No. 280

Although dogs and chimps had traditionally been used to test man’s space faring vessels, it was a squirrel that was the first earth-creature to make it to Mars.

Nobody was a hundred percent clear on why a squirrel had been chosen. It was whispered in the corridors of the International Space Agency that a squirrel had simply been the first animal acquired by the test department and had therefore been pressed into service due to a certain laziness on the part of the technicians. This rumor was neither confirmed nor denied by those in charge.

Now the animal, unimaginatively named Number One, was in the final stages of descent to the Red Planet. The microphones placed in the capsule to monitor Number One sent back the sounds of vigorous chittering. The camera had failed to come online, and so Mission Control could only guess at the exact emotional state of their rodent subject.

When all the lights on the monitoring consoles turned green, the humans knew that the landing had been successful. A man in the back row keyed his radio and gave the order to release Number One into the modified exercise ball that was to be his primary means of transport across the Martian world.

The history books, somewhat erroneously, would record the squirrel’s name as “Skippy”.