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

<passage>:
It would mean instant victory—but for whom? In the dream I was swimming in a river of white fire and the dream went looking. "How far is it?" I asked him. "It ain't far. Mile, mile and a quarter." "Pretty big place, I guess." He didn't answer. We went through a warehousing district, swung left along the cyclone fence with a locked gate. "A buck ten," my driver said. fading out again.... "I hope so," he said. "A man like you—you and me—" he winked. "After sunrise and forget you ever saw me." "Hold on," I said. "I'll tell you. Recorders going?" I didn't wait for an answer—not with a fifteen-minute transmission lag. I plowed on: " I finished talking and flopped back, waiting for Kayle's reply. On the "—your report. I won't mince words. They're wondering at your role in the disaster. How does it happen that you alone survived?" the lifeboat, with no recollection of how you got there. warning and without mercy. You were sent out to investigate the possibility of—what's that term you use?—hyper-cortical invasion. You pass the patrol line. the risk." "What do I do now?" I stormed. "Go into orbit and eat pills and hope you think of something? I need a doctor!" what he thought was the right thing. And I'd have to go along and I tried to gather my wits and think my way through the situation. I earlier. The thoughts I was having weren't brilliant, but they were mine, all mine.... what had happened. I lay back, cleared my mind of extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on the trigger word that would key an auto-hypnotic sequence.... surface into a dreamworld of vague phantasmagoric figures milling in through into the vividly hallucinatory third level, where images of The immense orderly confusion of the basic memory level lay before As the eye instantaneously detects a flicker of motion amid an infinity of static detail, so my inner eye perceived the subtle traces of the " " " " It is elusive, Master! It wriggles like a gorm-worm in the eating A part of my mind watched as the memory unreeled. I listened to the against the intruding stimuli—then yielded under the relentless thrust the way. I went on, felt ghostly flames whipping at me—and then the " " Impossible! Do you forget all my teachings? Cling, though you expend the last filament of your life-force! " are instantaneous and total, my monitoring basic personality fraction passage, to leave me unaware of its tampering—at a conscious level. Hesitantly, I felt for the immaterial fabric of the continuum, warping stifling the outcry, invaded the fetid blackness and grappled the Not pausing to rest, I followed up, probed along my channel of contact, tracing patterns, scanning the flaccid Gool mind.... rim, feeding, each monstrous shape heaving against its neighbors for a smaller creatures labored over strange devices. These, my host's memory cluster—those who remained of a once-great race—at a single feeding trough. They would spread out across a galaxy—and beyond. A timeless time passed. I wandered among patterns of white light and fared along strange ways examining the shapes and colors of the I paused at last, scanning a multi-ordinal structure of pattern within pattern I followed through its logic-sequence Matter across space. concept is too complex to try to describe in words. You'll have to take my word for it. I can build it, though, using standard components, plus an infinite-area antenna and a moebius-wound coil—and a few other for the trip with sessions on the encephaloscope, setting up the "Z four-oh-two, I am reading your IFF. Decelerate at 1.8 gee preparatory to picking up approach orbit...." The screen went on droning out instructions. I fed them into the miles distant, aboard the patrol vessel. There was a brief flurry of keys, spoke into his microphone: "As you were, Z four-oh-two. Continue on present course. At Oh-nineteen seconds, pick up planetary for re-entry and let-down." I blanked out the man's recollection of what had happened, caught his picking you up on channel forty-three, for re-entry and let-down." There was a long pause. Then: "Z four-oh-two, countermand DEW Line clearance! Repeat, clearance countermanded! Emergency course change to standard hyperbolic code ninety-eight. Do not attempt re-entry. Repeat: do not attempt re-entry!" of defense. A few more minutes' grace would have helped. I'd play it dumb, and hope for a little luck. "Planetary, Z four-oh-two here. Say, I'm afraid I missed part of that, fellows. I'm a little banged up—I guess I switched frequencies on you. What was that after 'pick up channel forty-three'...?" "Four-oh-two, sheer off there! You're not cleared for re-entry!" For an hour I rode the long orbit down, fending off attack after disorientation as the escape capsule separated from the sinking Kayle's face appeared. "Don't fight it, Granthan," he croaked. "You penetrated the planetary defenses—God knows how. I—" "Later," I snapped. "How about calling off your dogs now? And send somebody out here to pick me up, before I add sea-sickness to my other complaints." "We have you pinpointed," Kayle cut in. "It's no use fighting it, Granthan." "Goodbye, Granthan. Try to understand...." I flipped the switch, sat gripping the couch, my stomach rising with each heave of the floating escape capsule. I had perhaps five minutes. through the cluster of minds. "— missile on course do right, baby. That's it, right in the slot. " I would have a few minutes' stay of execution now. pilot, then leaned back and felt outward with my mind for the next It was dark in the trainyard. I moved along the tracks in a stumbling walk. Just a few more minutes, I was telling myself. A few more minutes and you can lie down ... rest.... The shadowed bulk of a box car loomed up, its open door a blacker along the weathered car, caught me. There was a startled exclamation. confused murmur of thought, a random intrusion of impressions from the city all around. It was hard, too hard. I had to sleep— fraction to set as a guard, a part of my mind to stay awake and warn have finished me—and the hapless fisherman—right then. We rode out a Now I'd had my sleep. I had to start getting ready for the next act of I lay back, waiting for the train to slow for a town. I wasn't unduly the hills, squirrel hunting, bottle of whiskey.... " carelessly. "When'd you git so all-fired hungry all of a sudden?" "Put it in a bag. Quick." "Look who's getting bossy—" around that counter!" She filled the bag, took a pencil from behind her ear. "That'll be one eighty-five. Cash." up and started out. watched from the platform. A rattle passed down the line and the train I was discovering that it wasn't necessary to hold tight control over every move of a subject. Once given the impulse to act, he would rationalize his behavior, fill in the details—and never know that the I drank the water first, ate a sandwich, then lit a cigarette and lay Orleans in another twelve hours. The first step of my plan included a but that was tomorrow. That could wait. started limping toward a few car lights visible half a mile away. It Through the drugs, I could feel my pulse throbbing in my various his thoughts. It was as though my mind, having learned the trick of

<question>:
What was the passage of time over the course of the story?

<options>:
A Days
B Months
C Hours
D Weeks

<answer>:

A