Have you been wondering how brilliant scientists can send a space ship millions of miles, yet mess up something as simple as landing gear? Me too. It turns out, there is a very good reason why Philae failed to land properly. To learn the truth, read on…

 

Lah wasn’t much to look at. He knew it and everyone else did too. Three feet tall, the sort of grey you found round the dark side of the comet and completely bald. In those respects, he was identical to the rest of his extended family.

It was the fine details where he failed.

His nose was a little too large and his ears a touch on the small side. His eyes looked like they were trying to mate and his arms hung half a foot lower than the rest of the tribe.

He had been reminded of these deficiencies for much of his childhood and things hadn’t changed much since. Every time the comet span, he rose from his tiny bed deep in the rock, scratched his way out through the tunnels and onto the surface.

That’s when it began. The snide remarks, the nudges that sent him spiraling away from the comet on his bungee whilst all the others laughed. Decades had passed and still they picked on him and still they bullied him. Even the mother didn’t treat him with the same love and devotion she gave the rest.

It had gotten bad recently. In the last few years he’d started to dream of the inevitable Day of Wonder. One day soon, their tiny home would change and become a glorious meteorite. On that day, they would plunge through the atmosphere of some distant planet and life as they knew it would end.

He longed for it. He would lie in his bed, stare at the stone inches from his nose, cross all eighteen fingers and toes and pray that the next day they would find that elusive planet.

But today would be different. Because Lah was going to catch God.

The great and mighty being had arrived a few days ago and now span around their tiny home, over and over again. For the first few hours, they had stood and stared, mouths open wide in amazement. Once they realised it wasn’t going to speak to them, they went back to their work.

But Lah’s mind had started turning and when it did, wonderful things happened. They mocked him and laughed at him, but they all knew he was smarter than them. He wondered sometimes whether that wasn’t why they were so cruel.

He had stopped mentioning the automatic crane arm that they now relied on for most of the work. The crane arm he had invented. He’d stopped even thinking about the space nets that caught their food. The space nets he’d created. They knew, just as well as he, that without his expertise, they would still be grubbing around in the minerals, instead of living like little grey kings.

Nowadays, he kept quiet and kept mining. But the arrival of God had changed everything. Today he was going to show the rest of his extended and narrow-minded family they were wrong to mock him.

He slipped from his bed shelf and out into the corridor. He gave the dust shower a cursory glance of his body and pulled on his overalls. As he did every day, Lah sniffed at the drab grey material. Given more time away from mining, he could create something wonderful to wear. Something with colours.

He reached the surface, clipped on his bungee, and the father pressed a pick into his hands. He joined the others and soon found himself hacking away at the dirt grey rock of their home. Tiny flecks of stone flew off into space and he paused to watch one.

As if it knew his thoughts, it turned and turned until it brushed past God. The mighty being hung above them, its wings spread wide and shining in the light from the distant sun. In its centre, the red, flashing eyes were still staring down on them.

Did it judge them?

He had to imagine so. But what did it see? Did it see their hard work? Did it see his mind, whirring and thinking? He liked to think so. It was, after all, God, so surely it saw everything.

Lunch break came and he put down his pick with shaking hands. The time had come to enact his masterful and daring plan. He crouched, bracing his legs for the jump. His heart pounded against his tiny ribs and he rubbed his chest in a vain attempt to slow it. He could do this.

He stared up at God and everything stopped. God was changing. He came out of his crouch, mouth falling open. God was opening and inside was a creature. Small and hexagonal and covered in beautiful silvery panels, it spoke to him. That was when he realised. The mighty craft they had been watching wasn’t God.

This was God. This perfect little machine being exposed beneath the craft was the real deity. Then he realised something else.

It was going to land.

He came out of his crouch and raced back through his family, ignoring the usual sniggers and sneers. He needed to figure out where it was coming down. He unclipped as he dashed into the tunnels. He slithered to his room, pulled out his toolkit and scurried back up to the surface.

The craft was still opening. But the landing would be soon. He set up his seeing eye and got a closer look. It was even more beautiful close up and he could see fire emerging from the back of God. It was angry. Either that or it was firing a propulsion device to bring it down to the surface.

Considering the faultless hard work it had observed, Lah figured it was more likely to be readying itself for a descent. He had already tracked and recorded the orbit of God and now he set off to follow it.

The surface of his home was pitted and mountainous, rising and falling faster than his peers’ opinions of his worth, and chasing God was hard work. But it was worth it. The great being shook and came free of its craft and in that moment, he knew exactly where it would land.

Beh’s plateau. It was flat, smooth and the perfect place from which God could survey him and his family. He scrambled across the comet until he reached the plateau and got himself set. He would need to secure God the moment it touched down. He also had to be certain it couldn’t escape.

Lah stretched ties across the plateau and set up his electronic counter measures. Once he was done, he hunkered down just over the edge and waited. Sure enough, a few minutes later, God hove into view.

He couldn’t contain himself and squeaked and squeaked as the great being came closer. So shiny. So straight and neat and ordered. God came closer still. Lah paused with his finger over the button. Was he sure he wanted to do this? It felt like sacrilege, but he couldn’t stop himself. Once he’d caught God, they couldn’t look down on him, not ever again.

He thumbed the button and watched with wide eyes as the legs sprouting from beneath God halted halfway out. He’d done it. The mighty being landed on the ties and Lah held his breath.

They didn’t spring closed.

