To the staff of TIME'S Nation section, the news sometimes seems to find a rhythm of its own. Often a story starts the week as an event of modest consequence and then unfolds into a major national controversy -- and a cover story. So it went last week, as concern over the discovery of up to 3,000 Soviet combat troops in Cuba grew so intense that it threatened ratification of the SALT II agreement, strained U.S.-Soviet relations, and presented the President with a substantial diplomatic dilemma. Observes Otto Friedrich, senior editor in charge of Nation: "When U.S. Senators are saying, 'Get out or no SALT,' you have a problem on your hands." And Nation has its 15th cover story of 1979.

Associate Editor Burton Pines, who wrote the narrative of this latest crisis, agrees: "The symbolic significance we attach to what the Soviets are doing is as important as the objective facts. The mere perception of power determines the behavior of nations as often as the use of power." Pines was one of five writers assigned to the cover package by Friedrich and World Senior Editor John Elson. TIME correspondents cabled details of the developments from Moscow, Washington and Havana, where Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott had been covering the Conference of Nonaligned Countries. Talbott found no shortage of soldierly looking Soviets in the Cuban capital. "Every morning I went jogging and passed groups of young Russian men," he says. "When I greeted them in Russian, they looked surprised, but usually returned a friendly word or two." Also reporting for the story was Economics Correspondent George Taber, who had been in Cuba only a month earlier for a firsthand look at the country's economy.

News events that become cover stories sometimes do not stop evolving by Friday. Thus weekend work is a regular part of Nation's responsibilities. Friedrich, however, also undertakes weekend labors that do not involve the news. His seventh book, Clover, a biography of Henry Adams' wife, will be published next month by Simon & Schuster. Another nonfiction work, about the idea of the end of the world, is 250 pages under way.

"I've always been interested in disasters and crises," says Friedrich of his latest project, an interest that makes him especially well suited to his Nation duties.

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