Third day of EVA preparation. We’re getting the transfer compartment ready — installing mirrors along the station’s sides for better viewing of equipment when we’re in the spacesuits. We’re positioning fixtures, brackets, and the equipment we’ll carry outside. A lot of small jobs need doing, without which it would be hard to organize the EVA reliably. Everything’s going well, but what seems like a trifle can wreck your whole day. Yesterday I deliberately set aside a clamp for the camera lens, and today we spent the entire day looking for it — never found it; it floated away somewhere. Without it you can’t focus the camera installed in the pressure housing. We’re also preparing the orbital module of the ship in case, after the spacewalk, the station’s transfer compartment proves to have lost pressure and we can’t repressurize it.

In that case we’d have to retreat into the transport ship and return to Earth. For this we’re installing “anchors” — special foot restraint platforms — in the orbital module, along with handrails, so we can remove the spacesuits, and we’re running tethers with electrical connectors.

We moved a block with compressed air reserves there in case the transport ship needs repressurization.

Tomorrow is the first spacesuit training day, and we should try to get everything done. Today I talked with Ryumin, asked for permission to traverse the full length of the station. He answered that the main thing now is to test the spacesuit modifications, so there’s no point in taking risks. Then again, we’ll see how it goes. I should mention that in virtually the same spacesuit, crews on previous expeditions to “Salyut-6” have already worked, and with proper precautions it’s a fairly reliable system. In the evening we looked for the camera clamp again and in the frame cavities of the station hatch found instead the movie camera filter we’d lost long ago and given up on.

The days are getting harder; I think about them more often. Our main task now is to get through the EVA successfully. With the ground, when serious work lies ahead, the talk becomes cheerful and businesslike. There’s not even time to look out the porthole. Just now I floated into the transfer compartment, glanced through the porthole, and was startled by the beauty of the Earth — as if seeing it for the first time.