Choose from A, B, C, or D the one that best answers each of the questions in the following passage.

Every drop of water in the ocean, even in the deepest parts, responds to the forces that create the tides. No other force that affects the sea is so strong. Compared with the tides, the waves created by the wind are surface movements felt no more than a hundred fathoms below the surface. The currents also seldom involve more than the upper several hundred fathoms despite their impressive sweep.

The tides are a response of the waters of the ocean to the pull of the Moon and the more distant Sun. In theory, there is a gravitational attraction between the water and even the outermost star of the universe. In reality, however, the pull of remote stars is so slight as to be obliterated by the control of the Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Sun. Just as the Moon rises later each day by fifty minutes, on the average, so, in most places, the time of high tide is correspondingly later each day. And as the Moon waxes and wanes in its monthly cycle, so the height of the tide varies. The tidal movements are strongest when the Moon is a sliver in the sky, and when it is full. These are the highest flood tides and the lowest ebb tides of the lunar month and are called the spring tides. At these times the Sun, Moon, and Earth are nearly in line and the pull of the two heavenly bodies is added together to bring the water high on the beaches, to send its surf upward against the sea cliffs, and to draw a high tide into the harbors. Twice each month, at the quarters of the Moon, when the Sun, Moon and Earth lie at the apexes of a triangular configuration and the pull of the Sun and Moon are opposed, the moderate tidal movements called neap tides occur. Then the difference between high and low water is less than at any other time during the month.

It can be inferred from the passage that the most important factor in determining how much gravitational effect one object in space has on the tides is_________.