graser

The Russians are working on the graser. One B. V. Chirkov has published a theoretical study in the Soviet Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. He thinks a very pure crystal, "pumped" with a powerful source of radiation (such a "hard" X rays), much as a ruby crystal is pumped with high-intensity light in one form of laser, could be stimulated to emit coherent gamma rays—pulses of high-energy radiation perfectly in step.

The graser beam melted through the far wall of the lounge, but luckily beyond that lay only sections of the complex containing the cargo runcibles, and there it finally spent its energy slagging the massive handler robots.