t him and went home, walking the mile in a
little less than fifteen normal seconds. But he still had not
seen the face of the man.

There are advantages intellectual, monetary, and amorous in being
able to enter the accelerated state at will. It is a fox game.
One must be careful not to be caught at it, nor to break or harm
that which is in the normal state.

Vincent could always find eight or ten minutes unobserved to
accomplish the day's work. And a fifteen-minute coffee break
could turn into a fifteen-hour romp around the town.

There was this boyish pleasure in becoming a ghost: to appear and
stand motionless in front of an onrushing train and to cause the
scream of the whistle, and to be in no danger, being able to move
five or ten times as fast as the train; to enter and to sit
suddenly in the middle of a select group and see them stare, and
then disappear from the middle of them; to interfere in sports
and games, entering a prize ring and tripping, hampering, or
slugging the unliked fighter; to blue-shot down the hockey ice,
skating at fifteen hundred miles an hour and scoring dozens of
goals at either end while the people only know that something odd
is happening.

There was pleasure in being able to shatter windows by chanting
little songs, for the voice (when in the state) will be to the
world at sixty times its regular pitch, though normal to oneself.
And for this reason also he was inaudible to others.

There was fun in petty thieving and tricks. He would take a
wallet from a man's pocket and be two blocks away when the victim
turned at the feel. He would come back and stuff it into the
man's mouth as he bleated to a policeman.

He would come into the home of a lady writing a letter, snatch
up the paper and write three lines and vanish before the scream
got out of her throat.

He would take food off forks, put baby turtles and live fish into
bowls of soup between spoonfuls of the eater.

He would lash the hands of handshakers tightly together with
stout cord. He unzippered persons of both sexes when they were at
their most pompous. He changed cards from one player's hand to
another's. He removed golf balls from tees during the backswing
and left notes written large "YOU MISSED ME" pinned to the ground
with the tee.

Or he shaved mustaches and heads. Returning repeatedly to one
woman he disliked, he gradually clipped her bald and finally
gilded her pate.

With tellers counting their money, h