HANG HEAD, VANDAL! By MARK CLIFTON Illustrated by FINLAY _Arrogantly, they set out to destroy a planet for the good of Man--Man who is stuffed with straw where his heart and mind and soul should be._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories April 1962 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] On our abandoned Martian landing field there hangs a man's discarded spacesuit, suspended from the desensitized prongs of a Come-to-me tower. It is stuffed with straw filched, no doubt, from packing cases which brought out so many more delicate, sensitive, precision instruments than we take back. None knows which of our departing crew hanged the spacesuit there, nor exactly what he meant in the act. A scarecrow to frighten all others away? More likely a mere Kilroy-was-here symbol; defacing initials irresistably carved in a priceless, ancient work of art, saying, "I am too shoddy a specimen to create anything of worth, but I can deface. And this proves I, too, have been." Or was it symbolic suicide; a sense of guilt so overpowering that man has hanged himself in effigy upon the scene of his crime? Captain Leyton saw it there on the morning of final departure; saw it, and felt a sudden flush of his usual stern discipline surge within him; all but formed the harsh command to take that thing down at once: Find the one who hanged it there: Bring him to me! The anger--the command. Died together. Unspoken. Something in the pose of the stuffed effigy hanging there must have got down through to the diminishing person inside the ever thickening rind of a commander. The forlorn sadness, the dejection; and yes, he too must have felt the shame, the guilt, which overwhelmed us all. Whether the helmet had fallen forward of its own weight because the vandal had been careless in stuffing it with too little straw to hold its head erect--vandals being characteristically futile even in their vandalism--or whether, instead of supposed vandal, this was the talent of a consummate artist moulding steel and rubber, plastic and straw into an expression of how we all felt: no matter, the result was there. The Captain did not command the effigy be taken down. No others offered, nor asked if that might be his wish--not even the ubiquitous Ensign perpetually bucking for approval. So on an abandoned Martian landing field there hangs a discarded spacesuit--the image of man stuffed with straw; with straw where heart, and mind, and soul was intended to be. * * * * * At the time it seemed a most logical solution to an almost impossible problem.