Woke up at 4 in the morning, afraid of oversleeping, since I wanted to look at faults in the Aral Sea area and Ural River region on the orbit that starts at half past four. Along the right bank of the Ural, opposite the salt lake Inder, I saw a ring structure about 100-150 km in diameter, similar to the Astrakhan one in color and boundaries. Well, after that I couldn’t fall back asleep — I’d broken my sleep. Approaching the Far East, I looked out the porthole. It was a rare cloudless day for that region. I saw an interesting picture — dark Earth, like a photographic negative, covered with fanciful bends of white lines — these are riverbeds, crevasses, faults in the pre-dawn haze. It turns out that in the morning, with a low Sun, you can study the terrain well and work out its structures.

At 11 o’clock we started an interesting astrophysical experiment AF-20 with the X-ray spectrometer SKR-02. We executed it well, cleanly. But the ground made an error with the sign on the attitude adjustment settings for the rotation around the longitudinal axis. As a result, we turned the wrong way.

We had to quickly identify our position relative to the stars through the portholes so the experiment wouldn’t be ruined, and manually reorient to the needed region of the star field. We managed to do this fairly quickly and calmly.

We talked with Kobzev. Things aren’t great. He said they’re displeased with us for staying out in space longer than planned during the EVA. The fact is, they had planned for us to complete only half the program, and we decided to complete it in full. But this isn’t taken into account by those who want to talk. In short, it’s the kind of case where there’s nothing to say, but someone has to come up with something to remind everyone of their existence and show their importance.

And this is nothing new: the more you take on in the work, the more you give yourself to it, the more is ultimately demanded of you and sometimes even for others’ mistakes. Right now our technological furnace “Korund” is malfunctioning due to a jammed motor on the capsule ejection mechanism.

That means someone made an error either in the calculations or in manufacturing, or didn’t catch these flaws during testing. As a result, the unit isn’t working on board, and moreover, the motor jam causes its housing to overheat above a hundred degrees, which in our conditions is fraught with fire. What should we do in this situation? The unit is unique, it’s on the station for the first time, its weight is over 200 kg, and of course many specialists are awaiting results needed for science and instrumentation. What to do? We have every reason to stop working with it. We have enough trouble on board as it is. But we can’t do that. Everything in our power and capability we’ll use to repair it and carry out the experiment program, and this has to be done at the cost of disrupting our daily routine — our personal time, meals, sleep, exercise, and sometimes at night.

Is it justified? Yes, it is. Because up here we draw strength and mood only from success in our work, and a non-functioning unit would be like a mute reproach constantly reminding us that something isn’t working, something hasn’t been done, and at that point it no longer matters whose fault it is. Later, on Earth, we’ll sort it out, but up here we’re responsible for everything. True, now we’re the ones taking the risk. If we make a mistake in the repair, then all blame for the non-working unit will fall on our shoulders. And then the bungling and unfinished work of some specialists, with their tacit consent, will be hidden behind our mistake, though we were guided by only one aspiration — to execute the experiment program and get a good final result. In this case, everything turned out well. We repaired the “Korund” furnace and obtained unique crystals, for one of which technical specifications were even drawn up for the feasibility of producing them in space. And I could cite quite a few such examples.

We’ve flown half the mission. Work helps. We have to hang on. Today they said the visiting expedition crew we’re expecting soon — Lyosha Popov, Sasha Serebrov, and Sveta Savitskaya — have departed for the cosmodrome. I think this expedition will be easier; Lyosha and I trained together for three years in one crew and know each other well. I want to sleep. I’ll listen to the latest news in the comm session now, and then lights out. At the end of the news broadcast we hear a familiar melody. Tolkunova is singing. The ground says: guys, Ivan Matveyevich wrote you a song to the tune of the lullaby from “Good Night, Little Ones.”

