Forerunner: The Second Venture

Kirkus Reviews Veteran Norton's second novel about the Forerunners (Forerunner, 1981, paperback), aliens of vast scientific and technological accomplishments who vanished before humans began to colonize the galaxy. Black-skinned, silver-haired Simsa is the only living Forerunner; having been raised in the vicious, dog-eat-dog "Burrows" by humans, she thinks like a human--but deep in her mind lurks a powerful Forerunner Elder One who comes to the fore whenever danger threatens. She also has a tool-weapon activated by thought. So, believing that her nemesis, the human investigator Thom, intends to vivisect her, Simsa flees in a spaceship's lifeboat--and lands on a dull planet inhabited by some insipid aliens. After various unexciting show more adventures (she rescues Thom from a crash, then sends him off with some false memories), she stumbles upon an old Forerunner hide-out, passes an ancient test of initiation, and finds that her human and Elder One selves have fused. And finally she comes to trust Thom and his alien-reptile associate (it was all a misunderstanding, you see). Skimpy on plot, with murky motivations, colorless characters, and stiff, unwieldy writing: altogether a dreary little nonentity.
(Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1985)
Sisma, the beggar whose mind held the ancient legacy of the Forerunners, had escaped her claw-and-fang life in the Burrows, with the off-planet Rangers. But the Rangers wanted her in captivity for study by historians.

So Sisma and Zass, her winged hunting zorsal, escaped again, taking a stolen lifeboat to an unknown world. A desert where shapeshifting creatures lurked beneath the sand, where Zass and Sisma's hunting skills, psychic powers, and strange link to the Elder One in Sisma's mind were their only survival weapons.

Then Thom, the Ranger who saved--and perhaps betrayed--Sisma, crashed on the planet. Together, they realized that a mysterious, mind-threatening and possibly monstrous power had found them...

And only the Elder One could help show less