Woke up in the morning with a heavy head, mood unclear, anxious. What’s it like down there? We’ve grown unaccustomed! Our life has already adapted to this little island in space, and now — suddenly — the Big World. Uneasy, a little frightening. We started working…

One in the afternoon, and I can barely walk. We’re doing station conservation; my head is splitting, almost nauseous. At two I couldn’t take it anymore, went and lay down — eyes dark, head pounding. Around four I got up, felt slightly better. Didn’t do any exercise. Today the director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems, Gazenko, came on the link and told us about post-flight arrangements: the readaptation period will be spent in Kislovodsk — me at the Ordzhonikidze sanatorium, and Tolya at Krasnye Kamni. He wished us a successful landing and said that the medics have no concerns about our health and are fully confident everything will go well during descent and on Earth. Then there were consultations with specialists on descent systems, onboard documentation, control algorithms, possible contingency situations, and communications. I asked a series of questions, got answers, and I’m satisfied. While putting away the electronic photometer, I started unloading it and saw that the film in the cassette had gotten tangled and several measurements were lost. It’s hard; I take it badly when I see failures or lost data. I’m thinking of working with at least a couple of stars during the shadow pass.

And so it’s the last night on the station… When we were put into orbit, on that first night in space I thought about what lay ahead of me, how the flight would go. After all, half a year of flying! And when the last night comes, what would it be like? And here it is — nothing special, ordinary, anxious.

We said goodbye to one more TsUP shift, for whom the flight has already ended. In the last communication session I read the poem I wrote three years ago at the Central Institute of Traumatology, where I’d been brought with a knee injury sustained during trampoline training. That happened a month before my scheduled launch with Leonid Popov to the Salyut-6 station. On the first night in the hospital, when I kept waking in horror and cold sweat beaded on my forehead from the realization that what had happened was reality, not a dream — though I wanted, so desperately wanted it to be a terrible dream. After all, seven years of the hardest labor on the path to my second spaceflight had ended in such a catastrophe! And so, early in the morning of March 10, 1980, lying in my ward as the first sunbeams lit the walls, I wanted to capture in a poem this state of a person stopped dead by fate, these experiences, these torturous thoughts — so that later, when I finally completed my second flight, I could turn to it and remember the hard days of my life, remember that even then I believed I would find the strength to rise after that blow from fate and walk a path no less difficult, and in many ways even harder, toward my dream — to fly and work in Space. Here it is.

A jump, a jump, one more jump

I feel the springiness of muscles

And the trampoline bands

A jump — and the joy of flight

Up, up, always up

To my Summit!

It is already visible and near

The summit of persistent labor

Spanning not days, but years

Sleepless, a bundle of nerves

A wounded soul, an exhausted body!

And my thoughts, my heart, I myself —

All are bent to a single task!

To pass, to reach

Through the ledges, the cliffs of knowledge,

The crevasses of human passions,

And agonizing minutes of understanding,

Of it, of oneself, of all that must be known,

To reach and carry to the Summit’s edge

The fruits of the labor of those who live with you,

Of generations past and those to come

And bound by a single dream —

To conquer as many as possible

Of yet-unknown Summits,

From which one might glimpse a new horizon

For the flight of Human thought…

One more push, upward, and pain…

A fall, and fear,

Fear that I will not make it on my own

And let down comrades, friends.

What is the pain of falling?!

If only one could rise,

And upward once more.

But people see the pain of falling.

Some help you stand, support you, and say:

“Onward, don’t despair”… They are few.

Others cry: “Disaster, misfortune, he won’t make it.

We should feel sorry for him…” They are many.

Won’t make it… I will! Let go of my hands!

No, we can’t — what if something

Happens to you!

We are responsible for you and will not allow you to risk

Yourself or us. Which we affirm by committee.

The hands, the hearts of friends reach out toward me,

We’ve been roped together for years!

Let go! — No! There is a protocol of decision.

And that’s it… Comrades are powerless…

And I say to them — Onward to the Summit!

For there, perhaps,

Beyond the gigantic expanse,

For the flesh of Man

There is also hope for the expanse of his Soul,

Which for ages has strained, thrashed, and suffered

From indifference and the shame

Of a human race Great by nature,

But lowered by humans themselves.

Friends, today my fate has so unfolded

That I cannot reach the Summit,

The crown of my Country’s labor,

Which is Russia…

Night fell, dawn came,

And the sun gently lit

The mountainside and the trail…

Of many years to my Summit.

Comrades have gone on; they must reach it,

To open the way for us and for new generations.

And those who stopped me,

Seemingly in a noble impulse,

Abandoned… and forgot me alone

On the path between the base and the Summit.

Friends! It is very hard for me

To walk my path from the beginning,

But believe me — I will walk it

And proudly stand upon my Summit!

And here I am, on the Summit!

Pride overwhelms me that I could travel this thorny road! This is the joy of human life! And now it’s three in the morning — time to sleep. Tomorrow the journey begins, back to Earth, home.

I lay down and thought of my loved ones. I’ll be frank — anything could happen, but I feel no anxiety. I’m only sorry for my family, if such grief were to fall on them. Stars are stars, but you only have one loved one in life. Mama, my sister are worried. Tomorrow — no, already today — is the hardest day; it could bring either joy or sorrow. Sleep. In the morning my head must be clear.