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

<passage>:
[115] THE HILLS OF HOME “Normality” is a myth we're all a little neurotic, and the vanished, leaving only the stillness of the dusk and the lonely cry of shore birds. phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of victims borne into [116] The sergeant's voice cut through the pre-dawn darkness. “Oh, three hundred, Colonel.... Briefing in thirty minutes.” Kimball tried to see him in the black gloom. He hadn’t been asleep. It been remembering. “All right, Sergeant,” he said. “Coming up.” long a road, he thought, from then to now. Then he stopped smiling and turned away from the window. It hadn’t been an easy path and what was coming up now was the hardest part. The goddam psychs were the toughest, always wanting him to bug out on the deal “You’re a lonely man, Colonel Kimball——” Kimball snapped on a light and looked at his watch. 0310. Zero minus one tightly, knowing that he [117] Kimball stood now in the bright glare of the briefing shack, a strange release as though these civilians couldn’t be trusted to get the sparse information given them straight without his help, given grudgingly and without expression. [118] Kimball listened, only half aware of what was being said. He watched the On the dais nearby, listening to the PRO, but watching Kimball, sat Steinhart, the team analyst. Kimball returned his steady gaze thinking: aim. What could Steinhart know of longing? No, he thought, I’m not being fair. Steinhart was only doing his job. The big clock on the back wall of the briefing shack said three fifty-five. Zero minus one hour and five minutes. Kimball looked around the room at the pale faces, the open mouths. What have I to do with you now, he thought? command car with Kimball. Chance or design? Kimball wondered. The Kimball thought: He’s pale skinned and very blond. What is it that he vaguely into the rumbling night. That’s what it was. Odd that he should have forgotten. How many rocket pilots, he wondered, were weaned on Kimball had had to give them up because of the flight. Kimball caught “I didn’t try to kill the assignment for you, Kim,” the psych said. “It doesn’t matter now.” “No, I suppose not.” “You just didn’t think I was the man for the job.” “Your record is good all the way. You know that,” Steinhart [119] said. “It’s just some of the things——” Kimball said: “I talked too much.” “You wouldn’t think my secret life was so dangerous, would you,” the Colonel said smiling. “You were married, Kim. What happened?” “More therapy?” “I’d like to know. This is for me.” Kimball shrugged. “It didn’t work. She was a fine girl—but she finally told me it was no go. ‘You don’t live here’ was the way she put it.” expect——?” “That isn’t what she meant. You know that.” “Yes,” the psych said slowly. “I know that.” They rode in silence, across the dark Base, between the concrete sheds Kimball, swathed in plastic, a fantastic figure not of earth, watched that.” “Thanks.” Vaguely, as though from across a deep and widening gulf. “What will you do?” “You know the answers as well as I,” the Colonel said impatiently. “Set up the camp and wait for the next rocket. If it comes.” “In two years.” “In two years,” the plastic figure said. Didn’t he know that it didn’t matter? He glanced at his watch. Zero minus fifty-six minutes. “Kim,” Steinhart said slowly. “There’s something you should know about. Something you really should be prepared for.” clinically. Natural under the circumstances? Or neurosis building up already? “Our tests showed you to be a schizoid—well-compensated, of course. You know there’s no such thing as a normal human being. We all Kimball turned to regard the psych coolly . you know?” The analyst flushed. “No.” “I didn’t think so.” “You lived pretty much in your mind when you were a child,” child.” [120] Kimball was watching the sky again. about the psychology of space-flight, Kim——” Silence. The rumble of the tires on the packed sand of the road, the murmur of the command car’s engine, spinning oilily, and lit by tiny sunbright flashes deep in the hollows of the hot metal. Kimmy saw the girls before they saw him. In their new, low waisted They were his sisters, Rose and Margaret. Older than he at fifteen and seventeen. But they walked by the river and into danger. Behind him he could hear the rustling sound of the Plant Men as the evening breeze came up. “Kimm-eeeee—” They were calling him. In the deepening dusk their voices carried far He stood very still, listening to his sisters talking, letting their “He always wanders off just at dinnertime and then we have to find him——” “Playing with that old faucet—” Mimicry. “‘My rad-ium pis-tol——’” “Cracked—just cracked. Oh, where IS he, anyway? Kimmm-eee, you AN-swer!” looked at his sisters with dismay. They weren’t really his sisters. They shifting light of the two moons. [121] “Kimmmm—eeee Mom’s going to be mad at you! Answer us!” If only Tars Tarkas would come now. If only the great Green Jeddak would “Kimmy! You come down here this instant!” alone. The plastic sac contained him, fed him and the rocket, silent now, coursed through the airless deep like a questing thought. Time was measured by the ticking of the telemeters and the timers, but Kimball slept insulated and complete. And he dreamed. as he remembered them through the eyes of a nine-year-old—— And his mother, tall and shadowy, standing on the porch of the rented cottage and saying exasperatedly: “ Why do you run off by yourself, Kimmy? I worry about you so—— ” And his sisters: “ What is reality, Kimmy? ” The hours stretched into days, the days into months. Time wasn’t. Time was a deep night and a starshot void. And dreams. He awoke seldom. His tasks were simple. The plastic sac and the tender care of the ship were more real than the routine jobs of telemetering information back to the Base across the empty miles, across the rim of She was right, of course. He [122] wasn’t of earth. Never had been. My love is in the sky, he thought, filled with an immense satisfaction. And time slipped by, the weeks into months the sun dwindled and earth was gone. All around him lay the stunning star-dusted night. He lay curled in the plastic womb when the ship turned. He awoke sluggishly and dragged himself into awareness. “I’ve changed,” he thought aloud. “My face is younger I feel different.” training. Ponderously, the ship settled into the iron sand slowly, the internal fires died. Kimball stood in the control room, his heart pounding. Slowly, the ports Strange monstrous men on fantastic war-mounts, long spears and The voice was thin and distant on the icy wind. Kimball knew that voice. or die. They were the hills of home. Transcriber’s Note and Errata 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. The original page numbers from the magazine have been preserved. The following errors have been corrected:

<question>:
What is the age difference between Kimball and his oldest sister?

<options>:
A 9 years
B 15 years
C 17 years
D 8 years

<answer>:

D