I liked the story with the robot on Mercury running in circles, because it couldn't go closer to a lake from which it was tasked with taking a sample without be

I liked the story with the robot on Mercury running in circles, because it couldn't go closer to a lake from which it was tasked with taking a sample without being destroyed by the heat, but couldn't go back, because it would mean disobeying a direct command. Of course, a longer inference chain would show that not going back would lead to the people at the base dying, but you have to cut it somewhere, because if you let a robot indefinitely extrapolate possible actions, the only rational thing for it to do would be to self-terminate, since breaking the third law with certainty is obviously preferable than the infinitely many possibilities of infinitely many times breaking the first and second laws.