As Noss learns their language and begins communicating with them, Paris shares stories of Voyager with her. When he notices that she likes Tuvok, he encourages his friend to pursue his mutual feelings for her. However, Tuvok remembers his schooling with the Vulcan master. He was taught that love is the most dangerous emotion, and that all emotions should be suppressed.

Back on Voyager, the ship is almost pulled into the sinkhole. When Janeway realizes the shuttle must have succumbed to it, she prepares to send in a multispatial probe to investigate. Suddenly, a vessel approaches, and they are hailed by Yost. He informs them that eleven of his ships have been lost in the distortion, and it will be sealed the next day. Chakotay locates the shuttle's distress signal, but he also finds that Tuvok and Paris are experiencing a temporal differential. A day to Voyager could mean weeks or months to them. In addition, the planet's gravitational distress is increasing, and the sinkhole is on the verge of collapsing.

After Tuvok and Paris are ambushed by the scavenger aliens, Noss lovingly tends to Tuvok's wounds. When she kisses him, he stoically rebukes her advances and hurts her feelings. Later, Tuvok tries to explain to Paris that his time with the Vulcan master trained him to ignore his illogical emotions. Meanwhile, Torres modifies the probe into a transporter relay and manages to send a communication signal to Paris and Tuvok's distress beacon. They receive the transmission telling them a transporter beam will be sent in 30 minutes, which is a little over two days in the differential. As they wait for their rescue, aliens surround them.

Tuvok and Paris are barely able to fend off the photon grenades of the aliens before Voyager's transporter relay beams them to the ship. Noss is taken to her homeworld, but before saying good-bye, Tuvok employs a Vulcan mind-meld to show her the feelings buried deep inside him.