Você leu uma parte do Tom Godwin 's série Ragnarok . Se fosse realmente uma "história curta" que você leu, então teria que ter sido a novela "Too Soon to Die " que originalmente apareceu em Revista Venture Science Fiction Março de 1957 (disponível no Arquivo da Internet ) e foi reimpresso nas antologias Ficção Científica A a Z e Space Wars . Aqui está a sinopse editorial da publicação da revista original:
The monstrous Gerns had left them to die—
left them on a hell-world of gigantic wolf-like prowlers,
of 1.5 gravity that dragged at aching bodies, and seasons
that withered life or froze it. It was unthinkable that
they could strike back at the Gerns 200 lightyears away—
it was impossible that they could even survive . . . impossible
A novela foi expandida em um romance chamado Os sobreviventes (título alternativo Prisão Espacial ) que está disponível em < href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22549"> Projeto Gutenberg . (Houve também uma sequela chamada The Space Barbarians .) < em> The Survivors tem sua própria página da Wikipedia , e neste site foi o assunto de esta antiga pergunta e este .
Na verdade eu acho que você deve ter lido o romance ( The Survivors aka Space Prison de Tom Godwin), porque a aliança com o os predadores e as criaturas telepáticas semelhantes a esquilos não ocorrem na novela, são do romance.
Os "animais do tipo gato-de-sabre" são chamados de predadores :
They were things that might have been half wolf, half tiger; each of them three hundred pounds of incredible ferocity with eyes blazing like yellow fire in their white-fanged tiger-wolf faces.
A aliança com os predadores:
The golden light of the new day shone on them, on his daughter and grandson and the prowler pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for the future.
His own role was nearing its end but he had seen the people of Ragnarok conquer their environment in so far as Big Winter would ever let it be conquered. The last generation was being born, the generation that would meet the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally. Perhaps it would be Johnny who led them on that day, as the omen seemed to prophesy.
He was the son of a line of leaders, born to a mother who had fought and killed a unicorn. He had gone hungry to share what little he had with the young of Ragnarok's most proud and savage species and Fenrir and Sigyn would fight beside him on the day he led the forces of the hell-world in the battle with the Gerns who thought they were gods.
Os bichos telepáticos são chamados de zombadores :
They emerged into full view; six little animals the size of squirrels, each of them a different color. They walked on short hind legs like miniature bears and the dark eyes in the bear-chipmunk faces were fixed on him with intense interest.
[. . . .]
"They're telepathic between one another," he said. "The yellow one there repeated what the one you spoke to heard you say and it repeated what the yellow one heard me say. It has to be telepathy between them."
[. . . .]
Their intelligence was surprising and they seemed to be partially receptive to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt had written. By the end of the fifteenth year their training had reached such a stage of perfection that a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspoken thought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, they would transmit the message to whichever mocker their master's thought directed. Presumably all mockers received the message but only the mocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud.