Or, I should say, the thing that is supposed to look like a laser component.
"The Foreign Hand Tie"
Gordon Randall Garrett
In such cases the men nearest it are usually not shattered, but dissolved into their component gases.
"The Greater Power"
Harold Bindloss W. Herbert Dunton
Like the minor province which we inhabit, the whole universe, we are assured,-so far as we have means of calculating,-must ultimately arrive at a condition of eternal stagnation,-its component parts being drawn close together by their mutual attractions,-so that motion ceases; while the heat replacing it being equally diffused, becomes as incapable of doing work as water between two pools on the same level is of turning a mill.
"The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer"
John Gerard