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"We're about 20 minutes away from the point where Clarke's law kicks in and technology becomes indistinguishable from magic."
- Peter Watts

Space-Post  
  A trading post in space.  

An early use of this term, which derives from the "trading posts" of the old American West.

Inside the low sheet-metal commissary building of the space post known on the Interplanetary Relations & Commerce Commission’s roster as No. 291, Oliver Blakston grumbled within his air helmet — where, to be sure, there was nobody to hear him grumble but himself. All space-post factors grumbled, as a matter of traditional right. Besides, it helped to pass the time between customers, and when these number only a score of prospectors, a dozen Martian spore gatherers and looth wool shearers, and one aged, slightly senile fugitive from justice, there is plenty of time to pass.
Technovelgy from Episode On Dhee Minor, by Harry Walton.
Published by Astounding in 1939
Additional resources -

Each space-post had it's own special defenses:

"There is news,” continued the native. "Approaching from sunward is great looth. Beware, man friend!”

Blakston thanked him, inwardly smiling at Queel’s melodramatic manner. But the warning was bom of the Ootlandah’s not unfounded fear of the genus loothaguri, which might be described as an acre of animal with but one characteristic — an appetite. The factor himself felt no anxiety at the approach of one of these weird creatures, for the space post’s electrical fences could turn aside a dozen of them.

A "trading post" (or trading station) was a place in the old West where the owner (usually called the "factor") would offer different goods for sale or barter.

Clifford Simak also made use of the trading post idea in his 1961 novel Time is the Simplest Thing. The commercial entity called Fishhook used its technology to travel the stars; different goods or products were brought back and sold in places called Trading Posts, which was taken as a sign that the company looked down on everyone else. Read this article on the transo which linked the Trading Posts together.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Episode On Dhee Minor
  More Ideas and Technology by Harry Walton
  Tech news articles related to Episode On Dhee Minor
  Tech news articles related to works by Harry Walton

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