The shift began at twenty-two hundred UTC.
Kari arrived at the radio room at five minutes before the hour, which was the custom.
She had come from the kitchen, where she had filled the thermos and taken a slice of the bread that had been left out. The walk from the kitchen to the radio room was brief — ten metres down the main corridor — but it was the transition from the inhabited parts of the station to the working space, and she made it at the same pace every night: not hurrying, not lingering, the thermos under her arm and the bread in her hand. She had developed this pace in the first weeks and had not changed it.
The radio room door was closed, as it was between shifts, to keep the equipment at working temperature without the heating load from the rest of the station competing with the equipment's own heat. She opened the door and stepped in. The room had the particular quality of a space that had been closed and warm and occupied for many hours — not stuffy, the ventilation kept the air fresh, but dense with the warmth of the electronics and with the specific smell of a working radio room: warm electronics, the oil of the equipment, the slight metallic quality of the electronics racks.
She set the thermos on the shelf and ate the last of the bread standing, looking at the room and the equipment.