The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton by Mark Clifton

Author:Mark Clifton [Clifton, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2015-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

HANG HEAD, VANDAL!

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 that was filched, no doubt, from packing cases which brought out so many more delicate, sensitive, precision instruments than we will 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 irresistibly 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: an expression of guilt so overpowering that man hanged himself in effigy upon the scene of his crime?

Captain Leyton saw it there on the morning of final departure. He saw it, 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, that 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 the supposed vandal, this was the talent of a consummate artist molding 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 one offered and no one 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 ought to be.

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