Problem with trapping SIGALRM

[Chung Kuo]

I'm having some difficulty with an alarm() situation.  Here is what I tried:

import os, sys, signal

if __name == __main__:
	try:
		signal.alarm(60)
		os.system('/usr/games/quill')
	except:
		os.system('killall quill')

This fails when the alarm goes off because the except doesn't catch the
SIGALRM.  If I add a signal(signal.SIGALRM, handler) the handler of course
catches the SIGALRM, but doesn't process it until AFTER the os.system
call (usr/games/quill) completes!  (The docs seem to imply this, that 
handlers only operate between Python atomic operations.)

Can anyone say what I've got wrong here or suggest a way to do what I
am trying to do?

Thanks in advance.