"But you were afraid, Lucie. You talked about undergrounds, and how it was impossible—"
She touched his arm and then took hold of his hand. "You don't understand I guess. Maybe you never will."
"Understand what?"
"What it is to try to get away, be alone, be by yourself, when you can't. When no matter what you do you're with the Group, night and day, even in your dreams. You knew it for a while, but imagine it for years, not days. There's no place to hide. Wherever you go the Group goes with you. That's why I said you couldn't get away—"
"Then there isn't any law to prevent us from going to the Moon?"
"Only the law of the majority, of Public Opinion," she said. "But you can't stay here and fight it, not for very long. Finally you have to give in to it. You become what they are or go mad. And there are Groups even for them."
The saucer dropped down to the fog draped earth and they were walking toward the pits where the Moonship waited.
It looked like such a wonderful world, he thought. Everyone happy, everyone smiling all the time. No wars. No externalized authority.
The Manufacturers of consent. A quasi-totalitarian society in which means of communication had largely replaced force as the apparatus of compulsion. Communication, fear, insecurity. In his isolation and insecurity, man clung to his Group, to the majority, the accepted opinions.
The majority did not need to force a man now. No need for police, or armies.