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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven

Emergency Repulsion (Repulsive Ray)  
  A beam of force that repels one object from another.  

This is the opposite of the tractor beam idea (from 'Doc' Smith's 1931 novel Space Hounds of IPC).

Blake quite evidently was trying emergency repulsion. A faint beam of radiance streamed downward, swayed drunkenly from the tumbling movement of the falling vessel... From the side bull's-eye of the room, Georg saw the direct, actual glow of the beam as it momentarily swung downward and struck the Moon surface.
Technovelgy from Blood of the Moon, by Ray Cummings.
Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936
Additional resources -

Compare to this very similar idea, the repulsor from Frederic Brown's 1949 story What Mad Universe and the pressor beam from 'Doc' Smith's 1931 novel Space Hounds of IPC.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Blood of the Moon
  More Ideas and Technology by Ray Cummings
  Tech news articles related to Blood of the Moon
  Tech news articles related to works by Ray Cummings

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