"Yes."
He turned to me. "Pheola," I said. "Now the question is whether you can help break it up. Maragon's blood stream is not eroding the clot. Perhaps it has a sort of envelope of firmer fibrin around it, something that keeps it from breaking down. The question is whether you are sensitive enough, and have enough control, to get a good grip on the clot, and start breaking it up by tearing away at its surface. It certainly has very little mechanical strength, and you have several grams of TK in the lab. What do you think?"
The whole idea scared the devil out of her, but we went back to Maragon's room together, where she felt for the clot with a new outlook on the problem. After some minutes she nodded, and we went out in the corridor to put our heads together.
"I think I can do it, Lefty," she said. "But what if something goes wrong?"
"It won't," I said. "Evaleen Riley says that he isn't going to die, and I believe her."
"O.K.," said Doc Swartz. "I'll put it up to him."
"I'd put it this way," he said to Maragon, when we had gone back into his room. "We can keep you here in bed for a while, but sooner or later you are going to feel well enough to leave, and we won't be able to make you stay. The first time you do anything that gets your heart going a little faster than it does lying here, that clot will break loose and kill you."
"The big thing," I reminded him, "is that Evaleen can't find that you are going to die. That argues that we are going to succeed."
"And this witch?" Maragon asked, moving his head slightly to indicate Pheola.
"No reading at all for the next couple days," I said. "She's a periodic PC."