"That's weird," commented Che, the ship's navigator and communications officer, to the pilot who was seated beside her. "I'm not getting any response from the space station, Arialla. In fact..." she paused, frowning at the console unit in front of her, "I'm not registering anything from the co-ordinates, at least, nothing large enough to be a station."

Stella, the pilot, frowned too. "That is weird. Space stations don't normally move from their location. What about the 'port down on Mu? What do they have to say about it?"

But Che was shaking her head. "Nothing. I can't get a response from them, either."

"There's something wrong," said Stella, biting her lip. "Let's see if we can get a little closer and find out what's happening."

The ship moved closer to the planet, until it was near enough to slip into orbit around Mu.

"I'm getting some images from the ground now..." said Che, her voice trailing off as pictures of blackened ruins, some still smoking, filled her screen.

Both women stared in horror. "What the hell happened here?" exclaimed Stella, in a harsh whisper.

Even as they watched, three small black ships rose to meet them. Fast. "I don't like that," said Che, uneasily. "They don't look like any ships I've seen before."

"Let's get out of here!" announced Stella abruptly. "I think we've stumbled on a war zone and those are the attackers!"

"Shouldn't we do something?" asked Che, hesitantly. "Fight back? There might be survivors down there."

" 'Fight back'? With what? Opera singers? We don't have any weapons!" Stella was scornful, already preparing the ship to leave orbit. But she was too late. The lead ship had caught The Flying Dutchman in a tractor beam.

The next minute a strange series of unintelligible noises came through on their hailing frequency. "I'm guessing that's alien for 'surrender, resistance is useless'," giggled Che with a touch of hysteria.

Stella gave her a quelling look then took a deep breath. "I'm afraid we're under attack by alien craft," she announced firmly to her passengers. "I suggest you remain calm and stay in your cabins—"

"Eiiiiiiiiii! Noooooo!" 

The sound of Tara screaming from the passenger quarters almost shattered their eardrums. Che and Stella clapped hands over their ears, even as they flinched away as the one piece of glass on board, a miniature Flying Dutchman, shattered above the console unit. They stared at each other, eyes wide with incredulity. Was it possible? Did they have a secret weapon after all?

In a matter of minutes, they had all the sopranos (and one tenor), of the Starshine Event Opera Company crowded into the cabin, clustered around the console unit. Turning the hailing frequency amplification to maximum, Che and Stella silently handed around earphones to everyone and then motioned to the Director who said, "Sing your highest note, as loud as you can. And atonal. Let's see what damage we can do to those bastards!"

Despite the earphones, the next few minutes on board The Flying Dutchman were excruciating. A white wall of sound, each voice a tiny fraction of a tone different from the others, like a hundred sabre cats being skinned alive. Stella wasn't the only one fighting back nausea, but when she felt the tractor beam lose its grip, she didn't hesitate. She sent The Flying Dutchman shooting off into space at maximum speed, flattening the singers against the back wall. At the earliest limits of safety, she switched the ship into FTL drive and jumped in the direction of Eridanus, Mu's home world.

"Well, that was a bit too close for comfort!" said Che, feeling giddy with relief.

"I guess we'll never know exactly what effect you had back there for sure, but the important thing is that it worked. It broke the alien's concentration long enough for us to escape. Well done, everyone!" praised Stella.

"I'd love to think we gave them all a splitting headache," said Che, as she helped Tara to her feet. "Or burst an ear drum or two."

Light years away behind them, three black spaceships drifted into endless orbit around Mu. The piercing frequency of the singers' voices had resonated precisely with the tiny, fragile component deep in the aliens' bio-metallic brains, and killed them all instantly.