What was going on? He leapt out from hiding and began to check the tensions, but it was too late.

His eyes narrowed and he clawed the rough stone as God struck the comet and bounced off. As it sailed back into space, Lah chased it with a howl of frustration. God was leaving. God couldn’t leave, not when he was so close to finally finding his redemption.

But he was watching its flashing red lights dwindling into the blackness far above his head and there was nothing he could… he slapped his little grey head and shook it. There was something he could do. He scrabbled back to where he left his pack and pulled out his stuff.

Scraps of electronics salvaged from the space nets and tied together with chunks of clumsy solder formed the huge device he held in his hands. He opened the back and tweaked it, pulling wires out and moving them here and there. Satisfied, he slapped the back in place and switched it on. It came alive with a hum and he smiled. He could do this.

Lah twisted dials and listened with his tiny head cocked to one side. His machine made buzzes and clicks and whirrs, but through it came the unmistakable sound of circuitry, live circuitry. He tuned in on the signal and sent out a homing beacon. Sure enough, the signal changed and responded, calling back to him.

He was speaking to God.

He whooped and giggled, then stopped himself. It couldn’t land here. Everyone would know it was here and that wouldn’t work. They’d take it from him. They’d steal his secret and take God apart to see how it ticked. Lah scooped up his pack and started to run.

He dashed across the barren landscape, darting round towers of rock shorn smooth by the solar winds. He raced down canyons and through narrow defiles until he reached his secret spot. It was perfect.

He checked his machine and nodded. It was still a long way out, but it was communicating with him. He was getting other signals also. Something, or someone, was trying to communicate with it. Someone else thought they could talk to God.

He grinned, showing his little sharp teeth, and upped the power on his box of tricks. The other signal faded away and God’s voice came through loud and clear. Now he just had to wait.

It was the longest three hours of his life. Every second that passed brought God a little closer. But it was also another second that might mean someone came out looking for him. They rarely did when he went walkabout. It wasn’t like there was anywhere for him to go and when night fell, he had to be in the tunnels. But still, just the thought of it made him shiver and wrap his arms around himself.

The hours passed, agonisingly slowly, until God came into view. The red lights flickered as it came down and underneath the cliff. Lah set his machine down and stepped back, bowing and resting his forehead against the cold rock.

God landed.

Its feet hadn’t extended fully and it sat at an angle.

Lah watched God.

God watched Lah.

He was about to creep closer when God made a series of beeps and began to move. First, tiny drills emerged from beneath it and drove into the stone. Then other devices came out, sniffing the rock and flicking at it.

It all looked a little mundane. Lah watched for as long as he could before he had to race back to the cave as night fell. The night was long and he slept for little of it. The second the day bell went, he was up and racing once more across the surface of his home.

God was still there. He leant against the rock and waited until his thumping heart slowed before approaching. God was beeping quietly to itself, the red lights flashing on and off.

He spent the day with it. Sometimes he spoke to it. He told it the tales of his people. He told it their dreams and their beliefs and how he had always known that God would one day come, as it had so many years ago. He told it his own dreams, even the guilty ones that would bring his life to an end. He told it about the bullying and the mocking and how much he hated his life.

Sometimes he just watched. The drills would pop out now and then, as did the arms. The beeping went on and off. The lights flashed. It was thrilling. And slightly boring.

Perhaps it wanted something. He sneaked back into the caves and pinched some minerals from the kitchen. He tried to feed God, but there wasn’t anywhere he could put them. He ended up scattering them beneath it for the drills to grind into.

Night time came again and he sloped grudgingly back to his bed. God was hungry and he didn’t know how to feed it. God was thirsty, but what could he give it to drink? He slept better that night, but woke with no more idea of what he could do.

He was heading out once more when the father caught him.

‘Now, now, Lah, one day off is more than enough.’

‘But father—’

‘No. There is mining to be done and although you work more slowly than your brothers and sisters, still you must contribute.’

It wasn’t true. He worked just as fast as they did. He worked faster than some. But they weren’t smart like him. And they didn’t have funny, close-together eyes. He scowled, accepted the pick and went to work.

He didn’t have the chance to visit God again that day. He slowed on his way back to the tunnels, but night was falling and he couldn’t make it there and back in time. He growled and climbed reluctantly into his bed.

The next day he was up before the bell and waiting for the distant sun to crack across the pitch black of the comet. When it came he was out, clipping on his bungee and racing down towards his secret spot.

God was still there! He picked up his pace, smile finally creeping across his face. It wasn’t until he was almost there that he slowed. The smile fell and he dropped to his knees.

The red lights were gone. God was dead. Or sleeping. Perhaps it was just resting. It would wake soon. He crawled across the last few feet and sat with his back against the wall, staring at the tiny eyes in God’s side.

He waited.

The day passed and God slept on.

The next day was the same. And the next. Every morning he would leave the caves before the day bell and race to check on God and every day would be the same.

Lah had failed. Somewhere between the food and the drink, he had failed God and left it to die. He sobbed for days, inconsolable. All he could think was that if he hadn’t tried to catch God, none of this would have happened.

He had killed God.

As the days passed, he stopped sitting beside God. Instead he would climb up the cliff and sit atop it, staring up into space. God’s craft still circled his home, waiting patiently. Did it know something Lah did not? What secrets did it house inside its shell?

As time went by, the first seeds of an idea crept it. If he could just get up there…