Saturday afternoon, in the midst of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Jerusalem Bureau Chief William Marmon looked out of the window of TIME Stringer Alex Efty's Nicosia home to see a Turkish pilot bailing out at 15,000 feet directly over the building. Greek soldiers in the street below nervously cocked their weapons, preparing to shoot the parachutist as he came down. Suddenly, a strong south wind blew the man out of range. "His fate," cabled Marmon to New York minutes later, "is unknown."

Marmon, Photographer David Rubinger and a few fellow journalists had arrived in Nicosia two days earlier in a chartered plane, the first civilian flight to land in Nicosia after Monday's coup. Quick to follow was Beirut Bureau Chief Karsten Prager, who, like Marmon, reported for TIME on both the Viet Nam War and last year's Middle East October war. Prager made it to Cyprus aboard a 1,000-ton German trawler bearing two dozen newsmen whose transistor radios interfered dangerously with the ship's compass. "The old Viet Nam bush jackets are here in full flower," quipped Marmon as Prager and other journalists arrived.

"But there is no real war to report on."

Then, suddenly, there was. Prager and Rubinger, along with some 150 other newsmen, were asleep at Nicosia's posh Ledra Palace Hotel when the Turkish attack began. They awoke to the sound of gunfire and could see paratroopers dotting the skies. A bazooka shell hit the hotel, killing two Greek soldiers. Power at the Ledra was cut off, and reporters were unable to file their stories. Prager managed to phone Marmon at Efty's apartment to convey eyewitness accounts of the fighting. Marmon, in turn, though periodically distracted by "soldiers with a weird assortment of weapons drifting into the house," fed Prager's reports into Efty's telex machine -- the only line out of Nicosia then available to journalists.

"The oceans," says Associate Editor Philip Herrera, "have always been a rich, romantic subject of great lore and splendid traditions. But that's all changing." This week Herrera, aided by Reporter-Researcher Patricia Beckert, examines the dynamics of the international struggle for custody of the seas. Their story marks the reappearance of our Environment section, which for the past eight months has given way to demands of our Energy section. Associate Editor Frederic Golden and Reporter-Researcher F. Sydnor Vanderschmidt contributed an accompanying article on the vast natural resources of the oceans.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.