The low point arrives anyway.

Periapsis was already too low. The thermosphere was already puffed. Starling hits air that is still “space” on a poster and still matter in real life. The window blooms a pale orange around the rim. The ship shudders like a truck on a cattle grate.

Mira flies what can be flown. She does not narrate. Okonkwo calls temperatures. Jax holds the laptop like a small animal. The killer whale sticker is lit by the glow of a planet that has decided to participate.

You skip. That is the word they will use: an atmospheric skip, a stone on a lake, except the lake is sky and the stone is a classroom. Then the lake grabs harder. Training said people black out. You are not shown a movie of that. The next true thing is a recovery ship, a blanket, and Mira counting heads with her voice not quite steady.

Nobody is missing. The research cruise is. Earth has you back early, the long way.

THE END

What you learned: periapsis is the low point, and air there is not a shield. A burn while tumbling, a burn in the wrong direction, a burn at the wrong place on the oval, or no burn at all when the low point is already in the air—any of those lets the sky become a runway you did not schedule.