Doomed Planet by Lee Sheldon

Author:Lee Sheldon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781938536076
Publisher: Singularity&Co.
Published: 2012-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter XI

"Can we break it down?" Woody yelled.

Together Jeff and Woody crashed against the door; it didn't even creak.

"We can't budge it," Jeff said. "Maybe there is a lock."

He searched the door, looking for some kind of latch or lock, but he found nothing except the small depression into which the Illustrians stuck their thumbs. The doors always opened easily when the Illustrians touched those depressions.

"Must be something about their thumbs that opens it," Jeff said.

"Maybe those sensitive thumbs of theirs are connected to the nerve center of this whole complex," Woody suggested.

"I suppose that's possible," Jeff said.

His mind was racing, probing for some means of getting out of this hallway into the main corridor. He didn't doubt that his and Woody's punishment would be severe now that they had made an attempt to break out. He had known when he began that there would be risks, but he had expected to get farther with his plan than the hallway adjoining his room.

"Maybe if we go back now, they'll never know we tried to get away," Woody suggested.

"They'll know it," Jeff said. "How are you going to keep those three Illustrians we knocked out from talking?"

"Suppose we killed them?" Woody asked in sudden alarm.

"Meredith said they only fainted when they were hit on those thumbs."

As if to verify Meredith's words, a murmur of sound came from their room now. Jeff turned and ran back there. Two of the Illustrians were stirring, looking around them stupidly.

Unlike Woody, Jeff was not ready to give up in his attempt to escape and rescue Sue. If he was going to do anything more, however, he had to put these Illustrians out of action for a while longer.

Running to them, he stooped over and hit the first one on the tender lower thumb on his left hand again. He wilted just as he had before. Jeff wondered, as he moved over to the next Illustrian, how it happened that although each man had four arms and four hands, each hand had only one thumb except for the lower left hand. That one had two thumbs and one of those was the tender nerve center of his whole system.

Passing the second Illustrian, Jeff reached over and slapped his tender thumb; instantly the man became motionless. He came to the last one and found him sitting up, blinking stupidly at him. Quickly Jeff hit the man's left hand and the Illustrian wilted again; as he went down, however, he struck his lower left hand on the floor.

Jeff stared in amazement as he saw one of the man's two thumbs break away from his hand and roll out on the floor. Stooping, he touched the thumb and discovered that this wasn't the tender thumb that he had struck to knock the man out; this was the other thumb.

Examining the Illustrian's hand, he saw that this thumb that had broken off was not a real part of the man's hand at all. It was something that had been fastened there.

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