Jean-Luc Picard. His name has gone down in legend as the captain of the <I>U.S.S. Stargazer</i> and two starships Enterprise. But the nine years of his life leading up to the inaugural mission of the <I>U.S.S. EnterpriseTM</i> to Farpoint Station have remained a mystery -- until now, as Picard's lost era is finally unearthed. <P> Following the loss of the Stargazer and the brutal court-martial that resulted, Picard no longer sees a future for himself in Starfleet. Turning to his other love, archaeology, he embarks on a quest to rediscover a buried age of ancient galactic history...and awakens a living survivor of that era: a striking, mysterious woman frozen in time since before the rise of Earth's dinosaurs. But this powerful immortal has a secret of cataclysmic proportions, and her plans will take Picard -- aided along the way by a brilliant but naive android, an insightful Betazoid, and an enigmatic El-Aurian -- to the heights of passion, the depths of betrayal, and the farthest reaches of explored space.