Emerging back into sunlight after 5K of trails through old growth forest, Torin eyed the forty-five degree incline up to the top of the bluff and knew she'd been spending too much time in space and too little time paying attention to her training. In spite of having been dirtside for the last tenday, she could feel the effect of the run in both legs and lungs.

There was a time, back before she joined the Corps, when she'd end her 20K run with a six-meter dive into the lake and swim a good fifteen, twenty meters underwater before having to surface to breathe. Diving straight into the lake today would be stupid bordering on suicidal. The gravity here on Paradise, Torin's birth world, was 1.14 oldEarth norm while ships and stations both maintained artificial systems at.98-a small difference but telling after a few years.

Although, Torin admitted, throwing everything she had left into the last 100 meters, it could be the mileage. The distance between nineteen and thirty-six was one hell of a lot farther than the distance between Paradise and the OutSector station where Sh'quo Company had been based.

The top of the bluff hadn't changed; a silver-gray cap of limestone curved out over Lake Serella, worn smooth by wind and rain. Her older brother Mohan and his friends used to hunt for fossils in these rocks; spiral-shelled creatures from an ancient sea trapped in time. She wondered if he ever brought his kids out here and tried to teach them the names the Human colonists had given some of the oldest of Paradise's original inhabitants.

The narrow fissure that ran across the rock at the two-thirds point marked the exact end of the 20K. Torin crossed it and stumbled less than gracefully to a stop, the stiffer soles on her trail shoes sliding a little on the rock's smooth surface. Regaining her balance, she walked over to the edge and stared out at the view while she caught her breath.