(i) In "This Earth Of Hours," the culminating story of the Galactic Cluster trilogy, there is a telepathic Central Empire.
(ii) A different central civilization is unnamed in The Star Dwellers, referred to as the Heart Stars in "A Dusk Of Idols" and self-identified as the Hegemony of Malis in Mission To The Heart Stars.
(iii) The existence of such an empire is suspected in ...And All The Stars A Stage but, if it exists, it could be (i) or (ii).
The Hegemony would be a perfect recurring villain for a series but Blish used it only to make a couple of points about the nature of society and civilization and then turned his attention to other issues. He has been described as a careful writer, another example being that the sequel to Black Easter could have been a mere riot of demons throughout the world. Instead, Blish thought through the philosophical implications of his fictional premises, then wrote a different kind of outcome.
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