Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. The Tunnel Under The World By FREDERIK POHL Pinching yourself is no way to see if you are dreaming. Surgical instruments? Well, yes--but a mechanic's kit is best of all! Illustrated by EMSH * * * * * On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream. It was more real than any dream he had ever had in his life. He could still hear and feel the sharp, ripping-metal explosion, the violent heave that had tossed him furiously out of bed, the searing wave of heat. He sat up convulsively and stared, not believing what he saw, at the quiet room and the bright sunlight coming in the window. He croaked, "Mary?" His wife was not in the bed next to him. The covers were tumbled and awry, as though she had just left it, and the memory of the dream was so strong that instinctively he found himself searching the floor to see if the dream explosion had thrown her down. [Illustration] But she wasn't there. Of course she wasn't, he told himself, looking at the familiar vanity and slipper chair, the uncracked window, the unbuckled wall. It had only been a dream. "Guy?" His wife was calling him querulously from the foot of the stairs. "Guy, dear, are you all right?" He called weakly, "Sure." There was a pause. Then Mary said doubtfully, "Breakfast is ready. Are you sure you're all right? I thought I heard you yelling--" Burckhardt said more confidently, "I had a bad dream, honey. Be right down." * * * * * In the shower, punching the lukewarm-and-cologne he favored, he told himself that it had been a beaut of a dream. Still, bad dreams weren't unusual, especially bad dreams about explosions. In the past thirty years of H-bomb jitters, who had not dreamed of explosions? Even Mary had dreamed of them, it turned out, for he started to tell her about the dream, but she cut him off. "You _did_?" Her voice was astonished. "Why, dear, I dreamed the same thing! Well, almost the same thing. I didn't actually _hear_ anything. I dreamed that something woke me up, and then there was a sort of quick bang, and then something hit me on the head. And that was all. Was yours like that?"