"Couple a force beam with a tractor focus-zone generator. The tractor, you know, operates on the field-of-focus principle. A rough sphere at the end of the beam—anything in that field is drawn. The snatcher merely applies the field-of-focus idea to the side-thrust of a force beam. You raise the power several times and anchor it with a superdrive tube coupled so that the thrust is balanced against a spatial thrust instead of the ship. That tears the guts out of anything."
"I have an idea that you might be able to cut instead of tear if you include some nuclear-resonant frequencies in the field of focus generator."
"Is it necessary?"
"Might be interesting," said Downing. "They tear. If we land on them with something that quickly, precisely, quietly, and almost painlessly slices a sphere out of one of their ships, they may be impressed."
"You have something there. I'm going to tear into some of the planet-mounted jobs. We are now sixty-three ships. I can make one snatcher out of every dymodine that's planet-mounted out here. Shall I?"
"How long?"
"Ten hours each."
"Six hundred and thirty hours. Twenty-six days and six hours."
"We'll make it in twenty days. By the time the boys get to Number Ten or Twelve they'll be working shortcut and on production-line basis and the piece-time will drop."
"Twenty days is long enough, believe me. We'll toss in my gang and Lane's gang, too. They can go to work on the modine directors and make barriers out of 'em if you claim they'll work."