A distress call leads the crew to Nandi, a smuggler who raised Dal, and a crystal heist goes wrong.
The episode's on-screen title is First Con-tact. The crew answers a distress signal from Nandi, a Ferengi smuggler who raised Dal, whose ship carries a cloaking device. She offers to share the technology, powered by the Protostar's chimerium crystals, if they help her steal a valuable remalite crystal from an unexplored planet. Janeway warns that the plan violates the Prime Directive, but the crew, tempted by a cloak that could hide them from the Diviner, goes ahead with the theft.
Once they see the damage the theft does to the planet, they return the crystal, and Nandi slips away with their chimerium. The story gives the crew its first hard lesson in why Starfleet forbids interfering with other worlds, and it shows Dal that the people from his past do not share the ideals he is learning. Nandi's betrayal carries into the next episode, in which she tells the Diviner where to find the ship. Diandra Pendleton-Thompson wrote the episode.