[Book 75] Catseye by Andre Norton (1961)
In the far off future, good ten years after the War of the Two Sectors, many displaced extrasolar colonists are still living in a giant refugee camp called the 'Dipple' located just outside the luxury port Tikil on the world Korwar, trapped by politics, poverty, and indifference.
Korwar itself is in many ways a conservation world. Outside the few cities it's been left relatively untouched by human civilization. While a Council rules the highly populated urban areas, it's vast Wild areas, whole continents of mountains, plains, forests etc., are controlled by the Clan and its guardian Rangers. The rugged Rangers who patrol the Wild also guard the deadly alien ruins of Ruhkarv, site of an unexplained madness afflicting the xeno-archeologists to all killed one another some years earlier in a disaster that has been largely hush-hushed.
Young Troy Horan is one such displaced person, having grown up on the frontier world of Norden, but is now orphaned with few prospects and little chance to return home. Things start to look up, as Troy's animal handling skills earns him a chance for casual labour in a pet-store catering to the rich and powerful in Tikil. It's mysterious owner, Kyger, deals only with the most rare and exotic animals, everything from fussel hawks to terran cats.
And then Troy stumbles onto a secret that has him escaping with a set of misfit exotic terran animals into the wilderness of Korwar, and into the heart of the deadly heart of Ruhkarv...
Another enjoyable yarn by a rather unconventional old-school SF writer. Alice May Norton legally changed her name to the more androgynous Andre Norton, and had a history of SF writing that spanned an unbelievable 7 decades. Her works have been long a staple in Public and school library collections, and in many ways were considered YA material before there was such a term.
I often think of her as the SF literary equivalent of Agatha Christie and her cosy-mysteries: familiar themes (e.g. coming of age stories, mistrust of authority), story elements (e.g. psionic powers, animal companions, flitters, blasters, the Thieve's Guild), plots (e.g. misfit underdogs winning out against secret plots, chases across and through alien ruins), but still highly enjoyable with reshuffling of all these story features.
::B::