Few more musings that may be useful or redundant depending on whether I'm the only one confused by NOTB :-)

I must have read this book over a dozen times but I still have this feeling of bewilderment at the mathy bits so I decided to sit down and try and get the mechanics of the world shifting clear. Not sure if it's totally relevant to the chat but still...

There are 6 space time co-ordinates; three space, x,y and z and three time, t, tau and teh. All are at right angles to each other. You can rotate between them or translate; which I take to mean join it at a different point on the line. Jake says there are a certain number of accessible universe; 6 to the power 6 to the power 6 but it turns out that Gay can't cope with quite that many.

The first trip that Jake and Deety made was one translation along Tau axis; world without a J.

The British and Russian colony was found by translating 10 quanta along the positive tau axis. They decided that Tau has Black hats and Zeb suggests rotating rather than translating. This gives them 15 possibles. In the middle of it all Hilda comes up with her theory about the fictional universes. They visit them starting from Mars 10 and rotating 90 degrees then decide that after each rotation they will return to Mars Zero as a safeguard. They rotate into, darkness, darkness, blinding light, stars, Pellucidar type world, Oz, blackness, Gulliver, Wonderland, stars, Big Dipper stars, King Arthur, green fire, red fog and Galactic Patrol.

Then they try Teh axis, positive and minus and after revamping Gay they manage to do 50,000 universes in a minute or so, Eventually they settle on Beulahland.

Hilda mentions that she searched tau axis looking for Barsoom and didn't find it. They decide to let Gay do a random search and meet up with Lazarus who is on Tau duration with earth prime on the positive axis; one they had never explored.

Then, they are wiped out, erased from the plot and settle down with the Longs.

I _think_ I've got it...sort of...I was hoping to pin down where the story book universes were but it seems to me they can be anywhere but not if you're looking for them on purpose. Which makes sense I guess.