That's the most likely explanation. Unfortunately, there's no way to get the GC back if s/he has disappeared, short of restoring a backup of the savegame file (if you have one). V1.1 has has fixed all of the major bugs, so if you decide to abandon your current game and start over, I'd recommend downloading and installing it first. You can get the new version from here: http://www.ldw.com/zips/vs1_1.zip