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villagers follow the
Empress through blind authority, the Weapon Shop has been secretly working in order to protect their rights and freedom. They offer him evidence that organizations owned by the Empress herself organized the theft of his money and store. The weapons shop organization restores his stolen property, and he quietly joins their resistance to the state.
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A small businessman named Fara faces mounting professional and personal troubles despite his fierce devotion to the
Empress who rules the solar system. He is infuriated when a weapons shop, which sells fantastic technology but which is not controlled by the Empress, materializes in his town. He fails
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The owner calls several of his friends to the shop and hatches a plan to counteract the weapon. McAllister now holds an enormous temporal charge. If he leaves the shop he will return to his time, while the weapon will be shot into the future by the same amount. As he dresses in a protective suit that
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A shop selling "The Finest Energy
Weapons in the Known Universe" mysteriously appears in Middle City in June 1947. A reporter, Chris McAllister, enters the shop and suddenly finds himself 7,000 years in the future. The shop's owner and daughter conclude that this was caused by a weapon being turned
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Nobody is willing to help him except, surprisingly, the operators of the weapons shop. Fara discovers that the size and power of their organization far surpass his initial understanding, and that they represent a bulwark against the otherwise absolute power of the
Empress. Although most of the
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He finds himself back in 1947, but after a short time, is propelled into the future again, and then back and forth as if on a seesaw. He notices that each swing is further than the last, and ultimately realizes his ultimate duty is to remove the suit at the beginning of time, causing the
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retains the charge, he realizes there is a problem — unless he removes the suit, he will retain the charge, and the motion will not stop. The group seizes him and throws him out the door.
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in his efforts to have the shop expelled, and is soon further humiliated and impoverished when his son participates in a scam against him.
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as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the
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Works originally published in Analog
Science Fiction and Fact
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16:Short story by A. E. van Vogt
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672:Short stories by A. E. van Vogt
168:. As such, it was published in
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346:The Man with a Thousand Names
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447:The Weapon Shops of Isher
431:The Weapon Shops of Isher
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422:(with Kevin J. Anderson)
530:Destination: Universe!
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339:Children of Tomorrow
332:Quest for the Future
387:The Pawns of Null-A
380:The World of Null-A
133:by Canadian writer
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