Here’s our first setback, which I’d had a premonition about and told Tolya things were heading that way. In the morning, during the first comm session, we hear yesterday’s shift flight director. He asks: “Guys, did you issue a command to shut down the radio telemetry transmitters yesterday?”

We asked: on which orbit? Turns out it was during the comm session when we were talking with the doctor, and as we were leaving, an operator shouted to us to switch off the telemetry transmitters. Now it was hard to recall whether we’d reacted to that command in all the rush. We asked: what happened? “Your transmitters were left running, and after 3 hours they overheated.”

I answered: if the command was transmitted, then mark it as our fault. It’s only frustrating that this isn’t the result of an error but of a lack of clarity about what’s most important — what and when to say during comm.

Today I woke up at 6:30. I wanted to see the Aral Sea and the fault line. But I didn’t. We passed too far south. I saw Ukraine, the Kakhovka Reservoir, the Kremenchug Reservoir. Then I went back to sleep; we slept until 9:15. Both got up and got to work.

Today is bath day. We started pressing the contents of the sanitary device — from containers with moisture-absorbing charge used in the bath to collect dirty water — into an empty storage container. We assembled the bath, heated water, filled the “Kolos” containers with hot and cold water. Put together an elaborate plumbing system for water supply, suction, filtration, and air purification from harmful substances and odors. We unrolled the transparent bath enclosure from its upper dome on the station’s ceiling, stretching it by fastening the lower dome to the station floor. We fussed until 6 PM, though the plan had been to finish assembling the bathing system by lunch.

Assembled, it consists of two hemispherical domes with a transparent polyethylene shell stretched between them. It looks like an aquarium. Inside is a shower head, like in a regular bathroom. On the outside of the upper dome are two waste-water collectors and two 5-liter containers of hot and cold water, which is fed under overpressure of 0.8 atm, created by a compressor, into a mixer for washing. You can adjust the water from cold to hot. In the lower dome there’s a port through which a pump suctions out air — or more precisely, the gas-water mixture that forms inside the shell due to weightlessness. This creates water flow from top to bottom, like on Earth. While on Earth you can’t drown under a shower, here it’s entirely possible. So during washing we look like scuba divers: a mouthpiece from a hose supplying clean air, a nose clip, and swimming goggles.

We washed Tolya first — what an exotic sight. A naked man floats through the station and swims into a cylindrical transparent aquarium, puts a mouthpiece in his mouth, goggles on his eyes, clips his nose, and slides his feet into ski bindings. And starts washing. Water comes from above, like in a bathtub. We scrub with a sponge soaked in catamine — a compound that could probably strip rust.

If it gets in your eyes or nose, it’s awful — burns, and your mucous membranes swell up. You hang inside the aquarium like seaweed, not wet but coated in water. The water doesn’t flow down your body; it hangs on you in thick blobs. Around you is an air-water mixture that’s sucked downward by the airflow. Soon, after about five minutes, the bath aquarium is filled with fog; you hang in the air seeing nothing, with eyes shut tight for fear of catamine getting in, and try to scrub your back. A funny performance from the outside. Thrashing around in there like a tadpole. When I was washing, I thought: don’t drown in here. What a laugh — drowned in space.

The sensations are pleasant when you wash off a month’s grime, since we only bathe once a month — not like on Earth. Today was a good day for Tolya and me. Spirits are high; we work well together, joking. After the bath, as Peter the Great used to say, “sell your trousers but have a drink” — we had a little cup of tea and got “tipsy” from the pleasure. Made a hot dinner. All is well. Had a heart-to-heart talk. Yes, it’s not easy to fly here — you also have to learn how to live and work.

Don’t try to figure out who’s who or dig through each other’s faults. We’re both 40; you can’t remake us. But we have to develop common rules that satisfy both of us. Whether we like them or not, we must follow them. And most importantly: don’t give in to your bad mood, and don’t spoil your crewmate’s mood. If you feel bad — share it; if you don’t want to — hide it, be friendly, don’t withdraw, don’t play the silent game, and do everything together.

Today we backed each other up well in the talk with the ground. I asked the operators several times why the “Samrentgen” test mode didn’t work on the tenth. They keep answering: later, later. I couldn’t take it and demanded in sharp terms to be told what happened. They answered: it was their mistake — before starting the work, they’d authorized us to refine orientation in small-impulse mode, which conflicts with the “Delta” system programs. On the next orbit Tolya also made a remark. In short, the crew was united.

In the evening Tolya talked with his wife and sister, and I sat and listened, since my family is vacationing in Grozny. It was nice hearing them talk about their home affairs and worries. People, people. We’re all concerned about the same things, just in different ways we relate to each other.

It’s now 2 AM. We’re finishing work and going to bed. Tolya comes over and says: — Want a riddle? — Go ahead. — Which systems do we work with most, you think? — I say: the ones whose documentation pages are most worn. — Exactly.