A good day. We’re mainly working on astrophysics. The crew also did other medical experiments. Life is cheerful. When we were shooting stars with “Piramig” today, after coming out of shadow into the light, Sveta floats up to me and says: “Valya, I forgot to open the porthole cover.” What a disaster! I clutched my head. The whole day’s work was wasted. But it turned out she was pulling my leg. Everyone had a good laugh. A bit later, I issued the “Programs Off” command, as required after completing station control, and the display routinely showed the orientation and motion control system’s alarm screen. But the crew didn’t know this was normal. Their training program didn’t include a thorough study of the station. So when Sveta saw it on the display, I pretended I hadn’t noticed and busied myself assembling a telemetry circuit. Then she slowly floated up to me and quietly said: “Valentin, look — ‘Emergency’” — pointing her eyes at the panel. Feigning terrible fright, I said: “That’s it! You’ve knocked out the entire control system. Now the station is finished — it’s uncontrollable. What do we do? I’m not going back to Earth.” She started quietly reassuring me, away from the others: “Valya, maybe it’s not completely broken?” Lyosha Popov floated over; hearing what was going on, he believed it too, since he also wasn’t well acquainted with this system. He says: “Don’t rush to report — let them figure it out themselves.” All the crew members were bewildered and worried for me. I kept them in the dark for about fifteen minutes, acting out a tragedy, then said: “Guys, you need to study the equipment.” Now the laughter went the other way.

In the evening, Sasha gave us haircuts, and for that we immediately awarded him a specially devised and decorated diploma of Cosmic Barber. We cut hair in the intermediate chamber with the vacuum cleaner, while Lyosha filmed us with the movie camera. After that we had a good dinner and sat together. Now I’m looking through the radiograms with tomorrow’s assignment. Sveta is sitting in a corner near the scientific equipment compartment; she’s braced her feet against the hull and her back against the cone of the compartment so she won’t float away, and is also preparing documentation for tomorrow. Lyosha and Tolya are signing envelopes, pennants, and flight certificates, and I’m preparing geology maps for return.

My right nostril is blocked; can’t breathe through it.