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

<passage>:
not." The captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. Earth set itself grimly to meet them with Behind him somebody made a choked noise, the only sound in the stunned hush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully into its field. "Suppose we settle this argument about humanity," said Knof Llud They had seen many such stars come near out of the galaxy's glittering most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun." A short But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the Quest III's crew. It was a subdued excitement men and women, they the same racial characteristics possessed by those aboard the the oncoming star, and there were wide-eyed children who had been born in the ship and had never seen a planet. The grownups talked in low voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years. captain, came slowly down the narrow the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot out from its original cramped quarters. Now the interstellar ship was he met identified it—no more." But this time the clamor was not to be settled. People pressed round Lesra?" She drew an uncertain breath and released it in a faint sigh. "I don't shrewdly, of Knof Jr. and Delza, who save from pictures could not remember sunlit skies or grassy fields or woods in summer.... He said, with a touch of tolerant amusement, "What did you think might Captain Llud found Navigator Gwar Den looking as smug as the cat Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, "Probably we'll be intercepted Llud shook his head slowly. "Who knows? We don't know whether any of the other Quests all. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. It's possible—not likely, though—that something has happened to break civilization's continuity to the point where our expedition has been forgotten altogether." notify him as soon as Earth's surface features became clear then he sat idle, alone with his thoughts. The ship's automatic mechanisms had scant need of tending everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained. than when the voyage had begun. That was the foreshortening along the "One light-day out from Procyon, the thirty-third day by ship's time the size of Jupiter, and like Jupiter utterly unfit to support a colony. "Our hopes were dashed—and I think all of us, even remembering the friends, relatives, all the generation that launched the Quest ships remote and foreign to him now. The fanfares of departure must still that system, too, is devoid of planets. "We face the unpleasant realization that what was feared is probably true—that worlds such as the Sun's are a rare accident, and that we may complete our search without finding even one new Earth. "It makes no difference, of course we cannot betray the plan.... This may be man's last chance of escaping his pitiful limitation to exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless and transcendent effort—the effort of Egypt that built the pyramids, or the war efforts of the nations in the last great conflicts of the futile as pyramid-building, less practical than orgies of slaughter to reduce pressure.... In any case, it would be impossible to transport very many people to other stars already. "But what are a few thousand stars in a galaxy of billions? We have there in a volume of space where one finds a few dozen in the Sun's neighborhood there if anywhere must circle the planets we seek! But more than forty thousand years. By then our civilization certainly, and perhaps the human race itself, would have perished from memory. "That was why the planners limited our voyage, and those of the other Quests Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a decree five thousand years old, whose makers are dead and which may be forgotten back there? "Would the crew be willing? I don't know—some of them still show signs of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths such collisions were rare to the vanishing point. No harm could have been done. The the vessel. Llud snatched up the receiver with the speed of a scalded "Sound the alarm. Emergency stations." He had said it automatically, interstellar ship. Knowing that Gwar Den was still there, he said, navigator said, obviously striving for calm, "They're light craft, not he had heard his father's words. "Something's happened," he judged with deadly twelve-year-old seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, "Can I go with you, huh, Dad?" Their faces were set, scared, uncomprehending. The To a man, the ship's responsible officers were already on the bridge, most of them breathless. To a man they looked appeal at Captain Knof "Well?" he snapped. "What are they doing?" Gwar Den spoke. "There are thirteen of them out there now, sir, and The captain stared into the black star-strewn depths of a vision screen "If they had anything heavier," surmised the captain, "they'd have unlimbered it by now. They're out to get us. But at this rate, they can't touch us as long as our power lasts—or until they bring up some bigger stuff." The mild shocks went on—whether from projectiles or energy-charges, would be hard to find out and it didn't matter whatever was hitting the the ship transmitted and rendered harmless. The effect was as if the vessel and the impact—and the ship, in obedience to the law of equal and opposite deflection was negligible. The people in the Quest III would have felt nothing at all of the vicious onslaught being hurled against them, save that their wait for us. But why on Earth—" "That," said the captain grimly, "is what we have to find out. Why—on come what might, this was journey's end—perhaps interstellar ship bore no offensive weapons—but suddenly on one of the the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart. Knof Jr. whooped ecstatically and then subsided warily, but no one was origin. They had seen no recognizable life in the part of the galaxy they had explored, but one of the other Quests might have encountered and been traced home by some unhuman race that was greedy and able to constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That "We'll have reached Earth before then," Gwar Den said hopefully. Smiles splintered the ice of tension. Captain Llud said, "Maybe you've "Who are you? What do you want? We are the interstellar expedition Quest III ...." And so on, identifying themselves and protesting that they were unarmed and peaceful, that there must be some mistake, and querying again, "Who are you ?" There was no answer. The ship drove on, its fuel trickling away under his ship. you can answer some of these riddles before—" " We know who you are ," interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, " him once more. He snapped, "But who are you?" and the words blended absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape. as he did so the speaker, still crackling with space static, said, "It may interest you to know that you are the from Earth, relayed by one of the midget ships—was not very smart as sure of itself as it sounded he deduced from the fact it had deigned to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the Quest III's something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, " Are you

<question>:
Who did the ship’s crew expect would meet them on arrival?

<options>:
A The other Quest ships
B Warships on attack
C A parade
D Maybe nobody

<answer>:

D