Cole and Mel visit a retreat for bringing romance back into a marriage, on the trail of a telepathically paired set of Orsian convicts. pretending to be a married couples poses problems when the two have to pretend to be intimate, while they try to track the paired convicts, who have figured out a way to scramble Cole's attempts to track them. Suspects abound, but Cole manages to track them down, only to be knocked out and find out the whole thing was a set up so that the two convicts could get into the Watchfire Bar and release Cole's imprisoned lifeforce/aliens. With Mel's help Cole manages to escape and thwart the two just before they can succeed. The two resolve that they can't be distracted by romance again.

After bringing in another escapee after some tests, Cole determines a way to zap all of the remaining prisoners off Earth and back to Sartop at the same time by remote. However, one of the currently held lifeforces is contaminating the process, and he and Mel desperately try to determine which one before the wormhole closes. Things get complicated when Cole is zapped by an energy burst and loses his memory. He gets it back with some prodding from Mel, and they identify the ""contaminated"" lifeforce just in time and get rid of every remaining prisoner on Earth. Cole goes back, his mission completed. But then he returns, realizing his home is on Earth with Mel. But as they celebrate, we see the display screen show all the fugitive prisoners reappearing all over the U.S.