E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction, September, 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ALARM CLOCK
By EVERETT B. COLE
Illustrated by Van Dongen
Most useful high explosives, like ammonium nitrate, are enormously violent ... once they're triggered. But they will remain seemingly inert when beaten, burned, variously punished—until the particular shock required comes along....
any years had passed since the original country rock had been broken, cut and set, to form solid pavement for the courtyard at Opertal Prison. And over those years the stones had suffered change as countless feet, scuffing and pressing against once rough edges, had smoothed the bits of rock, burnishing their surfaces until the light of the setting sun now reflected from them as from polished mosaic.
As Stan Graham crossed the wide expanse from library to cell block, his shoe soles added their small bit to the perfection of the age-old polish.