Swamped

You slip over near Yvonne. This is the first chance you've had to talk about something that's been on your mind.

"Pubert mentioned a lodestone, and you seemed to have an idea about it," you say. "Mind sharing?"

She pulls out a compass.

"See this? It's how we found the gateway back in your base. My crew dug it up some time ago, but we didn't know what to make of it. You know how a compass works?"

"Uh. Not really," you admit. "Something about pointing north?"

"Normally, yeah. It's magnetism. The needle's made from lodestone and, usually, that means it tries to point north. We were thrown off by this for a long time because it seemed to point wherever it damned well pleased."

So that's it.

"Then the Wanderers want to make their own compass? They've got something to do with the gateways?"

"That's my best guess," she says, shrugging. "But I couldn't tell you if they have some idea how to fix this, or if they're planning to make it worse. And we're probably not going to get a chance to ask them about it, unless we run into them after the sandstorm."

"They looked like they were chasing off a tunneler," you say. "Oh, yeah, another thing. In the battle, I saw what they look like, and... it's weird. They're like machines, but they have the face of greblings - at least, that one did. Don't suppose that's something your camp would know anything about?"

She pauses for a while.

"Probably not," she says. "Of course, we do have a good number of artifacts we haven't identified yet, so who knows? Something might relate to them."

You feel like she's hiding something. On the other hand, it sounds like you'll get farther on asking questions about this when you're at camp.

You thank her for your time, and check in on the girls.

River seems to be upset - well, not unusually so compared to her general mood, but you haven't seen her like this around Starling before. You get the sense that something's wrong.

And that's when you remember that Starling had something to say to you before this whole mess happened.

"Starling," you say. "What is it you were going to tell me, back in the fortress?"

She pauses.

"It's for your ears only," she says. "And I don't think we can really get any privacy in here for the moment."

For your ears only...?

Could it be something about Jackson? You never managed to sort that business out, but what if he recognized her and made contact?

There's also a chance she stumbled onto something about the spies Razor was worried about. She might be having a crisis of trust, and you're the only one she's willing to talk to about it.

You can't think of what else she might want to talk to you specifically about. If it's sensitive information of some kind, she could talk to Rider; and if it were just an ordinary problem, she wouldn't hide it from Rivers.

It would be nice to know more, but how could you get her to tell you without giving too much away to everyone else?