It was the timing of the sound and the sequential timing of the exterior and interior shots I was more concerned about.
Yeah, Threepio says ‘What’s that?’ and we hear distant sounds of metal on metal, as if it was those clamps locking onto the ship. Then we see the Rebels looking up and more of those distant metal clanging sounds. However, the next shot is still the ship being pulled into the Star Destroyer hangar with no hint that anything has physically interacted with the ship. We then hear more sounds, this time presumably the sounds of an umbilical passage being brought to the Tantive’s hatch, then the Tantive hatch is sliced with lasers.
The problem here is that the shot of the ship being pulled into the docking bay is out of place. It seems like it should go after Threepio says ‘This is madness!’. Then there would be no exterior shots of what is happening, and the viewer would be left to imagine it based on the sounds within the ship.
I always assumed it was the hull of the ship creaking because of the tractor beam and perhaps some blast doors in the Tantive being forced shut to slow down the inevitable boarding of the vessel by troops. In universe, a tractor beam would seem like a powerful type of energy to do such a thing. In Andor season 1 when Luthen is being pulled by the Imperial Cantwell-class Arrestor Cruiser (I had to look that up), you also hear metal thuds and creaks as he is trying to escape their tractor beam. Just my view on it, of course.