There is a page "More than you ever wanted to know about the Number 42"...but it seems to be unavailable right now (to see what's being missed search the same title with the Number 17). Anyway, here's something intriguing I found:

From the modern viewpoint, Alhirra subsequently diminishes the
attractiveness of his thought by then introducing his pet obsessions -
cryptozoology and numerology. He believed that the overseers of this vast
computation (the "Archons" or "Sysadmins", in occult jargon), although
originating in another dimension ("the spaces between"), had incarnated in
a form visible to us - as *mice*. (Hence the book's title.) He believed
that their centre of operations was "an alien city in a cold land to the
north" - presumably the Antarctic. Alhirra had several visions of this
city from space, perhaps while scrying (these visions later formed the basis
of the "Piri Reis" map); he described the city's physical environment, and
its flora and fauna, in considerable detail, and it is for this reason that
the NecroMicon is also sometimes known as "The Penguin Opus".

Alhirra also attached great significance to the number 42, suggesting
that this number somehow lay at the heart of the planetary entelechy, but
never explaining why. It is a frequent observation that 42 is twice 21,
the number of characters in John-D's Enochian alphabet, but otherwise no
one know what "Bill" meant by this. Colin Low has written that Alhirra's
scrying technique involved the use of "an incense composed of olibanum,
storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish", and it has been surmised that the
NecroMicon was not meant to be understood except by individuals who had
ingested certain rare psychedelic plants. (For more on this line of
thought, see ethnopharmacologist Terence McKenna's article on the Voynich
manuscript in Issue #7 of "Gnosis" magazine, and the scene in Wilson and
Shea's "Illuminatus!" in which Weishaupt attempts to fathom the NecroMicon.)

Alhirra himself may have been unhinged by his exploration of
consciousness. He is said to have written that to free oneself from "the
click of the mouse" (an unclear phrase, apparently referring to the means
of their alleged control) one must become "like that cat, dwelling in the
midpoint between Something and Nothing, which is neither alive nor dead."
Perhaps this is similar to the sentiment that one should be "in the world,
but not of it." In any case, Alhirra is said to have met his end while
standing on a chair, literally frightened to death by his invisible
persecutors; his last words were, "Ia! Cthulhu ack-phffftagn..."

Interesting that you started this thread, Capk!

[the url's way too long, search NecroMicron, you'll find it]