Balshazzar's Serpent — Jack L. Chalker

ON A GALACTIC MISSION FROM GOD

When the wormholes mysteriously failed and the Great Silence fell across a third of humanity's interstellar civilization, it was up to the Church to tie together what remained. As had happened long before, during the Middle Ages, faith kept hope alive in a new Dark Age for mankind.

Ishmael Hand, one of the Church's "Prophets" or cyborg scouts, comes across a system with a gas giant and three habitable moons, matching the description of the fabled star system of the Three Kings, an El Dorado long sought by prospectors across the galaxy. Like most Prophets, Hand is not completely sane; he disappears after his final message-which does not include the location of the system.

Centuries later, Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship The Mountain, brings the Word to a* lost colony of farmers on an uncharted world, and discovers that saving their souls is the least of his problems. A stranded crew of space pirates has terrorized the peaceful villagers for decades. Now their captain holds Woodward's crew hostage as well. And he wants The Mountain....