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

<passage>:
question already formed in his mind. and hares ... or was it follow the leader? Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the "We need all the good men we can get." "Where is he?" there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, " Ben looked down. The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees. a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one." tres fine, senor . I have Martian She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it? tres pretty and tres fat. She weigh almost eighty pounds, Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either." ?" Ben shook his head. He thought, comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining it, that's our business." "It is deal, monsieur ? Five dollars or twenty keelis Ben scowled. "What happens if there She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we tres bien senor ." The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices. They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator." could be us, you Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob." When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo. He was like two people, he thought. , Ben told himself. Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal. He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she ," piped the Martian boy. "A tres prisoner for half a million years. Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago. fine table. Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? Close in the shadows." legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and forgotten grandeur. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He thought, What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in about forty and he hated spacemen. His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him. Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here." suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey. Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the Odyssey's He'd sought long for that key. At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents' death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?" The guy's drunk , Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three stools down the bar. Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and held him there. "Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll Ben knew that he was dead. Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as, You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in So , Ben reflected, duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from senor ?" " Oui. n'est-ce-pas ?" "You are spacemen?" Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will Ben didn't answer. ?" Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy. " Ai-yee Martian kid, perhaps? wheel with Ben as their focal point. You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known! Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded, a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away. Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward, falling. The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised. A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with Ben's direction. Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and body overpowered him. A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?" "Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word. "You want to escape—even now?" "Yes." "You may die if you don't give yourself up." heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender at once. "Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced Better , he'd think. Getting better.... "You are better?" the kind voice asked. The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?" "Nine days." "Yes." "Why?" "Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?" Lieutenant Curtis." "How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—" "I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four, you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation. Fascinated, Ben nodded. "You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the Odyssey . "Children?" "Two. I don't know their ages." She left the room. He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side, trimmed red beard ! Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and

<question>:
From the passage, at what age can we determine that Ben decide that his future would involve being a Spaceman?

<options>:
A 5
B 25
C 10
D 16

<answer>:

A