input: Text: (A) Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is nearly 400 lightyears away from his ship. (B) Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is too far from his ship to ever be rescued. (C) Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is nearly 500 light years away from his ship. (D) Because the radio transmits only a bit slower than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is only 500 light years away from his ship. THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION BY FREDERICK POHL Out in the great gas cloud of the Orion Nebula McCray found an ally—and a foe! His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared. As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings were made every hour of the long flight. He had read off the azimuth angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the locking mechanism visually. It was only a personal quaintness; he had done it a thousand times. And while he was looking at Betelgeuse, Rigel and Saiph... it happened. The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his
  Question: What is the meaning of the lag between Herell’s radio and the Jodrell Bank? 
  Answer:
output: Because the radio transmits faster than the speed of light, the lag indicates Herrell is nearly 500 light years away from his ship.