  We study the effects of thermal conduction in a hot, active corona above an
accretion disk. We assume that all of the dissipative heating takes place in
the corona. We find that the importance of conduction decreases with increases
in the local dissipative compactness of the corona, l_{diss,loc}, and increases
with increasing abundance of electron-positron pairs. For l_{diss,loc} < 1, a
significant fraction of the energy released in the corona may be carried away
by the conductive flux, leading to formation of a relatively hot transition
layer below the base of the corona. Comptonization of disk radiation in such a
layer may account for the presence of soft X-ray excesses in the spectra
emitted by disk-corona systems.
