Dark Piper — Andre Norton

The ten-planet war had ended, and Griss Lugard had come home to Beltane, the biological-experimental station in deep, deep, space. He had warned the council of the dangers of peace. The war had destroyed worlds beyond imagining, and the refugees were sure to come, unerring in their determination to have a new home at any price.

But Griss's warnings had gone unheeded. Now, deep in an uncharted region of this planet's untamed surface, a small band of survivors must face the dangers of mutant monsters running wild on an empty world gone mad....