The Caves of Steel
A translator incorporated the concept of the Zeroth Law into one of Asimov's novels before Asimov himself made the law explicit. Near the climax of "The Caves of Steel", Elijah Baley makes a bitter comment to himself thinking that the First Law forbids a robot from harming a human being. He determines that it must be so unless the robot is clever enough to comprehend that its actions are for humankind's long-term good. In Jacques Brécard's 1956 French translation entitled "" Baley's thoughts emerge in a slightly different way: