But what about the exception? The guy who fought conformity and the majority opinion. Who would they put on Kane? Or what? It would help to know what he was running from. What concrete force or power would try to stop him. Then he saw her running toward him. Her face was flushed and the wind blew her dress tightly against her slim body as she stopped and looked at him. He took hold of her arm. "We've got to hurry," she said. "The Group knows I've run away. The Staff will be after me." Kane glanced at the elevator, then they ran back toward the saucer. "You'll have to pilot this thing," Kane said. "It's a little crowded up there for me." She started the motor and the saucer lifted abruptly. "The terminal at La Guardia?" she said. "No. The ship's at least two miles from the Terminal. We'll go directly to the ship." He hesitated. "The only thing is--it isn't due to blast out of here until the 25th." "That doesn't matter," she said. "Why doesn't it? We're flaunting the law. They're after us. They won't let us just hide away on that ship until the 25th." "They?" He stared at her. "You said yourself we had to hurry, because the Staff--" "But don't you see, there's no one to stop us now. The Staff at Sunny Hills could have, but here there isn't any Staff. There's none at the ship either, is there?" "No." "Well then, we'll just wait on the ship until--we go to the Moon." "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. They _convinced_ him. The only way you could keep from being convinced was to get out. The hatch slid open.