Sunday. Day off. Got up early to watch the passes along the Aral and Balkhash. I’ve grown accustomed to this region. We’re conducting programmed observations in the Caspian area. In its northeastern part, opposite the Ural River, there are many light-green swirls, and in the southeastern corner of the Caspian there’s a very bright turquoise plankton patch, 70-80 kilometers from shore, with two clearly defined vortices.

Photographed it. Again I observed how from the Kara-Bogaz-Gol bay three small salt lakes extend, continuing as a narrow whitish trail on the sand for several hundred kilometers, breaking off near the Amu Darya about 100 kilometers short. The impression is that from below, as if through cracks in the rock, groundwater is seeping up and, as it evaporates, leaves a white salt deposit on the sand. Apparently this is a fault buried by sand. In ground surveys and aerial photographs it would, of course, be hard to decipher because of the small viewing angles, which don’t allow you to fully capture and trace the development of structures and landscape. We consulted the geologists. They say it’s possible that the ancient channel of the Amu Darya once flowed along this strip, when it emptied into the Caspian Sea. The remnants of the channel are called the Uzboy.

During the day we had a visit from Kobzon. He was in high spirits, sang from the heart, and we sang along with him; he told jokes. Then we reminisced about our joint performance at the Soviet-German friendship festival in Halle, East Germany. It happened that the organizers of a big youth concert had heard me, relaxing in company, singing along with Kobzon. They liked it and asked us to perform together at the concert — Yuri Gagarin’s favorite song, “I Love You, Life.” Refusing in that situation would have been awkward, so I agreed, not grasping the scale of the whole affair.

So — the concert is underway, Kobzon performs, then invites me onstage to sing the song together. When I walked out and saw 6,000 smiling, applauding young people, I froze. I thought: how am I going to keep in time with Kobzon if I’ve never sung with an orchestra? But apparently they’ve already taught us not to panic in a difficult situation, but to look for a solution. And I found one. I put my arm around Iosif’s waist, and so the arm wouldn’t slip, grabbed onto a well-fed fold on his side — to sing in time with his breathing. We sang; the applause, I must say, was tremendous. Only probably not so much for the performance, but for how it all looked.

Afterward they told me Kobzon couldn’t be heard at all — only I was bellowing. Iosif sang along, glancing sideways at the side I’d latched onto. After the concert he tells me: “Valya, I’m never singing with you again” — and showed me his side, where my handprint was imprinted. We laughed, saying it wasn’t so bad, the main thing was that the young people enjoyed it, and honestly, the singing wasn’t bad either. I should say that Iosif Kobzon is a cosmonaut’s singer — he’s boosted the morale of so many long-duration crews. We had a wonderful time with him. As he was leaving, Iosif offered to invite Pakhmutova with Dobronravov and Leshchenko. We thanked him and said they’d sent us a “Niva” video player and cassettes with their recordings.

We’ll assemble it in the next few days, and then things won’t be so dull.

On the next orbit they broadcast us a recorded concert of Lyudmila Gurchenko for war veterans. A talented actress, one must admit, and with age her talent grows brighter, richer, wiser, and warmer. She, it seems to me, for our generation in popularity and people’s need for her, could be compared to Shulzhenko.

After lunch I had a good run on the treadmill, and the rest of the time — all visual observations. We worked on determining the water’s color at different latitudes of the Atlantic. On the Crimean Peninsula, near Perekop, a small red lake is visible — a good landmark.

The color of such lakes depends on the salts they contain, their concentration, and the time of year, when evaporation and salt precipitation change the lake’s surface. Later we learned that a local factory uses the concentrated brine of this lake to produce magnesium and other metals. In the evening we tried working with the Czech electronic photometer “EFO” on stars setting below the horizon. We recorded changes in stellar radiation intensity through the atmosphere to detect aerosol layers and temperature inhomogeneities. Interesting work.