The skies above Maithreyi were clouded today. Indra was disappointed; he had patiently waited through the 6 hour ride in anticipation of the 4 moons. All the guidebooks had unanimously voted it as the best feature of Maithreyi. The ride to the stay area from the dock could have been on any planet. The same raised platforms full of traders, the same debris and the same dejected faces. He remembered the first days of space jumps, everything was different, adventurous. You noticed the colors and the shapes and the textures. Using an eating implement or even walking through immigration was exciting. Just like the old movies. Now he could just point out the similarities, the differences were just superficial. Life it seems could just move in one boring direction, from water to land or air with maybe an extra limb here and there or even a wing or a horn but no other major difference. You were born, you lived a miserable life trying to conform to your society and you died even if you were on Earth, Mars or Maithreyi.

He shouldn’t be thinking these dark thoughts, after all he was on a mission and after that no more traveling or weird cultures and food, he was getting too old and had decided to stop. No more morbid thoughts about life, his or anybodys. The taxi was automated so he didn’t have to worry about making small conversation. He had always hated the way most taxi personnel in any tourist destination waited for you to praise their region. It was almost an insult not to. If you didn’t rave about the orange sea in Citricamus or the five winged disturbingly friendly koel of Garuda then the ride would most often than not be overpriced. And if you had just landed and not seen anything, then it was never ending trumpet blowing about that particular regions freak show.  The taxi hissed to a stop in front of his hotel and a native carried his luggage in. Some of the old ways were still retained after all.

After a quick clean up, Indra stepped out to the walkways to see the sights. There was an Earth restaurant a short distance away according to the guidebook. He never attempted any alien cuisine. Food poisoning was a constant threat and you never knew what effect it would have on your metabolism. The stark, almost uninhabited planet of  Ozark had become a tourist hit after their staple food – a kind of animal bile which was produced by large animal like creatures kept underground was discovered to have hallucinogenic qualities. 

The restaurant was dingy and the meat was old and rubbery. Unsatisfied and even grumpier than before he proceeded to the main market area to see if there was anything he could do to entertain himself. As the wars among the planets raged , the tourist industry as well as every other industry except ship builders and war research had collapsed. His job had taken him to the farthest reaches of the known universe and the destruction had touched every living thing.

His own planet Earth, was responsible for all this. He saw it in the gazes that the citizens of any planet gave him. ‘The advanced alien civilization was ours; the greedy want for resources was a human trait that spread worse than any virus.’ He thought with bitterness. The discovery of space jumps had revolutionized trade and consequently greed. And now after 500 years the other planets had also caught up, it was the first universe war and it wasn’t going as planned for the earth. Maitreyi was neutral as were most planets that depended on tourism, but reliable reports had come that it was the brain of the anti earth bloc. There had been many reports and many dead planets, but this time the league had seemed sure, and it was Indra’s job to see that this planet too died. It was his last mission after which he could disappear. He was the last of his kind, now there were robots that could do the job. Even this job had been fraught with difficulties. The fuel hadn’t reached; the supplier had been intercepted and killed. They had to use an unknown guy which was against the rules. There had been rumors of failures in other far reaching planets, but they were not as important as Maitreyi. That’s why he had been sent for, the best of the old breed of terminators. Not an assassin, who killed one, or a mass murderer who killed many but a terminator who wiped away a whole planet. They were experts who with a little bionuclear fuel and a deep knowledge of life forms and planets could wipe it out in little more than an hour.  

As Indra walked towards the place he had chosen, the skies broke and a yellow sickly rain fell. His spirit fell further and a dark melancholy filled him. It seemed his veins were not pumping blood but a black sludge. His steps dragged and suddenly he realized it just wasn’t depression but he actually was feeling sluggish, maybe a little sick. It must be the grey meat in his lunch. But that couldn’t explain the sharp pain in his side or the blurred vision. His mentor had always warned him about habits. They knew one little thing about you, you aren’t safe anymore. So Maitreyi was as important as they had said, or they wouldn’t have bothered killing him. Earth was going to lose after all.