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

<passage>:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The dark star passed, bringing with it eternal night and turning history into incredible myth in a single generation! the thing. the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you? Even at that, I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the Earth had gone away from the Sun, and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify, now that the Earth didn't have the Sun's protection. into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last It's Pa who is the chief guardian of the fire, though. I always think the whole place, but he can't—building's too earthquake-twisted, and to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside. You see, when the Earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so everywhere, and then down on Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time. First to drop out was the carbon dioxide—when you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top of laughingly says, whatever that is. comes crawling toward the Nest, just like an animal snuffing for cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a that's part of the cold and hates all warmth and wants to destroy the us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go, Harry!" knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up him. Habit, I guess, and then there's no denying that this time I was a anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the Sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taking us farther out all the time. I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and I followed Pa out on the balcony. I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark star captured the Earth. Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold, other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and he whipped around without warning, as if to take some peeping thing it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and treat each other right or wrong, when without warning there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned out sun, and upsets everything. water!—and people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. First off they thought it would hit the Sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China, because people thought the star would hit on the other side. But then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth. Most of the other planets were on the other side of the Sun and didn't get involved. The Sun and the newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while—pulling it this way and that, like two dogs growling over a bone, Pa described it this time—and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The Sun got a consolation prize, though. At the last minute he managed to hold on to the Moon. That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods, twenty times worse than anything before. It was also the time of the Big Jerk, as Pa me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it, when I've been sitting too far from the fire. You see, the dark star was going through space faster than the Sun, and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away. The Big Jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the dark star. But it was buildings toppled, oceans slopped over, swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket and the air got so thin in spots that they were getting knocked down by the Big Jerk and maybe their bones were scared or brave or crazy or stunned, or all four, but he's sort of then and in the Big Jerk. So he had to start over and throw the Nest lay his hands on. any time to keep an eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the Big Freeze that followed—followed very quick, you know, both because the dark star was pulling us away very fast and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug-of-war, so that the nights were ten old nights long. In one of the rooms, an old man sits stiff in a chair, with an arm and a leg in splints. In another, a man and woman are huddled together in toward the door, as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth and food. They're all still and stiff as statues, of course, but just like life. dark star to get us. Or maybe, I thought, both ideas might be true. Something coming down lady and the moving, starlike light. The frozen folk with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, snuffing their way, following the heat to the "So I asked myself then," he said, "what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up, I asked myself—and all of a sudden I got the answer." Again I heard the noise, louder this time, a kind of uncertain, "Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold," Pa was saying. "The earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't the handle of the hammer beside him. survivors. No good trying long-distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the Earth. Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harwell and Tanna Tuva. And now they'd been giving fire go out." Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the Nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a "survival school." Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo. Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a matter, not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the kind of. "It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers." the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on,

<question>:
What is the Big Jerk?

<options>:
A The event that changed the orbit of Earth to a new star
B The time period before the Earth started orbiting the dark star
C A term for the sun that Pa uses to entertain the kids
D The process of the Earth and moon leaving the solar system

<answer>:

A