Twain creates a diversion by insulting the aliens in such a way that they thank him for it while Edison builds an escape pod from plans stolen from Nikola Tesla.
You guys should read The Five Fists of Science, which is more or less what you just described (but with Tesla and Twain teaming up against the mad plans of Edison.)
Twain was the original gadget nut. If he was alive today he'd be having a running competition with Stephen Fry as to see who could have the most podcasts. The man could pilot a steamboat, his brother was a civil engineer, the guy was OBSESSED with gadgetry and one of the world's great alpha nerds.
Apropos of nothing, Elvis was a big gadget nut too. They have his mobile phone on display at Graceland - the thing is the size of a fucking suitcase. I guarantee you he would have been all over laptops and PDAs and shit were he alive today. Dude used to race go-karts with his friends up and down Elvis Presley Boulevard.
His younger daughter Jean, would die later that year. It is her death which broke him, though he had been grieving since Susy, his other daughter, had died in 1896.