Word: tsibliyevs
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...Tsibliyev liked his romance tunes and played them whenever he could. But after the commander's blue mood last night, Foale had not expected to hear them this morning. Wriggling out of his sleeping bag in the Spektr science module and drifting into the main module, he saw that Tsibliyev looked positively jaunty. Instead of his usual rumpled jumpsuit, the commander was wearing his stiffer, more formal dress jumpsuit. The fabric no doubt itched, but Tsibliyev was a pilot first, and today he had a piece of flying to do. He wasn't about to underdress for the occasion...
...Foale and Lazutkin too, the day would be a busy one. Bringing Progress in for a dead-reckoning docking would take the cooperation of all three crewmen. Tsibliyev would be at the helm in the core module, watching the monitor and operating the joysticks as the vessel approached. Lazutkin would be behind him, peering out a nearby window to call out the spacecraft's coordinates. Foale would be dispatched to the station's most distant module, the Kvant, where the unmanned ship would actually dock. Shining a laser range finder out the stern porthole, he would measure Progress's distance...
...into the main module and rigged the television monitor that had so famously failed weeks before. He worked the cables with the skill of a snake charmer, hooking them up to the TV with an authoritative snap. "You're not going to have a problem this time," he reassured Tsibliyev. "The picture is not going to disappear...
JUNE 25, NOON Tsibliyev could always count on Lazutkin. When Sasha told you a piece of equipment was going to work, it usually did. Shortly before midday, the Mir crew gathered in the main module, and Tsibliyev sent a command to the Progress vehicle, instructing it to open its electronic-eye camera and train its gaze on the station. The camera responded, and moments later, the TV monitor, as promised, flickered to life. Tsibliyev and Lazutkin seemed pleased; Foale was decidedly less...
...target in this orbital skeet shoot, was all but invisible. The screen was filled with an image of a mottled Earth rolling below the station, while a tiny, pixilated smudge--Mir itself--vanished and reappeared as it flew from the white clouds to the black oceans and back again. Tsibliyev, however, saw even this small target as a good target. With little hesitation, he engaged one joystick and brought the cargo ship's thrusters to life. Somewhere above, the ship invisibly exhaled propellant and began descending toward the station...