Project Gutenberg's The Six Fingers of Time, by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty

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Title: The Six Fingers of Time

Author: Raphael Aloysius Lafferty

Release Date: March 16, 2010 [EBook #31663]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note

This etext was produced from the September 1960 issue of If.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Obvious printer's and
punctuation errors have been fixed. Original page numbers have
been retained.

[Illustration]

THE SIX FINGERS OF TIME

[Illustration]

_Time is money.
Time heals all wounds.
Given time,
anything is possible.
And now he had all the
time in the world!_

By R. A. LAFFERTY

Illustrated by GAUGHAN

He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of
water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the
opposite wall and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This
would have surprised him if he had been fully awake, for he had
only reached out sleepily for it.

Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a
weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the
alarm. And the low boom, when it came again, seemed to come from
the clock.

He reached out and touched it gently, but it floated off the
stand at his touch and bounced around slowly on the floor. And
when he picked it up again it had stopped, nor would shaking
start it.

He checked the electric clock in the kitchen. This also said six
o'clock, but the sweep hand did not move. In his living room the
radio clock said six, but the second hand seemed stationary.

"But the lights in both rooms work," said Vincent. "How are the
clocks stopped? Are they on a separate circuit?"

H