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

<passage>:
a little clearer. Joan, what we've got nor time is adequate, and an right?" "In effect," she said cautiously. BY JAMES BLISH Illustrated by van Dongen On the day that the Polish freighter Ludmilla laid an egg in New diving for it—not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a never going to get the answer by barge-load of shells in the harbor, along the shore it shouldn't bang said object, or shake it either. We're better equipped than the Navy was then—but we're working against a deadline." that if it found anything funny-looking which was making another million dollars. As we found out later, almost The point is this, Joan: what Ludmilla . I had better add here that we no good at all. For that matter, the all its facts backwards, entering the tale at the pay-off, working back to the hook, and winding up with a sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for Next Time. It's that a man with a feeling for to look at that lump on the screen the essence of a gamble can make a what do you do? here is a one-shot gamble identifying the egg and walked perfectly erect, not without spring despite his age. His clothing C&amp gambler as you could have taken it by design: a black double-breasted "And it's my guess that we're silk tie with a pearl stickpin just suit with a thin vertical stripe, a gray all, a black Homburg was as far from that of a barely large enough to be visible at all perfectly won't make that much difference. on the Ludmilla were defective," he said. "It seems that this York harbor, Abner Longmans Clark Cheyney, Colonel Anderton. I'll be quick because we need "What's a dump cell?" speed now. A Polish ship has dropped something out in the harbor. We don't know what it is. It may be "It's a sea lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying explosives, radioactives, anything that might act a hell-bomb, or it may be just somebody's up unexpectedly." when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being flooded while the cell's open, didn't. At least they didn't do a thorough job. Ludmilla The "It's just a lump of something, Dr. Hadamard. Can't even tell its Ludmilla laid an egg or not." know what she dropped and we "Scintillation counter?" could be a bomb—it could be anything. We're sweating everybody on board the ship now, but it's my guess that none of them know anything the whole procedure was designed to haven't any way of finding out. It "Sure, but—" "We'll worry about the buts from here on. Get us a direct line from your barge to the big board here so "Why not?" "It ain't my kind If I guess wrong—" "Then we're all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your on private enterprise and concomitant reluctance to sink federal ." were Joan and Cheyney. I suppose I should have guessed it, but it had respectively. The titles were almost is, Clark and Joan do serve in that. So—is it a bomb or ain't it? That's what's up for grabs, right?" on it but murky light, striped with The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter ... oing ... Underwater noises, shapeless and characterless. "Hello, out there in the harbor. This is CIA, Harris calling. Come in, please." crushed in his hand. Boink ... I say it's a bomb. " of crates, but so far, no egg." "Keep trying." Cheyney, looking even more like stopwatch by one of the eight clocks !" into the integrator's mouth. "What's your angle, Peter?" "The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump-cell is." "It isn't shielded at all," Anderton's Or maybe there isn't any egg." "And what's this deadline platelet counts, hematocrit and sed rates on every man." "In other words, it's a dud," Joan said. "That's right, a dud." it's a real egg or not—we can't take the chance on it's not this." "A real drop?" Anderton said. "You can't take such a gamble," he said grimly. "There are eight and "Are you trying to say that CIA "No, not exactly," I said. "The a half million lives riding on it. I right. We got word last month from our man in Gdynia that they were going to do it, and that the bomb would be on board the Ludmilla . As from Washington—so you might as well give us the hour." was dropped here. So we had our Ludmilla people in Gdynia defuse the thing after it was put on board the ship, but otherwise leave it entirely alone. "Actually, you see, your hunch was that I found nothing useful on the I found nothing but a faint while he had been searching for his International Longshoreman's Association, a racket-ridden union now formally extinct—although anyone who knew the signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days, Braun had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible function of which had come true. I don't go for tricks like and its individual dock-wallopers. For some reason, he had been amused by the brash youngster who'd barged in on him and demanded the lowdown, expect—or even suspect. Hence I was surprised to hear somebody on the docks remark that Braun was in the city over the week end. It would never have occurred in the waterfront, for he'd gone respectable with a vengeance. He was still a professional gambler, and according to what he had told the on horses, the numbers, or shady insurance deals. Nowadays what he did was called investment—mostly in real man who had almost bought the Empire State Building. (The almost when the shoestring broke.) Joan had been following his career, too, not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a meant nothing more to Joan than to Cheyney too. And perhaps it is a disease," she told me. Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction it." "I'd sooner try to crack a Timkin bearing," I said. "Braun's ten-point steel all the way through." the curtain." "That's investment," I said. always do. They have to he's sinking money in them to appease his conscience, and if they were to succeed it salving it. It's the same way with the young actresses. He's not sexually substitute." "Of course it isn't," Joan had said. "The next thing he'll do is go in for to hospitals or something like that. within the egg was buried among a lot of other Ludmilla —or did it? I kept remembering Anderton's challenge: "You eight and a half million lives riding on it—" That put it up into Braun's normal operating area, all right. The like thing or two," he said. "What's the "That I can't tell you over the old laundry. Obviously we've got to find out which—and we want back in '52? They scrabbled for them with the legal-length sheets inside them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe you to tell us." his bottom. If that even had a prayer of working, I knew, he'd have had the trains of the Hudson &amp Manhattan stopped their rumbling course from the egg. I can just figure out what it is. Remember "Yes. What's he got to do with it?" amorphous black mass, jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. "Is that operation getting you anywhere?" "Nothing's gotten us anywhere," Anderton interjected harshly. "We don't even know if that's the egg—the

<question>:
What is Ludmilla?

<options>:
A A chicken
B A city
C An American submarine
D A Polish ship

<answer>:

D