For the TIME correspondents who went to Vienna for this week's cover story on the SALT II summit, the trip was the culmination of months, and in some cases years, of preparation. Moscow Bureau Chief Bruce Nelan, who followed the Soviet side of the talks, started covering SALT in 1977 as TIME'S defense specialist in Washington. White House Correspondent Chris Ogden who covered the U.S. delegation, was reporting from Moscow when Richard Nixon arrived to sign SALT lin 1972. For Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, the Vienna summit was quite literally a final chapter, both in his extensive coverage of SALT II for TIME and in a book he is writing on the subject. Says he: "After five years of tracking the story, usually through closed doors, it is gratifying and a relief to see it end in public, with some fanfare of statesmanship."

Correspondent Lee Griggs, a longtime Africa hand who moved to Bonn last December, found his first taste of SALT summitry to be a welcome contrast to the summits he has covered in tropical Third World capitals. Among Vienna's pleasures, notes Griggs: "Its cooler climate, the absence of king-size cockroaches, honest-to-goodness hotels with clean sheets and, behind the tapestries in what was once Empress Maria Theresa's ballroom, wiring for the simultaneous translation of the proceedings."

Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey, who conveys his impressions of the conference in this week's "Presidency" column, found lowered spirits and expectations in Vienna, a marked contrast to the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit he covered there in 1961. "Kennedy flew to Vienna with authority and respect," he recalls. "His jet was new. He was new. The world was in love with him. How different now. The U.S. has self-doubt. Carter is down. The world is far more somber and less prone to laughter." Yet Sidey believes that the first meeting of Brezhnev and Carter had both promise and "a little romance." As Chris Ogden puts it, "When two superpower leaders sit down and try to understand each other, it's a powerful instant. Like it or not, they have the capability to destroy this world, and the consequences of their meeting affect us all."

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