in The Ballad of Beta 2, Joneny a student of galactic anthropology, is given the assignment of finding the meaning behind the ballad of a starship lost centuries before. in Delaney's hands, Joneny's routine research project becomes a perilous quest of miraculous knowledge. Empire State is the story of comet Joe, the cat-bodied star wanderer who meets, in his travels the lump, a half alien, half machine Ni Thai Lee the suicidal poet of the Stars, the strange multiplex consciousness called Jewel.. and the race of beings upon whose salvation rested the fate of civilization.