SOURCE: Star Born (1957) by Andre Norton

DESCRIPTION: "...Late afternoon faded into the long summer twilight and still Sssuri kept on. As yet they had come across no traces of Those Others. Here were none of the domed farm buildings, the monorail tracks, the other relics one could find about Homeport. This wide-open land could have been always a wilderness, left to the animals of Astra for their own..." (Star Born by Andre Norton)

NOTES: Astra is a moonless planet many light years from Earth, where a group of scientists fled in a sleep-ship. (See The Star Are Ours for that tale.) Those who fled the evil Pax of Earth found a world populated by the remnants of another war, mainly the weird and evil Those Others and their genetically altered slaves, The Free Folk, and the vicious dog-like Pack. Natural creatures include the Duocorns, the Flying-Dragons, the Hoppers, the Moth Birds, the Night Runners and the Snake-Devils.

HISTORY: One of Norton's favorite themes is mental ability vs. technology and this novel is no different. Most of the animals on Astra have telepathic ability, including the transplanted humans who have lived there for five or six generations. Norton always favors mental ability over gizmos.