I don't think that SCRIPT2 is ever getting invoked. The reason I think that is that I strongly suspect that $? is -1 inside SCRIPT1. (please post the actual $? value, not $?>>8)

I strongly urge you to put the following code, taken from the perlfunc manpage where it talks about the system call, after your call to system:

  if ($? == -1) {
      print "failed to execute: $!\n";
  }
  elsif ($? & 127) {
      printf "child died with signal %d, %s coredump\n",
          ($? & 127),  ($? & 128) ? 'with' : 'without';
  }
  else {
      printf "child exited with value %d\n", $? >> 8;
  }
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@/=map{[/./g]}qw/.h_nJ Xapou cets krht ele_ r_ra/;
map{y/X_/\n /;print}map{pop@$_}@/for@/
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