The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino & George Zebrowski

Author:Charles Pellegrino & George Zebrowski [Pellegrino, Charles & Zebrowski, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780380770267
Amazon: 0380770261
Goodreads: 190678
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1995-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

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The Cat swung around Saturn, whiskers extended into a dry, surprisingly narrow band of pebbles, ice, and soot. The research station deep in Saturn’s Rings had a company name and a number, but no one ever used them. Everyone simply called it the Cat, because its long wire whiskers reached out into the electrostatic field of the Rings and by induction drew enough electrical current to run the small habitat. The station itself, only sixty meters long, was composed of two oppositely rotating cylinders embedded in a large chunk of rock that had once belonged to the Rings.

It was here, one Saturday morning, that Jesus and Buddha listened to the death cry of Ceres, and then, along with most of the other fifty-three researchers and technicians of the Cat, drifted away to their small private quarters to absorb the shock of this latest blow.

Unlike the Cerans, most of the Cat’s workers had not brought their families with them. Even if they had been surrounded by their families, it would have been small comfort against the fear that the Ceran fate, or something much like it, awaited them all. They now looked with a strange envy at those of their childless colleagues who had their wives or husbands with them to share the end that would surely come, and who did not have to live each day with the knowledge that their wives, husbands, children, and lovers were all gone. In their grief they did not consider that even the single members of the station had lost parents, siblings, and friends.

The Buddha had anticipated a fatal reprogramming such as that which had overtaken Ceres. So together with his Nazarene friend he had built a replica of an ancient TRS-80 computer, limited to only 4K of memory, and this was what they connected to the Cat’s ”ears,” making doubly and triply sure that there was no line of access to any other computer.

The two men, both now pushing fifty, had never thought of themselves as Jesus and Buddha, even though their creche father had openly discussed the history of the genetic materials from which they had been cloned. Buddha’s tooth from the Temple in Sri Lanka, and a few surviving bone fragments from an ancient golden chest, had been enough to re-create the two individuals. That much was certain; but whether they were Buddha and Jesus could never be an absolute certainty. Good enough, but not guaranteed, because there was no way to check the chain of physical evidence across the centuries. Teeth and bones were not great rarities. No one could ever have been tried for murder on the hearsay basis of their authenticity. Faith still held its vague domain.

Justin and Joshua were the names they chose for themselves when the pressures of life on Earth grew too great and it became necessary for them to hide in the Rings of Saturn.

Although he had, over the years, embraced the role of doubting Saint Thomas and gravitated toward a robust

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