Ishmael
Barbara Hambly
 Spock travels back to the time and place of Here Come the Brides, a television program loosely based upon Asa Mercer's efforts to bring civilization to 1860s Seattle by importing the marriageable Mercer Girls from the war-ravaged East Coast of the United States. The show's premise was that eldest brother, Jason Bolt, bet his entire logging operation that he could persuade one hundred marriageable ladies to come to Seattle, and that all of them would be married or engaged within one year. Much of the dramatic and comic tension revolved around the efforts of their benefactor Aaron Stemple to thwart the deal and take control of the Bolts' holdings. Spock discovers a Klingon plot to destroy the Federation by killing Aaron Stemple before Stemple could thwart an attempted 19th-century alien invasion of Earth. During most of the story, Spock has lost his memory and is cared for by Stemple, who passes him off as his nephew "Ishmael" and helps him hide his alien origins. Spock identifies one of the women in the story as likely to be an ancestress of his.