Indeed, Tolya and I on the station “Salyut-7” have found ourselves once again in a cradle, only now it’s the cradle of Mother Earth. Ivan Matveyevich was our crew’s doctor during my preparation for my first flight on the spacecraft “Soyuz-13” with Pyotr Klimuk. I remember, back then, right before the launch, a serious situation arose. The day before the flight, when the rocket with the spacecraft was already on the launch pad, we came by tradition to the rocket to meet the workers, designers, engineers, testers — everyone who had prepared the hardware and us at Baikonur. The previous crew of Lazarev and Makarov was also there, as if passing us the baton in the exploration of space.

Our launch was scheduled for December 18, 1973, so the meeting took place on December 17, and it was winter, more than 20 below zero. But Petya and I were young, both 31, even to this day the youngest crew. And of course we wanted to look sharp, so for that kind of weather we dressed up too lightly. Fur flight jackets, hats, trousers without any extras, and shoes. We arrived, and the launch pad is on a hill; besides the frost, the wind was blowing across the steppe. In general, everything went well, we were warmly greeted, wished successful work, given bouquets of fresh Alma-Ata calla lilies and carnations, and we assured everyone that we would fulfill our mission. We get back to our hotel, and I look: my inner state is somehow unusual, anxious, as if something has happened. I feel I’m getting sick, it hurts to swallow. What a disaster! What to do? We call Matveyich and say to him with anguish in our eyes: what do we do? After all, the flight is tomorrow. It’s nothing, he says. We’ll treat it. He brought an inhaler, some tablets, and strong tea. I drank, chased it with the tablets, lay down in bed, breathed the inhaler, and he bundled me up to sweat it out and drive off the cold. At night he dried me off, changed my underclothes. Around 6 o’clock he woke me, handed me a thermometer, and said: “Let’s see what the temperature is, so we don’t worry during the final morning medical exam.” We measured it — all normal. An hour and a half later the group of doctors came for the pre-flight medical exam to certify our readiness for flight. They checked, no issues; only the ENT specialist Gennady Dmitrievich remained.

When he began examining me, I’ll say straight out, the scene was a silent one, like in “The Government Inspector.” He looks at the throat, ears, nose, and his eyes widen in alarm, then he stares at me in bewilderment — blinking, blinking. I say to him: “Gennady Dmitrievich, everything is fine, don’t worry, sign the clearance. I’ll fly.” And there was nowhere to turn anyway — the rocket was on the pad, already fueled, the spacecraft fitted with equipment for our crew, all the control services notified and configured to work with us… What else could he do? He signed. Later, riding in the bus to the rocket, I gazed sadly at the bare steppe covered in snow all around and thought: how can I fly? Will I endure eight days? And here’s the interesting thing — when I found myself in the spacecraft, I forgot everything, the work crushed everything else out, and only during descent did I remember my pre-flight condition, because my ears were blocked and the pressure wasn’t equalizing well. On Earth, in Dzhezkazgan, the first person to examine me was Gennady Dmitrievich, and by then he was smiling with relief and joking. And to Ivan Matveyevich I’m sincerely grateful for his support in a difficult moment and his trust in him as a doctor. Ten years have passed since the first flight, we have a different crew doctor now, but he still tries to support us with the warm words of a song. Here it is:

The cosmonauts are going to bed, “Stroka” sleeps,

Blankets aren’t the fashion here — two bags,

Even “Delta” goes to sleep,

So it can appear in your dreams tonight,

Close the ODU, hush-a-bye.

Hush-a-bye, everyone at TsUP wants to sleep too,

Tomorrow it all starts over again, all over.

You’re so tired from the day,

We’ll say goodnight to you,

Close your eyes, hush-a-bye.

At home they remember you very tenderly.

May Lyusya and Lida appear in your dreams now.

At home everything is fine,

Your children are sleeping sweetly.

Close your eyes, hush-a-bye.

We can’t even dream, the way things are now,

As you race along your orbit for the hundredth time,

We remember you, love you so much,

And now — goodnight,

Close your eyes, hush-a-bye.