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We derive the short distance interaction of star polymers in a colloidal solution. We calculate the corresponding force between two stars with arbitrary numbers of legs f 1 and f 2 . We show that a simple scaling theory originally derived for high f 1 , f 2 nicely matches with the results of elaborated renormalization group analysis for f 1 + f 2 ≤ 6 generalizing and confirming a previous conjecture based only on scaling results for f 1 = f 2 = 1, 2.