jumping from the cliff from where he watches Marygay's spaceship lift off. In the end he decides that he has given the military his life, and will not give them his death as well. Volume 3: Major Mandella The third volume concerns itself mainly with the difficulties of a reluctant leader (Mandella) being the officer for a group of soldiers totally estranged from his version of humanity - still human, but genetically engineered and both created and born in vitro. Involving more combat (especially in space) than the other volumes, it also resolves the end of the Terran-Tauran war. Heading out on the Masaryk (a large Terran cruiser named after the Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk of the 20th century), Mandella has now reached a level of command he feels unsuited for due to his remaining pacifist leanings. Also, his troops – genetically engineered individuals born many hundreds of years after his own 21st century – are distrustful of him and his heterosexual nature (Earth having long since made homosexuality the norm, originally for population control), which they perceive as barbaric. After over 350 years of absolute travel time, the ship arrives near the portal planet Sade 138. The infantry force that Mandella commands builds a military base on the surface and settles in. However, boredom soon starts, and tensions come to a head when one of the soldiers attacks Mandella with a knife during a court martial hearing. Mandella survives by virtue of quick reflexes and long training - but is now faced with the difficulty of making a command decision: Should he execute the soldier for attacking his officer, or can he show leniency without losing the remaining respect of his charges? He is saved from the hard decision by an 'accident' during medical treatment of the soldier (it is implied that his medical officer, Diana Alsever, took the decision into her own hands) and then by a Tauran attack on the solar system. The Taurans are soon engaged in a running battle with the Terran space forces, while the infantry watches helplessly from their planetary bunkers. With the deadly ballet of space combat unfolding, the grim realities of war are exemplified by a computer screen shown calculating the Terran survival chances, underlined by the note: "These figures assume that you are willing to sacrifice all your fighters." The fighters are manned. One of the two Tauran cruisers