"Todo o tempo do mundo" , uma pequena história de Arthur C. Clarke , publicado pela primeira vez em Startling Stories , julho de 1952 , disponível em Arquivo da Internet . Alguma de essas capas parecem familiares?
Trecho:
"You can call this a personal generator," she said. "With it strapped about your arm, you are invincible. You can come and go without hindrance — you can steal everything on that list and bring it to me before one of the guards in the Museum has blinked an eyelid. When you have finished, you can be miles away before you switch off the field and step back into the normal world.
"Now listen carefully, and do exactly what I say. The field has a radius of about seven feet, so you must keep at least that distance from any other person. Secondly, you must not switch it off again until you have completed your task and I have given you your payment. This is most important. Now, the plan I have worked out is this. . . ."
O final:
Alone! Ashton held the gleaming bracelet before his eyes, hypnotized by its intricate workmanship and by the powers it concealed. He had made a bargain, and he must keep it. He could live out the full span of his life — at the cost of an isolation no other man had ever known. If he switched off the field, the last seconds of history would tick inexorably away.
Seconds? Indeed, there was less time than that. For he knew that the bomb must already have exploded.
He sat down on the edge of the pavement and began to think. There was no need to panic; he must take things calmly, without hysteria. After all, he had plenty of time.
All the time in the world.