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

<passage>:
beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard. they all have come from his own ship. He was then out of long habit confirmed the And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits "Wait!" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and seemed to be in pain cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty, needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved death. He said, musing: "This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this female is perhaps not quite mute." "Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?" Hatcher hesitated. "No," he said at last. "The male is responding well. Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died he !" is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with A space-ax? Or the old-fashioned child's rocking-chair, the the objects were more or less familiar. Even the child's chair—why, he'd had one more or less like that himself, long before he was old enough to go to school. But what were they doing here? ventilators, he thought Of course, the thing might not be operating. antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, may contain food. excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on various errands, quivered and shook a little yet they were the calmest "Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth. After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman. "Incredible—but it's true enough," he said. "I'd better report. Watch him," he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all The supervising council rocked with excitement. "You're sure?" demanded one of the councilmen. "Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while." The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It was not really a waste of time for him with the organs he had left in "Stop fidgeting," commanded the council leader abruptly. "Hatcher, you he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. "We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey for him—" actually, what he said was more like, —"and tried to guess his needs and we're frightening him half to death. We can't were intelligent." "Yes, sir. But not in our way." "But in way, and you must learn that way. I know." One lobster-claw shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself in an admonitory gesture. "You want time. But we don't have time, Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses team has just turned in a most alarming report." "Have they secured a subject?" Hatcher demanded jealously. The councillor paused. "Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing." There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members drifting about him. Finally the councillor said, "I speak for all of us, I think. If the Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do everything you can to establish communication with your subject." "—is no greater," said the councillor, "than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies now ." Hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily. It was just like the council to put the screws on they had a reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he of kelp it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day. He returned quickly to the room. His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all. Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of fleeing again. But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their existence to their enemies— The call was urgent he knew his assistant well. Obviously something was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to him for feeding they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had just taken.... "Now!" cried the assistant. "Look!" Hatcher studied him frostily his patience was not, after all, endless. "No matter," he said at last. "Bring the other one in." And then, in a completely different mood, "We may need him badly. We may be in the process of killing our first one now." "Killing him, Hatcher?" Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like puppies dislodged from suck. "Council's orders," he said. "We've got to himself. "God bless," he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that But it seemed to take them so long.... Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—" he swallowed and went on—"I'd estimate I am something more than five and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down. for that matter, had the suit been designed to operate in a corrosive medium. All in all it was time for him to do something. been brought here never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could, do next all those questions could recede into the background of his it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them. evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been

<question>:
Why is the supervising council worried about the Old Ones?

<options>:
A The Old Ones have captured one of their probers.
B The Old Ones are not happy with the kind of science Hatcher is conducting.
C The Old Ones need Hatcher’s data on the human specimen.
D The Old Ones must be given a human tribute soon.

<answer>:

A