Artist Boris Artzybasheff has a cool, ex-machine gunner's eye that can ruffle even the armor of a battleship, and has. With a knack for spotting an ogle where an I-beam ought to be, Artzy has been doing covers for TIME since 1941, created a pistol-packing battleship as background for Japanese Admiral Nagano, a school of sea-monster telescopes for Admiral Doenitz, a Veto-Bug for Gromyko. A special euphoria overtakes Artzy when the humans depart, leaving the machines alone with their fears, grimaces, ulcers and unique sex-appeal. Among Artzy's memorable anthropomorphic revelations: his three-armed Pentagon (July 2, 1951), a camera-faced Amateur Photographer (Nov. 2, 1953), his Mark III Computer (Jan. 23, 1950), which now hangs at Harvard, and his 6-29 Radar Set, now owned by M.I.T. After turning in his current cover (his 166th to be published), TIME editors asked Artzy to play turnabout, portray a mechanized version of Artzybasheff (see above). Said Artzy: "I'd like to psychoanalyze myself, but there isn't time."

WILL the U.S. have a major influenza epidemic this fall? With a massive outbreak of the disease now sweeping around the world from its spawning ground in Red China, the answer ordinarily might be yes. But thanks to modern medical detective work and the efforts of vaccinemakers, there is a good chance that the enemy can be held in check. To follow the advance of the virus, and the measures taken to outwit it. TIME gathered up-to-the-minute reports from a dozen nations in the Far East and Europe. See MEDICINE, The War on Mutant A.

IN Poznan last week, a Polish farmer -i dug deep into his pocket to pull out a roll of dog-eared but treasured U.S. greenbacks. "If it's dollars you want," he said, "I've got them." Others like him cheerfully proffered their savings in zlotys in a vain effort to buy for themselves some of the items laid out in a mouth-watering display of U.S. consumer goods at the first U.S. exhibit to appear at Communist Poland's annual International Trade Fair. To hold back the crowds, the exhibit had to be closed briefly every few hours--while the Russian exhibit went begging. See FOREIGN NEWS, Nylon Wonderland.

THE 4,000 employees of the United Press are charged to get the news ahead of the Associated Press, write in a style that "flames like a candelabra on a dark and muddy battlefield," and make their dispatches understandable to "the milkman in Omaha." They do not do all of these things all the time, but in 50 years of shooting for those mixed objectives, they have made the U.P. the world's second-largest and most enterprising wire-news merchant, and the shirtsleeve college for thousands of U.S. newsmen. For a profile of hardfisted, bustling U.P. on its golden anniversary, see PRESS, The First Half-Century.

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