I felt the bump when we at last settled onto the seabed. Around me, red lights blinked angrily until I shut them off. Nothing to be done now. Nothing but gentle quietness and the occasional ping of an over-stressed hull built for keeping pressure in, not out.

There was a curious silence. Not the vacuum emptiness when running silent between stars, but a softer, rounded silence. More peaceful, somehow, like the sea was welcoming its newest acquisition. Only the hardiest, recessed hull cameras were working now, but I managed to pull up a visual feed from one of the fore sensor clusters. What a view it was, too.

Blue, the most beautiful blue, faded into blackness at the infinite range. Everything seemed to have slowed down. Sand billowed around our impact zone, settling patiently back into a crater. Debris fell in slow patterns around, the larger pieces throwing up their own little clouds of sand too.

Not a bad place to rest a while, I thought. Not bad at all.