The young crew has just discovered the transporter and tested it on Murf, when the ship receives a distress call. The actual caller turns out to be a Ferengi named Nandi, the woman who raised Dal. Nandi proposes a deal to the crew. She would give them a Klingon cloaking device in exchange for their help to acquire remalite crystals from a planetary civilization that has not yet been contacted from outside their world. Janeway quotes the Prime Directive to Dal, but although he has doubts and he knows Nandi would cheat the inhabitants, he decides it would be just a diplomatic exchange. After the Protostar has landed on the planet, the away team gets caught in a sand storm. Gwyn figures out the harmonics of the storm and programs her tricorder to calm it down. A structure emerges from the sand, inside which the away team finds the crystals, which the inhabitants use to transform matter. Nandi offers a worthless Ferengi spit plate in exchange for a crystal. When the aliens refuse, she rips off the crystals, which destabilizes the building. While the rest of the away team hurry to put the crystals back in place, Nandi runs away with one of them. Dal pursues Nandi, while his friends return to the Protostar. Dal struggles with Nandi, who reveals that she didn't lose Dal because he was kidnapped but because she sold him. Nandi decloaks her ship, the "Damsel", and escapes with the crystal, as well as with the Protostar's supply of chimerium that she secretly beamed over. But thanks to the comm badge that Dal attached to the crystal, the crew can beam it back to the rightful owners. As Janeway is lecturing the crew about the Prime Directive, the angry Nandi decides to contact the Diviner to receive a reward for revealing the whereabouts of the Protostar.

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