I, Robot- Runaround( p7~ p17)

Mike Donovan and Greg Powell had trouble when they found that the robot named Speedy had not come back for five hours after sending for the selenium. They tried to speak to him by radio, but it did not work on the Mercury Sunside. They needed Speedy because he could get the selenium to protect them from the full heat of Mercury's terrible sun.

Even though both of them were wearing the new insosuits, it won't protect them for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight. Meanwhile, Mike had an idea to use old robots to take them outside the station. The robots were extremely large and three metres tall. The robots could talk and bend slowly, but could not move unless someone rode them like a horse. Both of them rode the robots through the door and along a narrow passage into the tunnel. They tried to find Speedy, the fastest SPD-13 Robot produced by the United States Robots Company.

They made contact with Speedy by radio, but he was behaving unusually. Then, the two men went back to the shadow of the cliff and got down from their robots. Powell asked whether Donovan said something wrong to Speedy when sending him for the selenium. Powell worried that Donovan had broken the Three Laws of Robotics that are built into a robot's positronic brain. First, a robot must not injure a human being or allow a human being to come to harm. Second, robot must obey the orders given by human beings unless they conflict with the First Law. Third, a robot must protect itself, unless this conflicts with the First or Second Laws.

The reason why Speedy was acting unusual was that Mike used the second law to send him for selenium, but Speedy used the third law when he was in danger with some gas above the selenium pole, so it came to a conflict between the second and third law. However, Powell put himself in danger by using the first law to make the conflict come to the end. "A robot cannot watch a human being in danger without helping", said Powell. And then, he went out in the hot sun to call Speedy back. "Boss, what are you doing here? And what am I doing? I am so confused," said Speedy. Finally, Speedy got that selenium back in forty-two minutes and apologized for the runaround he gave Powell and Donovan.