"Something's wrong!" she said.
"Now, now, now, don't worry," Bill chattered, helping her up. "I'll fix it."
"That pointer says," said Molly, pointing while her eyes got wider and wider.
"Look," implored Bill feverishly. "Why don't you go ahead and get your sewing room set up. Take Is. Take Was. I'll fix it!"
Molly stepped to the port. "Oh!" she said, stepping back. "It's—it's shimmery violet. Nothing else. Bill—I'm sick—"
He caught her, holding her helplessly. He should let her drop and fix the time-machine. Instead he carried her to the bedroom, got her under the covers, chafed her wrists. Her eyes opened.
"I'll fix it!" he said desperately. He went back to the instrument room. He didn't dare look through the port, as Molly had. He tried to put the mechanism in reverse, but the pointer stayed where it was. He rustled around in the parts cabinet and found a tube to replace the exploded one. It promptly blew out. The pointer stayed where it was, millions of years per second. How many millions of years? It didn't say.
He'd only wanted to go a hundred years into the future. He'd wanted to play safe. And then a tube blew out.
The truth came slowly. Then he sat back from the machine, staring at it. Then he started giggling. He was still giggling when he went into the bedroom and woke Molly up.
"Molly," he shouted. "It's Unk. Don't you get it? This is his way of getting back at me. He was nuts. He geared the machine so the control tube blew out. We can't go back. All we can do is keep going ahead—toward the heat-death!"