  The depletion force and depletion potential between two in principle unequal
"big" hard spheres embedded in a multicomponent mixture of "small" hard spheres
are computed using the Rational Function Approximation method for the
structural properties of hard-sphere mixtures [S. B. Yuste, A. Santos, and M.
L\'opez de Haro, J. Chem. Phys. {\bf 108}, 3683 (1998)]. The cases of equal
solute particles and of one big particle and a hard planar wall in a background
monodisperse hard-sphere fluid are explicitly analyzed. An improvement over the
performance of the Percus-Yevick theory and good agreement with available
simulation results are found
