Approaching the Black Sea coast, I see the Danube. We’re photographing Bulgaria. At the entrance to the Bosporus from the Mediterranean side, ships have gathered — about fifteen. Ahead is the Caspian. The Volga delta is visible.

We passed the Apsheron Peninsula. The Neftyanyye Kamni oil rocks are clearly visible. The Sea of Azov is all rust-colored; apparently heavy rains with strong wind came through, and the bottom current stirred up silt from the seabed. The ground confirmed that indeed one and a half times the annual rainfall norm fell there.

In the evening we talked with Viktor Blagov and asked him to report to management our proposal for a second EVA to practice the methodology of extending the solar arrays. He promised, and then said they’re concerned about my weight, as I’ve lost 6 kg, and the calf measurement data — its circumference has decreased by 6 cm.

In the evening there was a meeting with a radio commentator. He asked: “After such brilliant work as the spacewalk, you must be back to gray routine now, right?” We ask: “Why gray? We’re working under pressure the whole time, so there’s no room for boredom. Today we performed imaging of the Earth’s surface with the MKF-6 and KATE-140 instruments. We even asked to shift the exercise time and keep the orbital orientation so we could work over regions of Siberia, where we’ve identified a lot of ideas. We wanted to look at them, photograph them, and make some reference points.” Further he asks: “How do you identify the Earth now? Any discoveries?” Identifying regions we’re flying over, distinguishing what we see — that’s no longer a problem. Seeing on it, finding what would truly be useful to specialists, genuinely useful, giving real returns — that’s what concerns us now, that’s the stage we’re at, and it seems we’re already getting somewhere. As for discoveries… That’s something forged by long time and effort, not something where you peek out the window and — discovery. Otherwise you’re not far from shoddy work.

Again I felt strong tension. In the morning we began performing geophysical experiments and, on top of that, a technical experiment T-78 was scheduled to study the characteristics of the atmosphere around the station. I ask the ground: “Which cables to connect?”

They’re slow to answer. On the biological experiments I ask: “What should we do?” Same thing. And then, in a raised tone but without violating professional etiquette, I said everything. They took offense. I can feel it: relations with the ground have become strained. After that I couldn’t calm down for a long time.

It’s hard during a flight when you lose your equilibrium. And then they hit my psyche one more time. When the time came for exercise, during the communication session over the Soviet Union they gave the command to shut down the attitude control and start exercising. But we were still in orbital orientation, and I asked them to do it after the comm session ended, when we’d passed over the country’s territory, so that in the oriented position I could photograph several interesting geological regions. No, they dug in — shut it off, period. We’re wasting time arguing. Getting heated. Missing the chance to get valuable information. And all because the start of exercise would shift by 10 minutes. I tell the duty doctor: “Don’t take a formalistic position, because ultimately it’s up to us whether we exercise or not.” The shift flight director sees that I’m wound up and gave the go-ahead to finish the work, but we were already on edge. Good thing I still didn’t crack, didn’t say any unnecessary words.

Today was so heavy on the heart, so much had accumulated and resurfaced, that after work I went to the orbital module and began writing a poem. I wanted to say something about how we suffer, how we anguish from not having the character to always be sincere toward ourselves and others. And as a result, a mask becomes a convenient way to escape the struggle with our own and others’ weaknesses, problems, shortcomings, and in doing so you deprive yourself of the joy of believing in your own strength, of breathing freely, thinking, looking people straight in the eye and placing hope in them — but most importantly, you imperceptibly breed and surround yourself with the like-minded.

I looked at the time. Three in the morning; time to sleep.