and his blood His body arced again and again against the restraining straps, and his mouth was open in a soundless scream. He sensed dimly that his partner had wrenched open a wall door, removed metal medicine kits, and was coma-like sleep, woke hours later to stare clear-eyed into Splinter's concerned face. "Close, wasn't it?" he said weakly, conversationally. "Close enough!" Splinter agreed relievedly. "If you had followed my advice and taken those vitamin capsules, you'd never have had the bends." "I've had the bends before, and lived through them!" he said, still weakly defiant. sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief flicker of a side jet. Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face "I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of which the ship dropped toward the planet. Tendrils of vapor touched the ports, were whipped aside, then were stud, and nose rockets thrummed in a rising crescendo as the free fall of the cruiser was checked. Heat rose in the cabin from the friction of the outer air, then dissipated, as the force-screen voltometer leaped higher. Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another, and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and a news event, except for the utter lack of sound. One was scaly, while the other was skinned, and both were fully three struck. They threshed in a mad paroxysm of rage, whirling and spinning in the phosphorescent water like beings from a nightmare, exploding out of their element time and again, only to fall back in a gargantuan the snoring Splinter. "This is it, Sleeping Beauty," he called. "Snap out of it!" "Huh? Whuzzat?" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow. Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster." "Belt yourself," Kerry Blane warned. "If that beach isn't solid, I'll have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry." "Right!" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement. lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit, and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward. "Damn!" Kerry Blane swore briefly. There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet. Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser plowed into the silvery sand. Belts parted like rotten string they were thrown forward with crushing force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them. With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side, twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge. into the bloody features of the man bending over him. "What happened?" he gasped. Splinter Wood laughed, almost hysterically, mopped at his forehead with a wet handkerchief. "I thought you were dead!" he said simply. Kerry Blane moved his arm experimentally, felt broken bones grate in an exquisite wave of pain. He fought back the nausea, gazed about the cabin, realized the ship lay on its side. "Maybe I am," he said ruefully. "No man could live through that crash." Splinter moved away, sat down tiredly on the edge of a bunk. He shook he swung about. "Everything is more or less okay," he said. "The board will have to be rewired, but nothing else seems to be damaged so that repairs are needed." Splinter looked up from his task of bandaging his leg. "What caused the crash?" he asked. "One minute, everything was all right the next, Blooey!" he swore monotonously and bitterly for a moment. "Those gol-damned pills you been taking caused the crash!" he roared. "One of them broke and shorted out the control board." He scowled at the incredulous Splinter. "By the three tails of a Martian sand-pup, I ought to cram the rest of them down your throat, boxes and all!" you'll bind a splint about my arm, we'll see what we can do about righting the ship." Splinter nodded, opened the medical locker, worked with tape and "Let's take a look outside, maybe set up the Zelta guns. Can't tell but damage done by the crash, evaluating the situation with a practiced gaze. He nodded slowly, retraced his steps, and stood looking at the "Won't be any trouble at all to lift the ship," he called. "After rewiring the board, we'll turn the ship with an underjet, swing it himself, carrying the two Zelta guns. out-stretched toward the defective weapon. Splinter gaped at the gun in his hands, held it out wordlessly. "The crash must have broken something," Kerry Blane said slowly. Splinter shook his head. "There's only one moving part," he said, "and that's the force gate on the firing stud."

<question>:
Why don't the Zelta guns work?

<options>:
A They are powered by the sun, which is not visible on Venus
B They were never loaded with ammunition
C They are defective models
D They were broken in the crash

<answer>:

A