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

<passage>:
They weren't human. They were something more—and something less—they were, The Starship the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed "About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution. Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts. But something had happened to the exploration party fifteen years back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check up. glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was completely hidden by the fog. There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to originally. "Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are the kids!" Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that moved there. He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them. Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together. Then the mists cleared. Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets. Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The up speed. The other two followed. surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived "Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to kids. But it was too late to go back. The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog. against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster on another before heading back. makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had been overcome by the aliens. It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own. explorers went out in desperation to find what they could the terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to But how could primitives do what these must have done? squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship. They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what? For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up its head. It was the golden comet of a captain. well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain." Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend. "How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high. The kids of the exploring party.... as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off giving the gist of it to Jane. "It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men. They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy "And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never know." Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength. The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the

<question>:
Who were the horde members?

<options>:
A Angry aliens
B Aliens pretending to be Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party
C Lonely aliens
D Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party

<answer>:

D