" HOW LOVELY YOUR CATS ARE!" DAVID

34. Kate: " How lovely your cats are!" David: "___________________"Select the most suitable response to fill in the blank.A. Thank you. It is nice of you to say so. B. I love them, too.C. Really? They are. D. Can you say it again?VII. Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicatethe correct answer to each of the questions 35 to 44: The Alaska pipeline starts at the frozen edge of the Arctic Ocean. It stretches southward across thelargest and northernmost state in the United States, ending at a remote ice-free seaport village nearly 800miles from where it begins. It is massive in size and extremely complicated to operate. The steel pipecrosses windswept plains and endless miles of delicate tundra that tops the frozen ground. It weavesthrough crooked canyons, climbs sheer mountains, plunges over rocky crags, makes its way through thickforests, and passes over or under hundreds of rivers and streams. The pipe is 4 feet in diameter, and up to2 million barrels (or 84 million gallons) of crude oil can be pumped through it daily. Resting on H-shaped steel racks called "bents," long sections of the pipeline follow a zigzagcourse high above the frozen earth. Other long sections drop out of sight beneath spongy or rocky groundand return to the surface later on. The pattern of the pipeline's up-and- down route is determined by theoften harsh demands of the arctic and subarctic climate, the tortuous lay of the land, and the variedcompositions of soil, rock, or permafrost (permanently frozen ground). A little more than half of thepipeline is elevated above the ground. The remainder is buried anywhere from 3 to 12 feet, depending largely upon the type of terrainand the properties of the soil. One of the largest in the world, the pipeline cost approximately $8 billionand is by far the biggest and most expensive construction project ever undertaken by private industry. Infact, no single business could raise that much money, so eight major oil companies formed a consortiumin order to share the costs. Each company controlled oil rights to particular shares of land in the oilfields and paid into the pipeline-construction fund according to the size of its holdings. Today, despiteenormous problems of climate, supply shortages, equipment breakdowns, labor disagreements,treacherous terrain, a certain amount of mismanagement, and even theft, the Alaska pipeline has beencompleted and is operating.