input: Text: RETIEF OF THE RED-TAPE MOUNTAIN by KEITH LAUMER Retief knew the importance of sealed orders—and the need to keep them that way! "It's true," Consul Passwyn said, "I requested assignment as principal officer at a small post. But I had in mind one of those charming resort worlds, with only an occasional visa problem, or perhaps a distressed spaceman or two a year. Instead, I'm zoo-keeper to these confounded settlers. And not for one world, mind you, but eight!" He stared glumly at Vice-Consul Retief. "Still," Retief said, "it gives an opportunity to travel—" "Travel!" the consul barked. "I hate travel. Here in this backwater system particularly—" He paused, blinked at Retief and cleared his throat. "Not that a bit of travel isn't an excellent thing for a junior officer. Marvelous experience." He turned to the wall-screen and pressed a button. A system triagram appeared: eight luminous green dots arranged around a larger disk representing the primary. He picked up a
  Question: How did Retief narrowly escape having his skiff destroyed on the way down to the planet?
  
   (A) Retief encountered a nuclear missile fired by the Jax. The skiff was well-armed, and he took it down with a lucky shot.
   (B) The mail pilot of the main ship was in such a hurry to get rid of him that he did not fully seal the skiff's airlock, and Retief worried all the way to the planet's surface that he would run out of air. He didn't, though.
   (C) He escaped being blown up by a nuclear weapon by heading straight at it at such a high rate of speed that by the time its sensors detected him and triggered the firing sequence, he was on his way past, while the blast was focused in the other direction.
   (D) As he took evasive action to get away from an atomic missile fired by the colonists, he almost ran into some space junk from a destroyed ship, but he avoided that, too.
  Answer:
output: He escaped being blown up by a nuclear weapon by heading straight at it at such a high rate of speed that by the time its sensors detected him and triggered the firing sequence, he was on his way past, while the blast was focused in the other direction.