Last Blast?

The flash was short; the small, cotton-candy cloud could hardly qualify as a bona fide mushroom, and the rumble was barely audible 30 miles away. But there was a watchmaker's genius in every dimension of the tiny (less than one kilo-ton), sophisticated atomic bomb, exploded from a balloon 500 ft. over the Nevada desert last week, and it demonstrated how far the U.S. has progressed in small-weapons development.

It also opened what might well be the last U.S. nuclear-weapons test series. On Oct. 31 Britain and the U.S. have promised to join the Russians in their suspension of nuclear-weapons tests for one year, provided that the Russians show up for a political conference on nuclear-blast detection (TIME, Sept. 1). Will Russia stick to its own moratorium, declared after a heavy bomb-test series last March? Cried Moscow Radio last week: "If Britain and the U.S.A. continue to perfect nuclear weapons by means of test explosions, the Soviet Union also probably will be forced in the final analysis to resume tests.''

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