Temperature

Where the M25, now a screaming frozen circle, intersects with the M40 to Oxfordshire, police were clustered around in ever-increasing quantities. Since Crowley crossed the divide, half an hour earlier, their number had doubled. On the M40 side, anyway. No one in London was getting out.

In addition to the police there were also approximately two hundred others standing around, and inspecting the M25 through binoculars. They included representatives from her Majesty's Army, the Bomb Disposal Squad, M 15, M 16, the Special Branch, and the CIA. There was also a man selling hot dogs.

Everybody was cold and wet, and puzzled, and irritable, with the exception of one police officer,
who was cold, wet, puzzled, irritable, and exasperated.

"Look. I don't care if you believe me or not," he sighed, "all I'm telling you is what I saw. It was an old car, a Rolls, or a Bentley, one of those flash vintage jobs, and it made it over the bridge."

One of the senior army technicians interrupted. "It can't have done. According to our instruments the temperature above the M25 is somewhere in excess of seven hundred degrees centigrade."

"Or a hundred and forty degrees below," added his assistant.

". . . or a hundred and forty degrees below zero," agreed the senior technician. "There does appear to be some confusion on that score, although I think we can safely attribute it to mechanical error of some kind, [This was true. There wasn't a thermometer on earth that could have been persuaded to register both 700° C and -140° C at the same time; which was the correct temperature.] but the fact remains that we can't even get a helicopter directly over the M25 without winding up with Helicopter McNuggets. How on earth can you tell me that a vintage car drove over it unharmed?"

"I didn't say it drove over it unharmed," corrected the policeman, who was thinking seriously about leaving the Metropolitan Police and going into business with his brother, who was resigning his job with the Electricity Board, and was going to start breeding chickens. "It burst into flames. It just kept on going."

***

Good Omens - Saturday