As they are leaving, Deety and Zeb rescue Jacob from a heated argument he is having with another faculty member before a fight breaks out.

Zeb flies to Elko, Nevada, the state being the only one to allow people to get married 24 hours a day with no waiting period or blood test.

Thus begins the series of adventures that the four embark upon as they travel in the Gay Deceiver, which is equipped with the professor's "continua" device and armed by the Australian Defence Force.

An attempt to visit Barsoom takes them to an apparently different version of Mars, seemingly under the colonial rule of the British and Russian Empires, but near the end of the novel, Heinlein's recurring character Lazarus Long hints that they had traveled to Barsoom and that its "colonial" status was an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians: ...

Unless invited, you are likely to find a Potemkin Village illusion tailored to your subconscious...In the novel, the biblical number of the beast turns out to be not 666 but

Jack Kirwan wrote in National Review that the novel is "about two men and two women in a time machine safari through this and other universes.

[2] Sue K. Hurwitz wrote in her review for the School Library Journal that it is "a catalog of Heinlein's sins as an author; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly right wing, and excessively verbose" and commentary that the book's ending was "a devastating parody of SF conventions—will have genre addicts rolling on the floor.

"[4] Greg Costikyan reviewed The Number of the Beast in Ares Magazine #5 and commented: "No one writes like Heinlein, and what is a disappointment from him would be a smashing success from anyone else.

[7] In the remainder of The Pursuit of the Pankera, the characters visit fictional universes, primarily Barsoom, Oz, and the world of E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman series.