Time Limit in save-mode

Hello, a have this problem. I am reading some data from another server via http-conection for which I have used fsock_open..... But sometimes, it is possible, that reading is longer, than for example 5 seconds, and I want to stop this reading a return false... I found function set_time_limit, which is working only if server is not in safe-mode... But server, where is my script have to be in safe-mode... I have tried socket_set_timeout() too, but it seems, that it doesn't work (I've used a example from php.net)... Does anybody have any idea, how to solve this? I have PHP 4.1.0 (and because I am not the admin, I cannot change it...) Thank you! PJ