A spaceship full of refugees tries to settle on a planet with friendly aliens. It does not work out

Question

They are approaching the planet, hoping it will be a good place for them to settle. One of the refugees is telepathic. He tells the captain that he has been talking telepathically with people already on the planet. The captain asks what the people are like. The telepath says they are his friends, they go to work, go to church, raise families, nice folks.

So they send people down to the planet. The people living there are bipedal but look very different from humans. They are friendly, welcoming, happy to share their world with the refugee humans.

Each inhabited geographical area has its own god, its own temple and the aliens use their god's name as their surname.

The humans have been happily living alongside the aliens for a while. An alien leader tells them it is time for them to choose a surname.

The humans say they already have surnames but the alien says their surnames don't mean anything. The humans have to choose a god to worship. The alien tells them he would be happy and honoured if they would choose to follow his god.

The humans decide it would not be so terrible to add an additional surname to their names as this planet is a lovely place to live.

A human is taken to visit a temple. He meets a 'god.' a being far, far more intelligent and powerful than humans.

The aliens they befriended are domestic animals belonging to the superbeings. The refugees are made to leave the planet and look elsewhere for a home.

There are other events in the book both before and after this memorable incident.

Answer 1

This is Robert A. Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children.

The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants

domesticated by indescribable godlike natives. When Earthly humans prove resistant to similar domestication, they are expelled from the planet.

A long-lived group of people, the “Howard Families”, steal a prototype starship to try to find a place where they can live peacefully and safely, instead of under threat and outside the Covenant because the rest of humanity believes that it’s not just luck of the genetic draw, but that they have a secret way of extending life.

This is part of his future history, and Lazarus Long plays a not-insignificant part in the story.