On comm, project designer Lenya Gorshkov said the additional EVA won’t happen. Savchenko came — our fears about “Piramig” film being fogged by engine exhaust flashes were confirmed. We’d told Ryumin about our concerns, but he said: “What can we do now?” We answered: “We need to find a solution.” And we did. We stabilized manually, killing residual rates visually by sextant, and without firing engines conducted the photography during periods of minimal drift, achieving exposures up to one minute with drift rates of ten-thousandths of a degree per second, as the photos showed. Today was medicine. I worked in the “Chibis” — special sealed trousers that partially simulate gravity by drawing blood to the lower body through negative pressure. No particularly bad sensations. Then “Echography” — sat for about four hours undressed recording heart and vessel data and froze badly.

Still a long way to fly. This worries me. Kobzev wasn’t himself today on comm — came on without greeting, didn’t use my name, just “do this.” I decided to set him straight.

Late in the evening I read magazines and papers. Pleasant. I still can’t finish my poem “Masquerade” that I started writing up here. Here are its lines so far:

What we live by and must live by.

Let us look around. Words, nothing but words.

Like weeds they’ve choked all that’s living.

And through them it’s impossible to tell:

Where is the truth born of the soul,

Or born of human clownery.

Yes — clownery, I didn’t misspeak —

We are all participants of a great masquerade.

And from the moment we appear in this world

By people’s will

A mask is already being prepared for us,

And the paints applied, the image chosen

They try from infancy to do for us,

And if one sees the light and understands

That his life is becoming subject

To human passions and base laws —

Which were honed for centuries on guillotines

And aged in dungeons —

Oh, how hard it becomes for him among people

For this luxury — to live without a mask,

This great priceless freedom of man

People have paid dearly

In all ages and all times…

Today on the news they said we’re in good spirits and high working condition. That’s true. But the ground sees us only externally and evaluates only our present state, not sensing or understanding our state tomorrow.