“Why do you fight this war?” The alien mind howled out its war slogan—as incomprehensible as an astrologer’s jargon. - Keith Laumer

I was still alive, but that was a mere detail, subject to change. (p. 13)

Are you all right? Mellia said.
"It's nothing a month in the intensive care unit wouldn't clear up."

The last burst picked me up and threw me a thousand miles into an open grave and the mud showered down on me and a giant tombstone fell out of the sky to mark the place, but I didn’t care any more, because I was far away, in that place where the heroes and the cowards lie together with a fine impartiality, waiting for eternity to pass, slowly, like a procession of snails creeping across an endless desert toward a distant line of mountains. (p. 18)