Reloading the saved game seems to have worked. Thankfully, I had one just a couple of tunrs back. This will teach me to keep the autosave turned on. Thanks for all the advice.
I seem to recall some players have problems with their CD drives, causing occasional crashes. The solution was to turn off the in-game music option, which plays music from the CD if there is one in the drive. It happens on battles because those prompt reading a battle music track. Not sure if that's what this is or not.