Galactic Derelict

Travis is a smart Navajo cowboy with a super puma pet named Tigre who can talk in his mind. They find a giant broken spaceship from super old aliens in the desert, and with Apache friends Buck, Lupe, and Men-at-Arms, they fix it up and zoom to space! They fight bald bad guys, wolf monsters, and land on scary planets, using brave tricks and animal power to win big adventures and discover secret alien treasures.

In Andre Norton's 'Galactic Derelict,' set in the mid-20th century American Southwest, Navajo tracker Travis Fox is recruited by a secret U.S. government project following the discovery of X-Arth, a colossal crashed starship from a 5,000-year-old interstellar empire known as the Forerunners. Joined by his telepathically linked puma companion Tigre and a team of Apache scouts—Buck, Lupe, and Men-at-Arms—Travis explores the vessel's labyrinthine corridors, mastering its psionic controls amid psychic echoes of ancient crews dominated by the hairless 'Baldies' and their wolf-like 'Coyotes.' Launching into hyperspace, the crew crash-lands on hostile alien worlds, battling reptilian beasts, psychic overlords, and rival scavengers while unraveling a galactic conspiracy of lost colonies and enslaved races. Drawing on Native American survival lore and ingenuity, Travis navigates betrayals and moral dilemmas, forging unlikely alliances that position humanity as inheritors of a derelict cosmos, blending pulp adventure with profound cultural resonance.