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

<passage>:
The captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. Behind him somebody made a choked noise, the only sound in the stunned hush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully "Very well." The tone was like a shrug. The voice went on in its language that was quite intelligible, but alien-sounding with the the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. That was the Doppler effect as the star's radial velocity changed relative to the changes that nine hundred years had wrought. "Perhaps, if you realize the ship had decelerated. , launched toward Arcturus and the Quest III drove on its way once more, lashed by despair toward the speed of light, leaving behind the mockery of yet another solitary and lifeless luminary unaccompanied by worlds where men might dwell. They had grown time," said the voice lightly. "When he saw that it was hopeless, he sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of pause. "The vision connection is ready." nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years. crew. It was a subdued excitement But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun." A short voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might lie at the long journey's end. For the the the Sun, whose rays had warmed their lives' beginning. "It is enough for you to know that you must die." the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot A feverish buzz arose the captain gestured for silence and went on, identified it—no more." each other's hands, kissed, shouted, wept. For the present their fears were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. —and nothing will be the same. It won't be the same world we left, the world we knew and fitted in...." worry. Things may have changed—but we'll manage." But his face had hardened against registering the gnawing of that same doubtful fear within him. He let his arm fall. "I'd better get up to the bridge. He left her and began to climb the stairway again. Someone switched off the lights, and a charmed whisper ran through the big room as the before we get that far." hesitantly. "What kind of a reception do you suppose we'll get?" returned successful, or if they returned at all. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. It's civilization's continuity to the point where our expedition has been the He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred Earth years—though physically he was only forty now, ten years older than when the voyage had begun. That was the foreshortening along the time axis of a space ship approaching the speed of light. Weeks and months had passed for the His own voice came from the speaker, fresher, more vibrant and confident than he knew it was now. "One light-day out from Procyon, the thirty-third day by ship's time since leaving Earth. "It is cheering to note that the crew seems only more resolute. We go on to Capella its spectrum, so like our own Sun's, beckons. If success comes there, a century will have passed before we can return to Earth friends, relatives, all the generation that launched the Quest will be long since dead. Nevertheless we go on. Our generation's dream, humanity's dream, lives in us and in the ship forever...." back, an ironic smile touching his lips. That fervent idealism seemed remote and foreign to him now. The fanfares of departure must still have been ringing in his ears. He rose, slipped the record back in its niche and picked out another, later, one. "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 energy stores that went into them, left Earth's economy drained and exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless "Looked at historically, such super-human outbursts of energy are the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and therefore signalize the beginning of the end. Population can be its decline with the knowledge that its race went onward and upward, expanding limitlessly into the Universe.... "Hopeless, unless we find planets!" was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments. He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four years old. The recorded voice sounded weary, yet alive with a strange longing.... along the Milky Way. of aging too greatly. It would be a one-way journey—even if enough fuel remained, there would be little point in returning to Earth after to the sociodynamic predictions made then, our civilization—if the other expeditions failed also—will have reached a dangerously unstable phase, and before we can get back it may have collapsed completely from overpopulation. "Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... "It doesn't matter. Today I gave orders to swing the ship." him. A couple of lines of poetry came into his head, as he read them once in translation from the ancient English.... to alter that. He wondered if there would still be a quiet stream and a green shady place beside it where a death-weary man, relieved at last of Suddenly a faint cushioned jar went through the great ship to falter one moment in flight. then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all these years he could still respond quickly and smoothly to a crisis. short buzzes and repeat, ringing through all the great length of the sixth now." Repeated blows quivered the fifty feet long, but they move fast. The detectors hardly had time to "Something's happened," he judged with deadly twelve-year-old seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, "Can I go with you, engines still steadily braking its interstellar velocity. the 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 would have felt nothing at all of was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to The come what might, this was journey's end—perhaps in a more violent and final way than had been anticipated. All around the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart. and speed—but detector-beam echoes gave the distance, and likewise, by the Doppler method, the velocity of directly receding or approaching constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That audio carrier wave that shifted through a wide range of frequencies, repeating on each the same brief recorded message: nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of only the continental outlines were clear, and "The prevailing color of the land masses, you see, is the normal ," 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 as he did so the speaker, still crackling returned and been destroyed, as you will soon be—the sooner, if you continue toward Earth." from Earth, relayed by one of the midget ships—was not very smart to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the ponderous and unswerving progress toward Earth had somehow something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, "

<question>:
What is the overall shift in tone from the start of the passage to the end of the passage?

<options>:
A From calm to frantic
B From happy to calm
C From frenzied to calm
D From depressed to hopeful

<answer>:

A