[TOMT][NOVEL/SHORT STORY][BEFORE 2010] Science fiction book about shapeshifting amorphous/goo-like alien on a space station, cover may have ripped off the Alien series in some way

Sometime when I was in elementary school, weird old scifi story. I remember it being very short, like short story length, but I also could’ve just read it very fast. Pretty sure it was the only story in the book. Main character was a male astronaut I think, though maybe I’m wrong on it being in space at all. I swear that the cover made me think as a kid that it was an official Alien franchise book. I don’t know if it was the font, the egg, or something else, but it was prior to Prometheus so that can’t be it. The end had some sort of emotional twist, like the alien was just a mother trying to protect its kid or something? No idea when it was written since I read a lot of books as a child.

Edit: Things similar that I know it wasn’t: Camouflage by Joe Haldeman, I Spy/Spiro/Venturer of the Martian Mimics/Metamorphosite by Eric Frank Russell.