Trope-a-Day: Tractor Beam

(Forgot this last night; sorry, folks.)

Tractor Beam: Among the things that vector control will do for you, along with its pushy counterpart, the pressor beam, along with the variant in which it’s not used for towing or grappling, but rather as a structural element, in which all the bits of a ship or structure hang together despite hanging separately.  (Very luxury, such unsuitable for working vehicles, wow.)  Also available in small convenient sizes for construction, moving furniture, medicine, etc., often fitted as part of nanolathes, and for that matter, the modern Imperial equivalent of a screwdriver is basically one of these.

Important note: Eldraeverse tractor beams (and pressor beams), as with the rest of the vector control technology family, are subject to Newton’s Third Law, Conservation of Momentum, and so forth.  If you want to stay in the same place when using one, you need to allow for that.  Use thrusters to hold position when using it in space, and brace yourself when moving furniture.

It does mean you can take a personal-size tractor beam and play Spider-Man to your heart’s content, though. Assuming you are good enough to only point it at things that have the structural strength to support your weight.